Movie Review: The Hunger Games
May. 12th, 2012 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inverarity
So, I finally went to see The Hunger Games. Almost all the movies I see nowadays are on Netflix; I really hate going to movie theaters. Besides the fact that I can't hit "pause" when I want to take a bathroom break or get a snack, there is always, always some shitwaffle in the seat in front of me playing with her motherfucking smartphone during the movie Yes, I'm talking about you lady with the big hair and the ginormous handbag you kept digging around in during the movie when you weren't texting your boo! Jesus effing Christ unless you are a head of state, you can disconnect your self-important ass from Twitter and Facebook for 120 minutes GDI!
/rant
But, I really liked The Hunger Games books, even though they were quite lightweight and honestly, Suzanne Collins kind of punted on all the real hard choices for her main character. The movie made this really obvious, far more so than the book.
In trying to analyze why I did like The Hunger Games so much, I think it's related to that knot in my stomach I had the moment the Game began in earnest on-screen, even though I'd read the book so I already knew what was going to happen. When an author succeeds in getting me engaged with the characters, I may see how anvilicious and downright manipulative she can be at times, I may see the flaws in the story (from writing to worldbuilding), and I may be dissatisfied with the ending, but that author has still managed to hook me emotionally. I felt similarly about J.K. Rowling by the end of the Harry Potter series... yeah, yeah, plot holes galore in Deathly Hallows and there was much about the Epilogue that was wall-banging, but still, by the time the Battle of Hogwarts rolled around, I had shits to give about who lived and who died. An author who can make me turn pages like that is one I cannot help but give props to, as compared to authors who write objectively better books but on whose characters rocks could fall and no shits would be given by me.
So anyway, The Hunger Games movie is very faithful to the book. Everyone lives or dies pretty much exactly as in the book. As an adaptation that still must succeed as a movie in its own right, I think it's quite successful. The moments that were cut from the book were few, and the director managed to convey most of the essential details of the world and a few minor character backstories very succinctly. It's also full of enough action and spectacular moments that it's worth seeing on the big screen. A lot of people have complained about the jerky, constantly-in-motion camera work. There were some scenes where I did find this annoying, but overall, it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd been expecting from some of the reviews.
The violence was also pretty effectively rendered given the movie's PG-13 rating. You don't actually see the moments that sharp objects go through people, or smashed skulls or spilling guts or showers of blood, but it's still clear enough what's happening when people (children) die, and it evokes horror when it's supposed to.
I give it 4 stars.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
How to survive a death match without killing anybody
Twenty-four teenagers go into the arena and only one comes out. That means anyone who survives pretty much has to kill at least one other person, right? (I suppose you could hide and wait for everyone else to kill each other off, and hope the last survivor dies of natural causes. It's implied in the book that some in previous games have tried a strategy like that, but it's unlikely to work.)
Katniss does kill a couple of people in The Hunger Games (both the book and the movie), but only when she has no choice, and only competitors who are clearly "bad." Her (kind-of) boyfriend Peeta survives to the end without killing anyone.
There are basically only a handful of "evil" competitors, the "Career" Tributes from the wealthy Districts who train and volunteer for the Games and obviously revel in killing. They form an alliance and run around picking everyone else off. They conveniently kill off all the schlubs so Katniss doesn't have to. The two times Katniss does actually kill someone, one is when she is trying to save Rue (and since the person she kills is the one who killed Rue, that makes the killing about as morally unambiguous as possible), and the other is in the finale, when she mercy-kills an already-dying Cato, who was one of the sadistic Career Tributes.
She is spared from having to make a decision about what to do with Rue, because someone else kills her. She is spared from having to make a decision about Thresh (who is one of the few other Tributes shown to have a moral streak, and who at one point saves her life) because he's killed by the Mutts. And of course, she pulls her berry stunt at the end so she doesn't have to kill Peeta.
It's all very convenient how she and Peeta make it to the end of a bloodbath with very little blood on their hands. In the book, Katniss is constantly thinking about survival, but it's all very moment-to-moment; not once, that I recall, did Collins show her actually pondering what to do if she and Rue somehow managed to be the last two survivors, or thinking about whether she would actually be willing to pick off a fellow Tribute just because she had the opportunity to do so. Her one preemptive attack is dropping a hive of Tracker-Jacker wasps on the Career Tributes (who happened to be all trying to kill her at the time). Even when she sneaks down to destroy the Careers' stockpile of supplies, the boy who is guarding it is conveniently lured away by Foxface, so Katniss doesn't have to decide if she's going to put an arrow into him, even though that would be the obvious, strategic, and necessary act.
