The film was better done than I was expecting. Having only read the wiki summary I was surprised by how certain things played out.
I found myself appreciating the tight line the editors had to walk wrt making the violence have an emotional impact without making it too gory for a PG13. I thought they did that fairly well.
There were a lot of things they did very well, and some things that missed the mark. But overall I consider it a success.
One thing I want to point out is that unlike John Carter, which is pretty good in IMAX but suffers a bit on a normal screen, this film worked even without the IMAX advantage.
Agreed. DEM means the mortals make a shit mess of events, and a greater power shows up at the last minute to fix things.
In this case, the mortals are constantly using their wits to win favors with the greater power.
My own confusion with the situation is technical. I haven’t read the book but I’ve read the wiki summary and it seems to portray the arena as a real environment with a force shield around it and cameras implanted in various places.
But the impression I got from the movie is that it’s some kind of holodeck what with the dog things and the fireballs seeming to spontaneously generate from the environment and the lighting levels being controlled Truman Show style.
I hadn’t read the book. Didn’t have any trouble following it. Felt empathy for Rue. Thank God it wasn’t LONGER. My daughter, who at twelve is the target audience for the books and DEVOURED them ("best thing EVARRRR!!! Mom…well, that and the Maximum Ride books), thought it was wonderful.
It does seem like they cut a lot of Rue scenes, but I still got the sense of "little sister"ness. I think whatever they lost in developing their relationship, they were able to achieve solely with the impact of the death of someone her age.
In the book, it’s difficult to say what the exact nature of the arena is. As was mentioned before, the books are basically told from inside Katniss’s head, and you don’t know anything she doesn’t know, and she doesn’t know much about the arena, so neither do you.
I don’t think it’s a holodeck, but The Capitol is basically so scientifically advanced that it’s indistinguishable from magic (to borrow from Arthur C Clarke). It isn’t a “real” place; everything there is put there, and there are lots of genetically modified creatures and plants. Katniss mentions other Games where the arena was even more modified; she alludes to one where everything was beautiful, but deadly (all the plants and animals were poisonous, for example). So, I think it’s basically like a movie set, where the Gamemaker can endlessly tweak the environment. But, again, the exact nature is never spelled out.
I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either. The pacing was not that great. Very slow even during the games , yet ironically, I guess, I enjoyed the world building and would have actually liked to see and hear more about the setting.
The games themselves seemed kind of goofy. The fact that the people running them could change literally anything, the environment, the dangers, the very rules actually undercut the drama. Keeping it simpler would have worked much better I think.
I was also confused at the end that Katniss and Peter had to go back to District 12. I thought the whole point was the winner (s) got wealth and were allowed to stay in the Capitol. Other than to set up sequels was there a reason they went back?
I saw two movies today, this and The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo. Both where about the same length. Dragon kept me enthralled and made me look forward to spending more time with its main heroine when it ended. This one didn’t.
1 At the point you [as author] resort to dropping things into the game from out of left field, is the exact point you admit you suck at writing. It’s an “out of left field” answer that should not otherwise exist, given everything else already established.
There are a NUMBER of times in the film where the answer was simply “We will drop something”. Parachute items, obstacles, animals, or THE fundamental rule of the game itself.
Either you can write a better story than this, or you shouldn’t even bother. The emperor is naked, at a certain point.
2. That, or it’s a “Character study” type move. much like Hurt Locker and Resovior Dogs. I will pay anyone a million bucks, if they can convince me that ANY character study movie
was worth the effort.
Meeko, are you being disingenuous? The whole point of the game is that it’s a manipulation for the audience (the audience in the story’s) benefit. If there were a deus ex machina for the Hunger Games MOVIE audience, it would be like some crack team of rebels entered the game room out of nowhere and took over and saved Katniss and everyone in the game so there’d be a happy ending. But what you are describing is how the in-story game is actually set up. Yes, sponsors get to pay to get their favorite tributes things that will aid them. Yes, when the tributes get too far from each other and the game gets too boring for the in-story audience, the game-makers manipulate the environment in order to coax them back together for the purpose of entertaining the in-story audience. It’s like playing a video game and when you get too close to the edge of the virtual reality world, you have to turn around and go back. And there are power ups. Guess how they get more viewers? By playing up the romance angle for the in-story audience and then a twist for the people watching at home, the lovers will also have to fight to the death! Within the reality of the world set up by the story, all of these manipulations work because it’s just for their games to get ratings and teach the populous a lesson. A deus ex machina would help the plot along, everything you described is merely part of how the game is designed.
