The inevitable Hunger Games thread

also re: above, felt like the implication was that the govt is highly commercialized/partnered with corporations, but i might be projecting.

this is stuff i wanted to know too, though re: the third question - it's the sponsors who send packages of eg medicine in those little parachutes (the film doesn't show this, i've just been, uh, spending a lot of time reading up on the hunger games universe today)

This is more than sufficiently implied in the film, though some might have been thrown off by the attached notes from Haymitch.

Yeah I was thrown off by the notes. I didn't realize that Woody was lobbying for them. I just thought he was the one sending the stuff.

Also couldn't tell how big the arena was. I wish I had a sense of how Katniss was being seen by others, to see how she was or was not portrayed.

What I preferred about The Running Man was how the game-runners, who had total control of the media/viewers, had no trouble "pausing" the game and interfering. Like, they knew it was rigged, just as this "show" could have rigged any conclusion it wanted. Seemed weird that the Hunger Games wouldn't be similarly rigged. Also, couldn't believe that this barbaric, blatant bit of plebe manipulation could have possibly made it 74 iterations of whatever, considering just this one alone was enough to send that one District batshit rebellion. But I suppose this is neither here nor there.

http://i.imgur.com/0xJrb.png

BTW, there was plenty of gore in this. Just because it was depicted subtly doesn't mean anyone would miss the gist of viscous blood spraying across the screen or bloody weapons being bashed about.

I really enjoyed this! I read a couple of chapters of the book and really kind of hated how it was written, felt like the movie was a more pleasant way to follow the story.

But I hated, HATED, the smashed-in closeups/shakeycam. In the pulling the names out of the bowl scene it was so annoying, like I don't want to see Elizabeth Bank's goddamn lips! Or part of her hair and the corner of someone else's face. FRAME THE BLOODY SHOT. But more so in the action sequences, it was almost impossible to tell where anyone was in relation to each other when fighting, it was way too Bourne for my liking in that regard.

But the Katniss girl was fantastic. Nice and stoic, vulnerable, all the right notes. And so pretty. My mother-inlaw and Mr Veg both read the books and really enjoyed the movie too, Mr Veg even cried when Rue died <3

What are the odds that the same actress would play two squirrel-killing, Appalachian dwelling, look out for her sibling' 'cause her mom is no use sorts in two very different movies based on two very different books?

I thought it would be more interesting if Katniss had to, at some point in the story, fight someone who wasn't obviously a "bad guy" (ie those 1st-2nd district peeps). Seemed the relatively good or morally neutral people were killed off by some combination of nature/show manipulation/bad guys.

What are the odds that the same actress would play two squirrel-killing, Appalachian dwelling, look out for her sibling' 'cause her mom is no use sorts in two very different movies based on two very different books?

lol I definitely had the same thought. her whole character introduction seemed to have been deliberately modeled on Winter's Bone.

What are the odds that the same actress would play two squirrel-killing, Appalachian dwelling, look out for her sibling' 'cause her mom is no use sorts in two very different movies based on two very different books?

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, March 24, 2012 7:16 PM (26 minutes ago)

lol, was talking to a hunger games fan today and I started describing winter's bone, got halfway thru before realizing they're the same character

in the book, the District citizens are forced to watch the Hunger Games telecast in order to further grind them down; when they talk about "ratings" i think they're just talking about the Capitol viewers. some people have said (and i agree) that it kind of doesn't make sense that "you sit there and watch your children die" = a cowed populace, because if anything is going to inspire you to rebel, it's your children dying, right? idk.

it's also a little cheap that these Games have been going on for 74 years, but no tribute has ever tried to kill the assholes sitting ten feet away judging their use of weaponry, and apparently there's no contingency plan in place for tributes becoming suicidal. in the book they were like "don't do anything stupid or they'll kill your whole family," but even with that caveat i have to believe SOMEONE has tried it in the past 74 years.

lol I was sitting there thinking, yeah this whole teaching the populace a lesson for rebelling by killing their children every year has got to bite them on the ass eventually.

i'm two chapters in, and apparently they're kept obedient by the constant threat of having their whole district obliterated, though you'd think that'd be enough already without the hunger games.

also dear god suzanne collins' writing style is the worst

I couldn't hang

Doesn't Donald Sutherland offer some blather about giving the people some hope being better than simply executing a few kids every year? Regardless, didn't buy for a sec that anyone would stand for this silly arrangement for more than a year or two, sci-fi dystopia or not. Maybe the movie needed a more explicit show of government force to demonstrate the power of The Man?

Also agreed that I wish that one other team wasn't composed entirely of dicks and bullies. It would have added a bit more moral ambiguity had they been at least a little sympathetic, and not, you know, actively encouraged you to root for their deaths.

