The president gives a monlogue about hope. Much like in Dark Knight Rises, the best way to oppress people is to give them hope. Without hope, they will become desperate. Too much hope, and they no longer fear you.
The President maintained Panem by giving the people just enough hope to continue cooperating. Katniss upset that balance by being a symbol to the people that they dont have to keep running on the hamster wheel any longer. The very propiganda machine the Capitol used via televising the Games was turned against them.
It’s a Prisoner’s Dilemma problem. It only works if EVERYONE tosses in a thousand balls. I thought it was one ball per year anyway.
I assume I’d be the one who had to kill you?
Again, it’s a game theory problem. If you have two players where one does not have an obvious advantage or there is an obvious mutual advantage, there is an incentive to maintain the status quo (IOW help each other) until such time as the status quo changes.
Another thing to keep in mind. Other than the “career” players who have been training since birth, most of them aren’t trained killers. Most people have a natural aversion to smashing a total stranger’s head in with a rock unless it’s an immediate life threatening situation.
I think my biggest problem was the same issue I had with Never Let Me Go.
Where’s PETA? Seriously, sending children to slaughter each other, raising children as clones to be butchered, you can’t tell me there wouldn’t be SOME PEOPLE, even in the Capitol who would fight to free them.
I’m thinking of the districts where you have the kids who train for years and then volunteer. If you already know Bob is going to volunteer, you might as well get a bajillion rations.
Of course, those are the affluent districts and I suppose you don’t really need the extra government cheese and it might even be seen as low class to use any of it (I haven’t read the books).
Glory I think if such a faction existed, consistent with the real world, it would be brutally supressed.
Panem’s government is pretty much “if Stalin ran North Korea.” They are an isolated and insular state … and when you say the wrong thing to the wrong person, you get dead… if you’re lucky.
It looks like most of your complaints aren’t actually plot holes, they’re just things you consider implausible. Which is fine and all, but I generally feel that if you’re not willing to suspend your disbelief enough to accept the basic premise of a work of speculative fiction then you just need to avoid that work altogether.
There are also threats and bribery. While this wasn’t discussed at length in the movie, the home district of the winning Hunger Games competitor receives a substantial increase in food for the next year. The winner and his/her family are set for life. I don’t think this is mentioned in this first book and it’s not particularly important until the third, but aside from controlling the flow of goods and having the only military/police force in the country, the Capitol also has nuclear weapons and has expressed willingness to use them against Districts that rebel.
As others have mentioned, the Capitol isn’t going to be hurt by feuds and riots in the Districts, and the Districts don’t get to set the rules of the Hunger Games. It is also presumably not that common for people from the same District to actually have to kill each other. One of the trainers in the movie mentions that a large number of Hunger Games participants die of “natural” causes, and there are of course 22 people from other Districts who aren’t going to have any neighborly feelings holding them back from killing someone else’s District-mate.
I honestly do not know why you find this difficult to believe. I think in such a situation temporary alliances would be almost inevitable.
I don’t think it’s a major spoiler to say that in the third book the Capitol is brought down by a rebel alliance. However, this involves support that comes from outside the 12 Districts. The 12 Districts seen in the movie don’t have the training or supplies needed to attack the Capitol on their own. They don’t have their own militaries, nor do they have much in the way of weapons or vehicles. There’s also essentially no communication or travel between Districts except that involving the Capitol’s military, Hunger Games competitors and their entourages, and refugees/rebels.
No, we’re not supposed to believe that. Katniss knows she needs to be winning over the sponsors, she’s just not particularly charming or good at faking it. This is clearer in the book, where you get her full internal monologue, but I saw the movie before reading any of the books and I thought it was pretty well established there too.
In the movie, when she seens Peeta with the careers, she is surprised/hurt. But then when she dumps the bees on them, and climbs down the tree, she is hallucinating and confused, and Peeta comes back and tells her to run away. So he had the opportunity to kill her and didn’t, he protected her. Think about the scene with the tree, Peeta tells the careers to just wait her out, rather than shooting arrows at her that just might hit her. You could think he might be trying to seem like he’s helping the careers but really trying to find a way to help her escape.
When the announcement is made that they don’t have to kill each other, but can help each other, her reaction is not lovey dovey, it’s “I can get an alliance that I don’t have to kill later and won’t try to kill me”. The lovey dovey was only played up for the audience after getting a note.