I understand why Collins arranged things so neatly for her heroine. Showing Katniss killing someone in cold blood would make her, well, a killer. And that would play even more badly with movie audiences. Still, the entire premise of the book/movie is that these kids have no choice but to kill or be killed, and somehow all of the "good" Tributes get away without killing, or by killing only "evil" Tributes, and only in self-defense.
In fairness, Koushun Takami's Battle Royale also let the good guys mostly avoid killing, but there was a little more introspection on their part; they at least admitted that they might have to.
The Hunger Games is a YA book, and the movie is a PG-13 YA-friendly movie.
I have mixed feelings about what this signifies. On the one hand, it follows a long heroic tradition: good guys don't kill (or if they do, it's only when they have no choice). On the other, it feels like there was too much convenient authorial fiat to prevent Katniss from having to make any hard choices.
For those of you who read my Alexandra Quick series, I freely admit that I may be being a bit hypocritical here, since I've assigned a high moral weight to killing in my world. If Alexandra kills someone, it will be a Big Deal. And if she ever kills someone preemptively, out of anger or because it's strategically convenient, you can be sure it will mark the crossing of a Moral Event Horizon....
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-05-13 02:55 am (UTC)I also have mixed feelings about YA things in general...on the one hand, reading/seeing them as an adult, I feel frustrated when authors pull their punches. On the other, I do get that the target audience is younger and you know, the whole broadly accepted idea that youngins need to be protected from *some* things. Except I kind of...don't know how much I believe in that because in the real world not all kids even have the luxury of that kind of sheltering...but then I kind of question myself/my judgement on such things, and uh...ill stop rambling before it goes into tangent territory...
no subject
Date: 2012-05-13 03:06 am (UTC)I've long believed that children can handle a lot more than most adults believe they can. That's not to say we shouldn't protect them from certain things, but there's no hard-and-fast rule for that. Maurice Sendak puts this point far better than I can:
Certainly we want to protect our children from new and painful experiences that are beyond their emotional comprehension and that intensify anxiety; and to a point we can prevent premature exposure to such experiences. That is obvious. But what is just as obvious — and what is too often overlooked — is the fact that from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can.
Besides, The Lion King ended with a frankly brutal fight between Simba and Scar that ended with the latter getting eaten alive by hyenas. Kids can handle a lot. (Admittedly when I watched that scene I hid under the couch...hey, I was five...)
no subject
Date: 2012-05-13 12:10 pm (UTC)Oh, definitely. Just take a look at Grimms' Fairy Tales, once probably the prime example of children's literature. There's killing, hidden sexual references and a lot more "unsuitable" stuff. And that are already the watered down and cleaned versions.
Or look at the original story which forms the basis of Sleeping Beauty: The princess isn't awoken by a prince, but by a married king. And it's not a kiss, but he impregnates here instead (while she's still sleeping) and it's her newly-born child that sucks the splinter out of her thumb, thus awakening her. Fairy tales indeed.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-13 03:22 am (UTC)And in the second book, she does kill other "innocent" tributes. While it made her less "moral," I did respect how Collins didn't "shelter" her from guilt.
Wow, that's a lot of quotation marks in one sentence.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-13 11:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-13 07:28 pm (UTC)Still, when bad guys get away from things scot free, it is rather annoying. Battle Royale, I felt did a much better job of dealing with these issues and I think Koushin Takumi is an author who privately, I suspect, has more doubts about the morality of his own society than Collins does about hers.
I think there is an indirect coralation, to the level of moral 'punting' in these two books and the relative comfort levels of said authors with their worlds, though I'm not sure what or why?
Kerney
no subject
Date: 2012-05-14 02:15 am (UTC)It is only a long tradition in USA from silver age comic books.
Gilgamesh killed people as did Hercules and Moses and Odysseus and Hannibal and Caesar and Gustavus Adolphus and Cromwell and Churchill and Xena up to Season and Buffy up to Season 5.
