I keep telling people this, but no one will listen to me. Other than a surface level similarity in plot points they aren’t really much alike a all.
Well, I tore through all 3 books.
Damn fine books. If anything, the first is the weakest of the 3. The last one is the strongest IMO but they are all good.
They are not what I expected. I particularly like the fact that a 16 year old girl doesn’t really have that much direct impact on the events until the very end. The last confrontation between her and Snow is perfect. You can see what will happen but very well done. She is helpful in her role but does what I expect a 16-17 year old girl would be doing in that situation.
The emotional pain she was going through toward the end of book 3 was hard for me to read. I went through something like that in my life. It was horrid. I can’t help wonder if the author went through something like it as well because the descriptions and actions Katniss goes through are spot on. The ending was perfect (except I don’t think it needed the short epilogue - but it didn’t hurt)
Getting back to book one and the movie.
The movie still did a bang up job. Prue really doesn’t have much more ‘book time’ then she had screen time. There really wasn’t that many more parachute gifts…just more in the same vein - her mentor communicating with her. As another poster noted I wish they would have continued the sceen after the games were over to show her pounding and screaming on the glass in the hovercraft and that the violence was tamed down for the movie. However, these are minor things and the movie did a good job of capturing the books.
Of course, the books are better but that is true in almost all cases but I have no major nitpicks against the show. Good job.
(snipped)
Sorry, I misread your earlier post as not having read the books at all - I read the first one myself way the hell back and gone in 2008 when it first came out (I’m a librarian and I read lots of YA) and then I didn’t want to read it again until after I had the chance to watch the film, so there was a lot that I simply didn’t remember either.
You won’t find any harassment from me about the clunky worldbuilding. While the story and the general concept are interesting and I think the whole shebang covers a lot of really interesting conceptual real-estate, I *never *really felt that it was believable.
Even in the Hunger Games, I had to really work hard to shut off my brain screaming “NO!! That would never work out that way!!” at just about every major world-building reveal. The number of people in some of the Districts? The total lack of any sort of preparation of their children (even psychologically) for the Games? The Capitol uses COAL to power all this shit? They outsource all of their soldiers and guards from ONE specific District that rebelled against them in the first place? Just no. No no no no…
I think the story was fun (in Hunger Games specifically) because it was a first person POV thriller. Because it WAS a limited-worldview thriller-type story, the worldbuilding issues weren’t as horribly offensive. Catching Fire and Mockingjay really almost did me in. I think I literally threw Mockingjay across the room at one point where the convenient placement of plot-relevant people finally was too much for me.
So no, while I will argue about the validity of the initial set-up of the Capitol and the Districts due to an unnamed and terrible near-apocalypse, and I will argue that the ideas that are presented by the story are interesting and valid concepts to present to teenagers - that clemency doesn’t extend to the worldbuilding of the actual books, because they nearly did me in with poor choices.
I think you are being a little too harsh here. You are hearing all these things being filtered through the mind of a 16 year old that isn’t even involved in the planning of things who, despite her experiences, has no real concept of the world and hearing these things from others that probably don’t have a full clue themselves. She spends much time with a mentally unstable tag on her! 
I too would have thrown Mockingjay across the room AND jumped up and down on it except it was on my Kindle.
Hideous, stupid book.
However I do believe it will make 2 perfectly good movies. Suzanne Collins WAY overreached in the page limit she was allotted.
If I could rant slightly,
the way Gale was dealt with made me all ragey. “Last I saw he was being dragged away by peacekeepers and begging me to kill him… what’s he doing now? Oh this and that I guess, we haven’t spoken since then. No big whoop.” I mean, when sopmeone repeatedly saves your life and is basically your only friend who really understands what you’ve been through, they obviously fall out of your life the same way as people you met on the train on vacation. Me: STAB STAB STAB
Hello Again…
Regarding your spoiler…that happens IRL ALLTHE DAMN TIME! I understand you being angry about it but to call it stupid and hideous…well…it IS stupid and hideous but also entirely realistic.
Well, we disagree.
and I disagree with you, Blinking Duck. It might happen that way in real life, but as for handiling what Hello Again spoiled - well I think it was really bad writing. Good fiction varies from real life when necessary to be good literature.
Oh man…you are right. We disagree! I thought the ending was good. However, I have been called a barbarian more than once in my time (as well as an elitist snob in the local newspaper 
)
The ending was happier than I thought it would be. However, it is YA fiction (supposedly) and so it is to be expected I guess. It wasn’t completely happy but if it was then that would have seemed wrong.
Guys disappear from women’s lives when they find out there won’t be something going and when they are ambitious and getting going with their careers. That’s life. After a few years away people usually do not reconnect.
Hey guys, be careful. This is the movie thread and a lot of people haven’t read the first book, let alone 2&3. There are other threads for the book trilogy.
SPOILERS For the next books below.
[spoiler]
having read all three after seeing the movie, I think they will struggle with the second one. Firstly it’s quite violent, what with the whippings and executions which will be difficult to reduce to PG13 levels without compromising the story. Also it will be seen as a rehase of the first movie, hey we have another game with Katniss and Peeta and almost the exact pre game story as the first.
My ideal casting for the next two outings
Coin:Meryl Streep. Seriously no one could pull her off better.
Finnek: DiCaprio
Johanna: Charlize Theron and the better keep the naked elevator and oiling scenes. [/spoiler]
[spoiler]No…M from the bond films is how I saw her in my mind. However, too old I guess.
Caprio - I thought of him as well but, again, too old I think.[/spoiler]
3rd movie is going to suck. There is no way they can put that book on screen I think. Look at the reviews on Amazon.com…even the fanbois tend not to like it when I think it is the strongest of the 3.
Even if they stay faithful to the book, I just don’t see how they can do it. However, they are smarter than me (I hope) and hopefully can pull it off.
How about Justin Timberlake for Finnek? 
I would take the “open spoilers” in the thread title to refer to this movie, not to the books and/or the as-yet-unfilmed sequels.
If you’re going to give spoilers to the second and third books, and/or to the casting of the movies based on those books, please use spoiler boxes. AK84, just saying “spoiler” isn’t enough, please use spoiler boxes. ( [ spoiler] and [ /spoiler], without the space.)
Thanks,
twickster, Cafe Society moderator
For those who have only seen the first movie, we’re talking about casting characters you don’t meet until Catching Fire. I might also mention that although Marvel is named in The Hunger Games movie, he isn’t in the book. Katniss kills him (and Glimmer) and doesn’t even find out what his name is until she goes to District 1 on her Victory Tour.
I imagined it a little bit differently:
[spoiler]Harry Hamlin played Perseus in the original Clash of the Titans. He would’ve made a fine Finnick, but he’s too old. Additionally, my wife reminded me that Finnick has bronze hair; Hamlin’s was too dark in Clash, even if otherwise I thought he was spot-on. He even had the whole sea-side fisherman with the net and trident thing going! Isn’t that the essence of District 4?
You could give Coin to Meryl Streep, but how about Glenn Close? She did play a live-action Cruella DeVille, remember? Maybe she’s too busy with Damages to take time out for a movie…[/spoiler]I wonder if at any point they considered asking Bob Barker to play Caesar Flickerman.
[spoiler]I don’t know about Streep or Close playing Coin, they’d do a good job but personally I imagine Coin as a little younger (like late 40s or early 50s), and with a leaner, hard look to her like she was in the military when she was younger and got into politics young.
I’m thinking maybe Joan Allen or Julianne Moore.[/spoiler]
For casting calls, I have been pretty happy with who they’ve picked so far. I think it would be really interesting to pair Donald Southerland’s President Snow with Tilda Swinton as Coin. She’s young enough to pull it off, the androgyny is a plus in my opinion, and I think that would be a really interesting contrast. Also, she does creepy as hell really really well.
What do people think of the casting for the Hunger Games, to get slightly out of spoiler territory again?
I really really liked Kravitz as Cinna. I didn’t think I would, but he was just so damn sweet. That was the only one I was really worried about. I was actually a bit shocked that Southerland was willing to go for Snow - he’s a really big name actor, and the potential for this to go south and be really lambasted by the critics must have given him at least some pause.
I saw the movie today, and have not read the books. I keep meaning to, but they’re always checked out at the library, and when I heard there was a movie coming out I figured I was probably better off seeing the movie first (if it got good reviews) and then reading the books so I wouldn’t be disappointed about things that got changed or left out.
Based on this thread I think I made the right decision. I thought the movie was pretty good – not the best movie I’ve ever seen or anything, but reasonably engaging and well-made. I did not ever feel confused about what was going on or like I was missing crucial information. I see a lot of fans of the books have complaints about how parts of the movie don’t work because X was left out or Y wasn’t adequately explained, but aside from the other contestants not being very well developed then none of these complaints match up with anything I felt was problematic about the movie. I think some of you were so caught up in looking for things that had been changed that you actually missed some things that happened onscreen.
There were a few points where I was uncertain what Katniss was thinking, but I didn’t feel this was a major problem. The relationship I would have liked to see developed more wasn’t Katniss and Rue – while Rue could have received more screen time and I wasn’t clear on why she trusted Katniss, I bought that these two characters cared about each other and understood that Katniss saw Rue as a younger sister figure – but Katniss and the costume designer played by Lenny Kravitz. He wanted her to succeed and this didn’t appear to be for purely selfish reasons, but it wasn’t clear to me whether he was just a generally nice person or if Katniss was somehow special to him. Since his character wasn’t obviously gay and since Kravitz is a handsome guy who looks young for his age, I did wonder whether he was supposed to be more a father figure or a potential love interest. I didn’t feel like there was any sexual tension between them in this movie, but I could buy that once her life wasn’t in danger Katniss might be attracted to him. But this may be just because I’m well past my teen years and Kravitz was considered a sex symbol when I was a teen. It may be that to today’s teen viewers Kravitz is obviously an old man who Katniss could only think of as a mentor/dad.
It might be too subtle if you haven’t read the book, but Cinna is something of a rebel.
You can tell by looking at the way the other Capitol citizens dress, act, and speak, that they’re self-absorbed - completely out of touch with the harsh reality the proles in the districts have to endure. The poofy hair, the fine clothing, the crazy colors (pink salukis?!?) …
Notice how Cinna doesn’t go in for any of that? His only token gesture towards Capitol fashion is the gold eye-liner, which, if you’re not looking for it in the movie, you could easily miss. I’d say Cinna is more visually subdued than Kravitz is in real life! He’s wearing long sleeves to cover up his tattoos and removed his nose ring for the film.
Having read the second and third books, I think it’s pretty seredipitous the way Cinna ends up as Katniss’s stylist… but then again, there are plenty of things in The Hunger Games that, even if not overtly stated, make you wonder if they’re pure happenstance or deliberately planned.
Yup…wait. There is a reason Cinna acts as he does and it becomes very clear in book 2.
Still not sure what all this luke-warm-ness is coming from for the movie. I saw it ‘cold’ (no books didn’t even know about it) drug to it by daughter and friends and it was supurb. Top notch acting and story. Loved it. One of the better movies I’ve seen in years tbh.
If/when you read the books, you’ll discover that – like so many teenage girls – Katniss herself is often uncertain about what she’s thinking.