There was a post report from someone who does think it’s a major spoiler, so I added a box. Since I have neither read the books nor seen the movie I have no opinion about whether it is or isn’t – but when in doubt, pls. err on the side of caution.
i saw the movie the weekend the dvd was released. then got and read/inhaled all three books like rachellelogram. then poked around the net, including the threads here on the books and movies.
north america (and the rest of the world?) under went some sort of major climate/enviromental thingy so that n.a. is much smaller than it is now. the north (parts of canada), south (mexico and the gulf of mexico), east (us and canada), and west (us and canada) coasts are under water.
then war broke out amoung those remaining after the disasters, finally ending up with 13 districts and “the capital”. there weren’t many people left after this, just a handfull of thousands per districts.
1a. the capital ends up in the rockies with the 13 districts around it. in the movie, we find out that district 12 is part of the appla. mountain area (coal). district 11 where rue is from is orchards and farms, also that it is close to 12. district 4 is fishing (mentioned in the tribute parade) which puts it around what is left of the gulf of mexico.
74 years ago district 13 attempted an overthrow of the capital, with some of the other districts. there was a nuclear stand off, the 12 districts were told that 13 was destroyed. without the military hardware 13 had the 12 districts fell quickly and the capital ruled again.
to keep the 12 disticts in line, the hunger games were instituted. 2 children from each district 12-18, fight to the death. the capital was exempted (as well as 13, which the capital said was destroyed). your name goes in once when you are 12, twice when you are 13, etc. you can get extra rations for you and your family if you put your name in another time. when katniss was 12 she entered once automatically, and 3 extra entrys for rations for mum, sister, and her. katniss would not let prim enter for rations when she turns 12.
IIRC, to get extra rations you wouldn’t be allowed to enter your name for more times than the number of people in your immediate family - a district couldn’t just pick a Career kid to train and then have them volunteer for 1000 extra rations for their whole village.
So Katniss enters her name an additional three times per year (for herself, her sister and her mother) on top of the standard number of times she’s entered for her age. Her friend Gale was entered 42 times in that reaping, mostly for the number of extra rations he’s gotten for his family over the years since he was 12 (the extra entries in the reaping from rations are cumulative).
Although it is not shown well in the movie, the Hunger Games are only one of the constant reminders that the Capitol is in charge and will to kill them all. Additionally, there is constant footage shown of District 13 which was bombed into glass during the rebellion, troublemakers taken from the district, neutered, tongues removed, conditioned and turned into slaves in the Capitol. Peace keepers are shipped in from one district to another and never allowed to police their own district.
Also, concerning the careers, as mentioned this training is illegal, but tolerated in the richer districts. The logic behind this is it transfers some of the hatred from the Capitol to the other districts. I don’t remember if this is confirmed in any of the books, but I would suspect the government not only tolerates this rule breaking, but encourages and maybe even started it in the first place. It gives the inner districts higher status. Less of their children die. The children who do have chosen and trained for it. The outer districts don’t have the same advantages and resent the inner districts. This puts the most powerful and populous districts more on the side of the government. It is standard oppressive behavior. Pick one group and elevate it below the top, but above the bottom and they will be more willing to help keep the bottom down then take down the top.
One other thing that is only briefly hinted at in this movie, and not even really expounded on in the books until later is:
It sucks to be a winner from any of the outer districts as well. You may live in luxury, but to survive you have to make sure they government knows you are harmless. You can’t do much for your community, you can’t speak out in any way, and you better be a damn good actor.
the only time there is travel from one district to another is during “the victory tour”, making it difficult to get info from one district to another.
there is an electified fenced in “no man’s land” between the districts,(in 12 the elec is out quite a bit, rue tells katniss that it is on 24/7 in 11), making it a bit difficult to walk from one to another.
the only time you would see anyone from another district is during the hunger games or the victory tour.
the victors do have phones in the nifty houses they get for life… but who can they call? perhaps someone in the capitol, or if there are other victors in the village. of course monitoring is included on that call.
And between the districts on the other side of the electric fence are wild/mutant animals. Since weapons aren’t allowed, people have no real idea how to protect themselves. They feel protected by the fences that isolate them.
In case it isn’t obvious the reason for the different fence policy is that 11 makes food and 12 mines coal. You can’t go far if on a belly full of coal dust.
it did bug me that she didn’t fully take advantage of her bow. couldn’t she have simply strolled in to take the medicine during the Feast? who is going to challenge her when it’s in the middle of a field with little place to hide?
Well, they were real enough to maul the one guy at the end and I believe they also killed the District 11 kid (the black kid who killed the girl who bragged about killing Rue). I thought the whole “Create some puma-hyenas here!” thing was hokey but the movie was about done by that point anyway.
Speaking of, supposedly 70% of them would die from exposure, dehydration, etc. In reality, almost no one died from anything that wasn’t human related/caused. The closest was the girl who ate the poison berries – I don’t count the wasp sting victim since that was directly human-caused.