Some things from the book that may have given context - I was lead to believe that the games were more or less mandatory viewing for the citizens - the people in the Capitol never have entrants, so it's all fun for them, but punishment for the other districts because of the rebellion.

I thought that losing Katniss' narration did mean that the movie would be more confusing for those who hadn't read the book. Katniss' salute to Prue's district happens in the second(?) book - that was a bit out of place. It *does* raise a scandal among the game makers that she places all the flowers on Rue - she thinks they'll edit it out for reminding the viewers that they are people, children, etc.

The sponsorships they receive during the games are said to be quite expensive. We saw Haumitch schmooze but it might have been more helpful to hear Jim pushing for donations! A big thing in the book is that after Rue and Thrush died, the people from their district sent Katniss a loaf of bread (which was distinct enough she knew it came from them). This touches her a great deal because she knows that must have been a great expense and an unheard of cross-district sign of support.

Sorry - Jim=him, I plead autocorrect.

Got the salute. One of the cooler moments

so this flopped big time huh

I thought it would be more interesting if Katniss had to, at some point in the story, fight someone who wasn't obviously a "bad guy" (ie those 1st-2nd district peeps). Seemed the relatively good or morally neutral people were killed off by some combination of nature/show manipulation/bad guys.

yeah i did think a lot of the deaths were very convenient for katniss to retain her moral high ground - she only outright kills the dude who killed rue and that's presented as purely reactive self-defence. (and i think the bad guy at the end, but he's being torn apart by hounds anyway.) even in her only one-on-one fight, someone else handily shows up to kill the girl who attacks her.

The great thing about sci-fi is that it can show us stuff like a reality TV program being manipulative with the situation it's presenting and viewers learning to take less than entirely trusting view of this, when in reality it would take thousands of years for this to evolve.

also isn't the point the multiple allegories - we might throw our hands up and say "how can they possibly accept this barbarity" but almost every aspect of the hunger games society is a direct reflection of stuff that has happened or is happening in real human history - just smooshed together to magnify the horror

so this flopped big time huh

Sarcasm? It was the biggest single-day non-sequel opening.

so it flopped then

sorry but with John Carter tearing up the box office, this movie just doesn't have any chance.

oh, wait i flipped on my alternate universe browser.

One thing that the film I think drops is the fact that the district that wins gets like double its food rations for the next year, so for the subsidence districts, that's nearly life-or-death for a lot of them. Peeta's talk about how if no-one watched, that would really fuck'em up is veering close to "Workers Control the Means of Production!" - which is obviously one of the things I love about the film, that since the book has been written, the OWS has brought particular topicality to it.

One thing I'm curious about is what else the people at home watch - like is the rest of the programming Panem's Next Top Garishly Coloured Model, or Food Tips for Bark and Small Rodents? Or is that the only thing actually broadcast all year?

I was pretty certain (but maybe wrong) that they dealt with the sponsorships? You have Woody Harrelson in the train car talking about how you have to get sponsors to get you stuff like fire and cover, and you have to be likable to get them (the scene where he advises Katniss to keep the knife, as Peeta is much better at glad-handing than her), and later you have that Woody looking worried / Woody slapping backs and shaking hands / package for Peeta montage.

Also agreed that I wish that one other team wasn't composed entirely of dicks and bullies.

Team 11 = Rue and Thrash (the big guy who offs the knife-thrower) did alright, and you could imagine that some of the dudes who last ~10 secs were nice if you met them in a social setting.

But yeah, I think Katniss gets her chance in the early-game scene where she meets Foxface in the forest and they just run in separate directions - her plan is much more "Survive with my appalachian skills" than "kill everyone".

Or she gets her high moral ground from her high district number :)

Just because it was depicted subtly doesn't mean anyone would miss the gist of viscous blood spraying across the screen or bloody weapons being bashed about.

This was the weird thing - I think the scene where Rue dies is pretty much the only bloody weapon!

nah there's bloody weapons elsewhere. Katniss isn't wielding them though

Ah though, that might just be the UK

from that article: Could that grim and gritty Baby-sitters Club revamp be far behind?

oh my god i would be the happiest person if they did this. speaking of, whatever happened to the diablo cody-helmed Sweet Valley High movie? or did she give up on it and write Young Adult instead?

they covered the sponsorships - i guess i'd have just enjoyed seeing a rich capitol sponsor being ~moved~ by the showmance and deciding to send them medicine because of it - could've been a pretty effective scene.

they covered why some of the kids were "baddies" too, ie the ones from the richer districts are trained for it from an early age (hence "careers") and traditionally ally with each other at the start. obviously it suits suzanne collins' purpose that katniss is only ever put in a position of having to fight the careers, rather than eg if she and rue had succeeded in eliminating them first and were left as the last two themselves.

i was reading ahead and some of the winning tributes who crop up later in the series have pretty interesting strategies - eg there's one who spends her time in training weeping and acting weak and deliberately gets a low score so no one thinks she's a threat (which is why katniss was targeted more than foxface in this film) - then hides for most of the games then reveals herself to be fairly good at killing right at the end.

i love the fact that you're really into this lex

All I know is that the Hunger Games, the TV show, must be the most boring required viewing ever. Like when Katniss is asleep for two days? Or Team Asshole is just camping by the river or whatever? Not riveting.