The shaky cam, especially in the beginning, practically made me angry. I get it when you’re filming a high speed car chase, or a pitched battle, not when you’re showing a guy eating, or folks walking to work. You want to show me how poverty stricken these people are? Give me 3 seconds to focus on the damn scene.
Overall, I liked the movie, and have never read the books. To comment on other posts, I see that the Rue character was bigger in the book, but I thought the movie did a good job with her death. I know they’re pretty much all going to die, putting too much time into one supporting character would feel like a setup for an inevitable gut wrenching death.
I was actually surprised at how little the sponsors did. All that negotiation and effort to get a cup of soup and a can of Secret Formula Burn Cream?
Yeah, these are a bigger deal in the books and I was frustrated by how they were glossed over. They would have gone further in showing the nature of the game and why it had been so important that Katniss make people like her.
An outside force from seemingly nowhere to save someone or something. Not Deus Ex?! And I had to figure, that, that was what Haymitch was doing. They didn’t even have audio durring the ONE sponsorship meeting in the movie. I’m still trying to figure out how exactly it was a sponsorship. [I was expecting in world Logos somewhere.]
3.Game makers manipulating the universe, for the better, or for the worse.
**
a person or thing (as in fiction or drama) that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty **
A “Wonder Drug” that fixes scars literally over night? To both Katniss and [Peeta was it?] Dropping a tree into the field, the cougars? The Fire?
4, It can wear whatever dress it wants. It’s still things cropping up suddenly and unexpelctedly [to the game players] to be a magic fix to something the game makers feel have gotten out of control
There is nothing sudden or unexpected about the sponsors. It was well explained in the movie that sponsors can save your bacon, and it’s very important to be likable so that you can attract them.
At best they were surprised at the high level of technology, they were not surprised at the sponsor help.
It shouldn’t have been sudden or unexplained to the game players. I will say that I might consider it a continuity error for the players to be surprised at the salve, or surprised at the need to attract sponsors, or surprised at the interference of the game managers, given that they have seen these competitions every year of their lives.
At worst, I would consider this an example of failing to explain the level of technology available, rather than a Deus Ex cop out.
Another nice touch was havine Cesar fill in the background for the “audience” things that aren’t obvious if you haven’t read the books…the wasps, for example. It was an elegant way to fill in the real audience while staying within the constraints of the story as well as underscoring, again, that all this cruelty is just entertainment cor the Capital viewers.
I’m curious if people familiar with the books found the movie more successful than people who never read them. Sometimes just seeing things you previously only imagined on screen for the first time over trumps everything.
I will concede that I was totally taken by the “Matrix” … for lack of better words, tricks that the game [and therefore the movie itself] employed. **I wasn’t sure if I was watching people “you are stranded on a desert island with only a match, a knife, and some rope” or if I was watching “Guns. Lots of Guns.” (A crucial line from The Matrix)
**
My point remains, the story relies on ““outside”” help way too much.
Katniss, of her own resolve should have won. Full Stop. [[Or, you know, if the main character actually DIDNT win for once… but that’s not this conversation, and would ruin prospects for the trillogy.]]
If you want to stretch the game makers to being “God like” over their own domain [the game itself] with the cobantants being the populace of the “world”, that might help you understand where I am coming from.
The point of the Hunger Games is not about true battle between the kids, though. It’s not about honor or glory or the best person winning or impartiality on the part of the game officials.
It’s about punishment for the districts and it’s about entertainment for the capital.
The whole thing reeks of producer interference, just like any reality TV show. The whole idea of the Hunger Games itself is so unfair (punishing innocents for actions well before they were born) that the producer intervention for entertainment’s sake is really just icing.
Besides, without interference and manipulation, all the kids would just bolt to different locations and hunker down. Bor-ing for the audience, but it’s not like the kids really volunteered to go get murdered.