The inevitable Hunger Games thread

Hunger Games is obviously a mashup of a lot of tropes and clichés, but at heart it wants to be a epic of The Hero. The Evil Government trope is just there to give the Hero a nemesis, to throw obstacles at her and her fellow heros, and to be an evil counterpart to all that is Good and Clean and Loving and Human. Οὖτις has every right to find the HG a particularly unthinking and reactionary misuse of the trope of Evil Government, but the number of 13 year old girls who are into the politics of HG as opposed to the Hero Quest aspect (with super cool archery feats!) are probably not numerous enough to be worth worrying over.

ah great some ott misogyny

w/ it's war on terror metaphor. hunger games pretty openly and somewhat on the nose response to iraq war, poor youth being sent to their deaths in a spectacle for the benefit of the rich

idg this. American troops weren't forced to fight each other, they were fed a bunch of fictitious lies about a demonized, external enemy.

I don't think that word means quite what you think it means, balls.

I remember reading an interview with the author where she said the inspiration for HG was flipping the channel between Iraq War news reporting and a reality game show like Survivor... So I think it's meant more of a comment on poor kids killing poor kids, TV entertainment, and the rich and powerful using the reality of the poor's struggles as political theatre which they sell back to the poor as heroics... maybe a bit more a mix of ideas than a direct analogue to either Iraq or now.

I don't think that word means quite what you think it means, balls.

― Aimless, Monday, June 16, 2014 7:35 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nah that's the correct usage

I just watched this. I kind of liked the set up and all the TV stuff, Truman-show-esque as it was. Ending is basically 'oh the people in charge changed their minds' and not really because she did anything mind-blowing or outwitted them particularly? just 'they probably won't like this because TV' - so a massive anti-climax. And yeah, she never really has to make a morally challenging decision. But I'm also glad there was no 'wake up sheeple!'.

much bigger problem during the action scenes is that when peetah and that vicious psychopath kid were fighting at the end they looked so much alike i couldn't tell who was who (blonde buff young caucasians all look the same to me i guess)

i could tell them apart but this was the only time the shakeycam got annoying for me too, because it was so jerky that you couldn't tell what katniss actually shot such that she'd hit cato without him taking peeta with him.

(i looked it up afterwards, she shoots cato's hand so he's forced to release peeta as he falls backwards.)

― lex pretend, Thursday, 29 March 2012 09:34 (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

See this is one of the very few bits of obvious 'strategy' or something: Peter spends ages pointing to that spot on his hand and gesturing!

Just watched Mockingjay Pt 1 last night, and holy hell, how in the world did this film get made? 2 hours long and virtually no action and very little happening at all. I liked the first two quite a bit and am amazed that they messed this one up so badly. Katniss, who was a great character in the other films, comes off in this one as basically useless. Why in the world do they stretch books into two long movies when the first one is nothing but set up for the second?

just standard operating procedure for these things - spin the last book into two films, the first one of which will always be fucked because it makes no structural sense. watched Part 1 when it came out and it's exactly as you describe, but exactly what i expected.

sorry, shd've just said "it's the money"

also tbh the second two books probably could have been one book and chopped out three or four story arcs and ten characters that didn't really add anything.

i never read the books, it was my daughter that persuaded me to watch the movies but i liked the first two. even tho she won't believe me that all the handsome young men look the same to me and i can't tell who the hell is who.

i have napped through all of these movies so far

reading this for the first time
do they have to list every time katniss goes to sleep

it's pretty good on the whole tho
i decided kids probably like it so much because, developmentally, they feel like their actions & their crazy new feelings are the focus of worldwide scrutiny, so it's a good parable for adolescent feelings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_audience)

there are a lot of 'refrigerator moments' in these books for me, like, why does everyone go along with the games in the first place? what kind of government does this society have? why are there cars & hovercrafts & omniscient sky cams but no guns or lazers, only oldschool weapons (except the night vision sunglasses)?

i do like that it all take place in the woods -- i am imagining really scrappy crummy woods like burnt down yellowstone circa the late '80s, or new mexico's white mountains, or flagstaff. ariz. i want more descriptions of the climate & biome but i think all my criticisms just mean i'm a nerd

also a plus, i think it is cool that katniss's feelings for her sister (& affection xfer to rue as a result) are way more fleshed out than the boycrush feelings.

Tried to see Spectre tonight but the theater was a madhouse and everything was sold out so we did the opening weekend plunge on this one instead. I can see this ultimately resonating like a nu-school Star Wars for a younger generation. Except that they get a Star Wars that doesn't just peter out with a long wet fart full of teddy bears. I went very begrudgingly into the first movie but I've liked it and every installment since quite a bit. The ending was ultimately a little pat but satisfying nonetheless. The acting carries an awful lot of water, but it's a well-made package overall. Remains to be seen how it'll all hold up on a repeat viewing (although I'm looking forward to doing just that since I've spent too much time during every sequel trying to remember what had happened previously).

i've never realised how hateable the name 'peeta' is before

The character/actor himself is kind of a limp noodle and easily the weakest part of the film series. Perhaps the books provide more clarity as to why he wasn't mercifully chucked into a canyon as early as possible.

I've never read the books, but I have seen the movies multiple times, because of one of my teens, and they've grown on me, particularly the sequels. They're pretty well conceived and executed, especially the last one, which was iirc sort of dismissed at the time as being more conventionally action-y than the others but is actually full of long stretches of quiet or introspective bits. I assume it's from the source material, but some of the turns of the final installment are particularly dark and heavy, and ultimately subvert a lot of tropes in these sorts of dystopian films. I like that the surviving heroes all clearly end up damaged, and that there is no real sunrise over a new day conclusion.

This is all in the source material iirc! You might enjoy the books. I'll admit by the end I was getting a little weary of just how endless the conveyor belt of trauma and recovery seemed, but maybe I'd think about those themes differently today. And maybe I just read them in too quick a succession.

Aren't the books told in first person or something? I can imagine that being less effective. Or maybe just effective differently.