… given we are watching children kill each other for our entertainment, exactly as the in-universe audience does?
I mean, yes, we’re watching twentysomething actors pretending to be children pretending to kill each other, but essentially, we’re doing pretty much the same thing the book condemns the Capitol for.
This is giving me real questions about seeing the movie. What do y’all think?
I think that’s silly. It’s fiction based on fiction, and you’re sitting in a theater.
No. The Hunger Games are used as a framing device upon which are hung questions about media, culture, and power. Merely going to see the movie is not an endorsement of the behavior in the movie anymore than seeing Gladiator is an endorsement of gladiatorial combat.
I have not read the books and am only vaguely familiar with the premise, but I’d say that watching actors pretend to kill each other for our entertainment is *not *essentially the same thing as watching people actually kill each other for our entertainment. There are some pretty major differences between the two, like nobody actually dying when making the movie.
If it were essentially the same then I don’t see how reading the book would be any less hypocritical than watching the movie, as the book still presents a story about children killing each other as entertainment.
The books are not about children killing each other for entertainment. It’s about children being forced to kill each other for the entertainment of the elite of a society. That’s a significant difference which people who haven’t read the books seem to miss.
I guess watching The Running Man is also hypocritical
In any event, the movie (as in the physical film, not the story) doesn’t have actual killing in it. If watching a movie about an event was the same as watching the event, those Hunger Game people could solve the problem by just putting on plays about the Hunger Games 
I have no idea what this has to do with my post, but okay.
Of course it is. You may as well take a loaded gun yourself and blow their brains out. Murderer! I hope you can sleep now, with their blood on your hands.
Oh, no question there are. But a good movie - well, any good work of fiction - convinces you to suspend your disbelief. And when you do that with this story, you occupy the same position relative to it that the in-universe audience does.
Of course, that could be exactly what the artist is trying to achieve. Suzanne Collins said she got the idea for the book from seeing images from a reality show and images of soldiers in Iraq; there’s definitely a subtext addressing the enjoyment we take in watching people hurt themselves and others.
I think that’s a load of hooey. At no point in the story did I associate myself with the Capitol crew. With the exception of Cinna, Plutarch and Snow they were brainless fops without a thought in their heads. There is no in-universe audience to align yourself with because with the exception of Katniss, there is no one who sees all the events in the story and is privy to all her thoughts and conversations.
Link to related subject at TV Tropes.
Yeah, really thought-provoking, challenging questions like “should kids kill each other for entertainment?”
Which was answered with a resounding “yes” back when Battle Royale was released.
It would only be hypocritical if you went around proclaiming you were against that sort of thing.
Suspension of disbelief doesn’t mean the audience believes what they’re seeing is actually happening somewhere in the real world. Any sane person watching the movie is going to be aware the entire time that no real children are in peril.
And as I said before, I don’t see why you’re concerned about the hypocrisy in watching the movies if you’ve already read the books. In both cases you are consuming as entertainment a story about children forced to kill each other. You certainly have the right to find such a story upsetting or disturbing, but if you didn’t feel like a hypocrite reading the books then I see no reason to feel like one watching the movies. Frankly, I do not see any point in being concerned about whether one’s real world behavior violates the moral message of a work of fiction. If you choose to take a lesson from a work of fiction then that’s one thing, but buying a ticket doesn’t obligate anyone to live by the moral code of the movie.
The way Broadway is going now, there probably WILL be a Hunger Games:THE MUSICALl jazzhands! within the next few years.
I mean why not–we’ve got “Madagascar: The Musical”, “Shrek:The Musical”, “Legally Blonde:The Musical” and “Sister Act: The Musical”.
Pretty soon there won’t be ANY movies without their own really horrible Broadway musical.
And then a movie based on the musical based on the movie.
And forget about watching “Battle Royale”!
Quick correction. The Legally Blonde musical somehow managed to be actually good. As in way better than the source material.