Yeah, but watching someone sit up in a tree doesn’t put any butts in seats and eyeballs on screens. It doesn’t make compelling television. It is, in fact, boring. How do you reckon the crowds in the Coliseum would have reacted if the lion sat down and washed its face and the Christian stood around picking at his fingernails? You think they would have sat quietly and contentedly waiting, or would they have been howling for someone to stir that damn cat up so they can see the show they were expecting? (The author is not at all subtle about the Capitol citizens being the Romans, even having someone quote the “bread and circuses” line in one of the books.)
I’ve only watched the movies once, but in the books at least the fireballs are the second or third night in the arena, and nothing exciting had happened in a while. Katniss knew the audience would be getting bored soon and there would be Gamemaker intervention–she’s been watching the Games all her life and understands that when things get dull, the Gamemakers manipulate some factor to stir things up and cause some excitement. That’s just how it works. The bettors have also been watching all their lives and understand how it works.
Also, the people betting on Katniss weren’t betting on her because she was good with a bow and could set traps, because they didn’t know that until she demonstrated those skills in the arena. All the betting public knew was that she was pretty and had a brilliant stylist and a really high training score, and that Peeta was in love with her. She didn’t have a bow at that point, anyway, so it’s not like her archery skills were doing her any good.
could someone explain the significance of Katniss’ actions in the third book?
her little adventure was completely unnecessary in terms of getting to the president or taking down the Capitol. had she done nothing, her team would not have died and you’d still get to the same ending. is that to show the hopelessness of her attempts at being a do’er? or what?
Kristen Stewart can do sullen and sulky, so maybe that is not a bad thing.
Damn, kind of ruthless and blood-thirsty for a Cat Lady, aren’t you?
I find your argument is so self-evident, that I do not understand why people even present the opinions you refute. I can only assume they lack the imagination to grasp the motivations of any hero with more complexity or subtlety that the prototypical summer blockbuster star.
One of the most enjoyable things about both the movies and the books is that they present themes simply and clearly, but don’t hit you over the head with a brick. Peeta & Katniss discuss once refusing to let the Game define them; that once is enough to explain their decisions.
No, why would I think that? I’m certain you wish to emulate only the type of female who could convincingly portray Lisbeth Salander and are simply unable to relate to a woman with a different physique.
Nothing makes much sense in the hunger games. I thought it was a poorly-written attempt at YASF and I thought the 1st movie was a fair-to-middlin’ adaptation of that.
Pasty-faced I get, but fattie makes no sense from what you said. And while I’d understand an objection to calling her fat, I don’t understand the objections to saying she has too white a face and should do something about that.
Heck, if the implication really is that they should have tanned her up for the part, I wouldn’t get why that would be objectionable. Quite a lot of actors superficially change their appearance like that for their roles.
I think a lot of this analysis is minimizing how big of a deal it was that she was a volunteer. A volunteer from an outlying district was an unprecedented event – in the book ( but not in the movie ) – Effie is confused and flustered when she volunteers because there is some sort of official procedure for volunteering that she doesn’t know or remember because the very idea of someone from an outlying district volunteering is inconceivable to the Capitol. This is what drew attention to her … yes, she had a good stylist but she wasn’t really any prettier than any of the other older girls in the games.
The other factor in her popularity as a contestant was Peeta and his strategy. I never bought into the idea that Peeta had some pathologically overblown crush on her. I think he probably had a little crush on her and he leveraged that into his ultimately successful strategy to give himself - and, by extension, Katniss – a strong backstory that would elicit sympathy and draw sponsors. The fact that Katniss wasn’t fully in on this strategy is a weakness in the story… throughout the series Katniss is pretty consistently kept in the dark about the plots surrounding her. I understand that this was primarily a literary device ( as the books are told totally from her POV and are mostly inner monologue this allows for the slow reveal of plot points ) but it doesn’t make sense, especially in Catching Fire where she is left out of the Great Escape plan. The reason they give is that they want her to be truly ignorant if she was captured but you’d think the could have filled her in to the extent of “there’s a plan, we’re all going to live and most of us are committed to protecting you so don’t screw it up and kill us all first.”
But there are inconsistencies that bug me about the stories ( please fill me in if I’ve missed something).
In the first games, Thresh (male tribute from District 11) is in a position to kill her and lets her go, saying something to the effect of “this one’s for the girl (Rue )”…but how would he have known about the circumstances of her death or the funeral?..as a contestant all he would have known was that she died-while he might have known that Katniss befriended her for all he knew Katniss pulled a double cross and killed her.
Finnick is from District 4 which is listed as a district that uses career tributes. I don’t understand him being put into the games at age 14…I would think that even if he was a likely winner at 14 that whomever coordinates the career volunteers would have waited until he was older. I would think that putting in volunteers at the last year they were eligible would be a no-brainer in terms of career strategy.
I’m starting to wonder if the last two movies will deviate a little more from the book Mockingjay ---- they have to drag two movies out of it.
I wonder if they will actually hold the games ( or get closer to holding them )that involve the children from the Capitol. Seeing that they added Snow’s granddaughter as a character it seems like a distinct possibility ) and by now the movie audience is going to expect games and a arena
In the movie, at least, the girl Thresh saves Katniss from is mocking her for trying to save Rue, and brags that they “killed her anyway.” Thresh overhears her, and intervenes.