So my wife told me that when things like the killer dogs and whatnot happen in the book, you don't know they're the TV show's doing, since it's all Katniss POV.

Hey, look, it's "The Running Man," condensed to 11 minutes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZOeIsbj1fQ&feature=related

i'm sure if katniss and rue were the last two katniss would kill herself though. it never really deals with the moment allies have to turn into enemies -- that would've been real interesting from the baddie crowd. (and again, if cato and the rest of them were turned into roy batty figures instead of just that disposable "this is all i know how to do!!" line, they would've gotten some humanity to them. maybe the book humanizes them more.)

one thing i liked is that katniss isn't some magical hero-who-sees-the-light figure (in this book at least). i'm always prepared for the young hero to make silly "CAN'T YOU SEE WHAT THEY'RE DOING TO US!?!?" monologues and then destroying the system, but nope. no matter how heroic and goodhearted she is, she's still just another kid playing their game.

All I know is that the Hunger Games, the TV show, must be the most boring required viewing ever. Like when Katniss is asleep for two days? Or Team Asshole is just camping by the river or whatever? Not riveting.

lol josh you can easily sub in big brother w/r/t this complaint and yet that era happened to us!

(and again, if cato and the rest of them were turned into roy batty figures instead of just that disposable "this is all i know how to do!!" line, they would've gotten some humanity to them. maybe the book humanizes them more.)

i understand the sequels feature former "career" tributes in more depth, so maybe that happens then

lol josh you can easily sub in big brother w/r/t this complaint and yet that era happened to us!

But Big Brother is not required viewing! If our dystopian future included mandatory Big Brother viewing, the entire population would either be up in arms after a season or two or suicidal.

One thing I'm curious about is what else the people at home watch - like is the rest of the programming Panem's Next Top Garishly Coloured Model, or Food Tips for Bark and Small Rodents? Or is that the only thing actually broadcast all year?

(MILD SPOILER)
There's a whole thing in Mockingjay about the propaganda aired regarding District 13.

BTW, I'm kind of fascinated that Jennifer Lawrence has become this lightning rod for body politics. Like, people calling her too "big boned" or whatever for this role. And then I just read (and maybe this is old news) that the reason she did that skeezy Esquire spread was to prove to apparently many doubters that she could be sexual post-"Winter's Bone," which is what got her the "X-Men" role, which surely helped her land this tentpole opportunity. Just weird all around, and kind of cruel, this oddly Zeitgeisty debate. Lawrence does "Winter's Bone" and people say she can't be hot. Then she does "Hunger Games," and people call her fat. I'm worried she's either going to be a tough as nails adult or go off the deep end.

Does the book specify Katniss as model-thin?

"Almost all of the boys and at least half of the girls are bigger than I am, even though many of the tributes have never been fed properly. ... I may be smaller naturally, but overall my family's resourcefulness has given me an edge in that area. I stand straight, and while I'm thin, I"m strong. The meat and plants from the woods combined with the exertion it took to get them have given me a healthier body than most of those I see around me."

Xp I feel there was some mention of fat people=rich, thin people=poor, but Katniss is also a hunter! She/her family get by fairly well between that and the many extra times her name is in the draw for grain, so her (very tiny, model thin with boobs) size is pretty reasonable. Of course I'm a fat old lady so what do I know. She runs pretty well for Hollywood Obese :*(

Too bad I can't see what gets posted when I'm typing in Zing! Well quoted jaymc.

holy shit that's some awkward prose

MILD BUT VAGUE SPOILER
Book readers - what will they do with Rue's district's riot now that they pulled it out of her tour? I hope they won't skip that altogether - I wanted to see all the districts.

basically any discussion about a woman's body is going to be cruel iirc

and the "fat people rich thin people poor" idea is so antiquated i can't defend any story taking place in the present or future using it.

Okay, wtf is actually "awkward" about that prose?

So basically Katniss in the book is a typical late bloomer girl, sort of skinny and awkward? Regardless, it's not like she looks like some hulk in the movie. Maybe they should have given her mountain teeth again?