I love that scene in Star Gate Atlantis: John (hero) fights Michael (villain) on the rooftops. Michael falls and holds on by his finger-nails. Before John can save Michael so that he can kill even more thousands, Teyla climbs to the roof. Earlier in the episode, Michael had threatened Teyla,s baby. She stamps on his hands. Mom morality pwns Hollywood morality.
Alex set up a plan to kill Manuelito. Her plan failed, so Grimm killed Manuelito as a result of Alex's plan. Are you saying that AQ is not responsible? Are you saying that Grimm is evil incarnate?
That is technical pacifism. Doctor Who refuses to kill people with guns. so he kills them with a Sonic Screwdriver instead. season 5 "Gabrielle" refuses to stun people with violent sticks, so she kills people with non-violent sais instead.
Killing
Date: 2012-05-14 02:48 am (UTC)I am not talking about the comic book code that heroes don't kill ever, period. I don't endorse that view: I think Batman should have broken the Joker's neck long ago.
But killing is serious business. Alexandra is not a pacifist (and neither am I); there are certainly circumstances where she might kill. You'll note, though, that she never really answered the question about just what she intended to do with John Manuelito, since she'd never really thought it through. A normal person doesn't just kill in cold blood like it ain't no thang.
"Alex set up a plan to kill Manuelito" - uh, what? She set up a plan to destroy the Nemesis Spirit. She didn't know John was there. If you're talking about her Naming trick with Nigel, she wasn't specifically trying to kill John, she was just trying to save herself (much like when she slashed him with the knife) - if John happened to die in the process, well, that's not "technical pacifism," but it's also not the same as a conscious, premeditated attempt to kill someone.
Re: Killing
Date: 2012-05-14 03:27 am (UTC)The idea that killing Innocent people is bad is older than dirt as is the idea that killing genocidal assholes is what Heroes are there for.
"But killing is serious business."
The Bear is Catholic. Popes poop in the Woods. Killing innocents is evil: killing genocidal assholes is righteous. When you set out to kill, you have a duty to ensure that you have correct information.
"A normal person doesn't just kill in cold blood like it ain't no thang"
Killing is a thang; it is serious business.
But killing in Self Defence is righteous.
Re: Killing
Date: 2012-05-14 04:45 am (UTC)Killing is never righteous. Protecting innocents is righteous. Saving others' lives is righteous (saving your own isn't). Killing is always regrettable. Occasionally it is the only way to achieve a righteous action, in which case it is morally acceptable or even obligatory--but it is still always regrettable and should never be celebrated.
The idea that the job of heroes is to kill is one of the most destructive memes in human history. Because in war, everyone thinks that they're the heroes.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-14 12:20 pm (UTC)That said, in a movie it's quite hard to get so deeply into a character's head... while it was a good translation of the book, some of the details that really made it for me was her figuring out what her mentor was trying to tell her, her thought proccesses, etc. So, the movie lost a lot for me in that regard.
SPOILER Alert in this post
Date: 2012-05-14 02:01 pm (UTC)*SPOILER*
...that it was her mom's twins' (Mayor's wife's twin sister's) pin.
But all three books were really intense, but, I will admit I HATED it every time the book read "...I say" a WHOLE LOT!!! It was just a bad run on fragment that got on my nerves...that was the whole bad thing of the book.
The third book got interesting when we find out that District 13 was actually underground and was working under the nose of the Capital. They knew they were there, but when you got the nukes that can attack capital..you got some sway.
So anyway,....that's my view....just saying
no subject
Date: 2012-05-14 06:36 pm (UTC)I could be wrong as I'm not a THG obsessive. Okay, okay, all I've done is see the film once, but I thought Peeta did kill someone. Isn't there a girl who is dying (from District 8) and he finishes her off?
I'm not sure what to make of THG. Probably because I hadn't read the books, I didn't feel a great deal of connection to the characters - until Rue's dad/district started rebelling. Oh and Gale. I liked his efforts to 'not watch'.
But, yeah, Peeta and Katniss are kind of sanitised in this. And I did wonder as I watched what would happen if her and Peeta were left at the end. The announcement that two could win from the same district annoyed me because it appeared trite and easy. Taking it away at the end made sense in the context of how cruel the games were. The berries ... *shrugs* good thinking, might have preferred it if they'd happened on it after trying to kill each other.
no subject
Date: 2014-11-22 02:32 pm (UTC)