That always got me - it’s clear Katniss teamed up with Rue and someone else killed her, but when he challenges Katniss what seems to turn his wrath isn’t either of those facts which are typical game elements - but that Katniss mentions putting flowers around her and singing. It makes a bit of sense to cut that line since the viewers have already seen it, but it makes Thresh sparing her seem less realistic.
The Careers are horrible at what they do. They all fall asleep, they give up on trying to shoot Katniss out of the tree. (Uhm…set the tree on fire? If you don’t/can’t do that…throw rocks at her?).
The Capitol has Holographic technology, super-advanced medicine, advanced genetic engineering…yet they are keeping their slaves in 1850 conditions. Even Rome knew to give their slaves more hope than what Donald Sutherland is giving them. A fat, happy slave who has a chance of becoming a full citizen is going to be much less rebellious than in Panem.
If entering your name more times gives your family much more rations …then everyone should enter their names the maximum amount.
I guess these aren’t particularly plot-holes. The Careers being generally poor at what they do is the biggest for me.
Well, I must agree that the “careers” seemed to be sucky players, and that could go a long way towards filling my other pet plot hole which is:
Even though the careers allegedly dominate the games and “almost always” win, they still managed to come up with one living male winner and one living female winner from each district out of a field of 59 living winners ( the 59 number is from the book BTW). I always thought that it was completely mathematically improbable that they could scrape up all these winners from the outlying districts but the incompetence of the careers goes a long way towards explaining this. Maybe they didn’t win THAT often.
I don’t really see a plot hole in everyone in the district not entering their kids 3 times for extra rations. Katniss and Gale, both being fatherless, are way poorer than most of the other kids in the district and I never got the sense that there was much solidarity in the district with regards to the Reaping, the idea seemed to be to lessen the odds of YOUR kids getting chosen, not to even them out across the district. The tesserary was a last resort and even Katniss and Gale did it so their younger brothers and sisters didn’t have to.
Technically, only the girl who was supposed to be on watch is horrible at what she does. Everyone else was supposed to go to sleep, that’s the whole point of teaming up and setting a watch. Katniss could clearly climb higher than the girl with the bow could shoot, so continuing to shoot at her would only be a waste of ammunition. I suppose one of the other Careers might be a better shot and have a chance at hitting Katniss, but it wouldn’t be terribly smart to hand over a long-range weapon to someone who is a) good with it and b) going to be trying to kill you soon. As for setting the tree on fire…:dubious: You’ve never tried building a fire with green wood, have you? And if they could set the tree on fire, how would you suggest they control the burn so they get themselves trapped in a forest fire?
It doesn’t give you much more rations–it gives you just barely enough grain and oil to keep body and soul together, if even that much. Most of the kids in the Seam take tesserae, but in a family like Peeta’s, where there’s enough food (even if it is stale) it’s just not worth it.
In the movie, she does just that - after missing one shot, she hands it over to the guy from District 1, who also misses, and gives up after one shot. And if you can’t hit a stationary target at that range, you’re wasting your time carrying the bow around in the first place.
They don’t have to burn the tree down. Just make a big enough fire at its base that she can’t breathe from the smoke.
Considering that the standard method for keeping people in the playing area is setting off enormous fireballs, I’m guessing forest fires aren’t much of a concern.
The Careers didn’t take the bow because they were good at it. They took the bow because they knew Katniss was excellent with it and wanted to deny it to her.
Forest fires are not a concern is you are the Game Masters, more so if you are IN it. Just like the Mutties and the killer wasps and …
How far up in the tree was she, and how much cover did she have? In the book, I seem to recall her being way, way up in the tree, and shooting straight up past a bunch of branches is not a simple shot.
At that point, did they know about the fireballs? Also, while I can see the game designers preventing their own fireballs from causing forest fires, I suspect they’d be thrilled to see a bunch of dumbass game players burn to death in a fire of their own making.
And if she’s way up in the tree, there’s a chance that the smoke would actually be worse on the ground near the fire than it’d be way up where a breeze might disperse it.
The world of the Hunger Games, as laid out in the books, doesn’t make a lick of sense in realistic terms. The Capitol, as you note, has the holographic tech and the hovercraft and the ability to grow mutant dog creatures in, at most, weeks, and all the rest of the super-science stuff.
And all this is somehow created by a population of frivolous airheads, using only coal and lumber and such sent by the oppressed Districts.
In the Districts, as you note, nineteenth-century-level grinding poverty prevails, except of course for the working TV screens in every house.
The Hunger Games world does make sense, of course, as a metaphor for the experience of being a teenager (“everyone is against me and it’s not fair”). Such metaphorical translation of human experience is the mark of good literature—but there has to be at least some realism involved, too, for it to be genuinely powerful and a true classic. If the reader is constantly reacting with the equivalent of “you have GOT to be kidding,” that’s not a good sign.
IIRC, it’s stated in the first book that District 12 is the only district with only one living past victor. There are normally two mentors for the two tributes, but Katniss and Peeta had Haymitch as their sole mentor because there was no one else who could do the job.
I don’t remember it being stated that the careers “almost always” win, only that they usually win. The nine districts that don’t produce career tributes could average about three living victors each and still leave the career districts with a slight majority of the 59 living victors. If the “almost always” was something Katniss said/thought, she may have just been referring to the Games she can remember watching.
Face it, no dystopian world makes any sense. 1984 had two-way viewscreens for every household that were on all the time. And each viewscreen had someone watching it at all times. Talk about impossible.
Well, I must agree that the “careers” seemed to be sucky players, and that could go a long way towards filling my other pet plot hole which is: