posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
connielane at 04:39pm on 24/03/2012
connielane at 04:39pm on 24/03/2012I have no Hunger Games icon, so I'll just use Arya Stark, Killing Machine.
So, I went to see The Hunger Games yesterday morning (at 9:15, which is an indecent hour to see a movie unless it's part of a 24-hour marathon - trying too hard, Lionsgate?). I made a special playlist for my iPod for the occasion, which included Temple of the Dog's "Hunger Strike," Barbra Streisand's version of "You'll Never Walk Alone," and DragonForce's "Through the Fire and Flames," among other heart-stirring tracks. In other words, the Most Amazing Way To Get Ready To See A Movie. I was pleased to see a nearly full house and even more pleased that so many of them giggled and hissed at the Breaking Dawn 2 trailer. I also heard an excited "That's Katniss!" during the House at the End of the Street trailer when Jennifer Lawrence appeared.
I have some stuff I need to say about the movie and it falls into three categories. First, though, a picture.
OMG I WANT TO CRY JUST LOOKING AT THIS. I ALSO WANT TO TELL KATNISS IT'S GOING TO BE OKAY, BUT THAT WOULD BE A LIE SO I WILL JUST ASTRAL PLANE HUG HER INSTEAD.
HUNGER GAMES (ADPTATION) VS. HARRY POTTER (ADAPTATIONS):
Stop right there. Don't you dare do that. I solemnly swear that anyone who sets this movie up against the HP film franchise and says anything like "why couldn't the HP movies be like this?" is going to get an earful from me, because they just quite simply don't know what they're talking about. I saw the title of Melissa's recent review on LeakyNews ("THIS IS HOW WE SHOULD ADAPT BOOKS") and could feel my blood starting to boil, but thankfully she never actually went where I was afraid she was going to go. I still strongly disagree with the title, but that's a whole other conversation.
The Hunger Games is Exhibit A in an argument I think I've made before (many times, probably) that some stories are more suited to a visual medium than others.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cleolinda pointed out, and she's absolutely right, The Hunger Games is essentially *about* the visual medium, which is why in some ways the movie manages to actually improve on the novel. (Katniss flipping the channels on the TV window in her Capitol bedroom is a great example.) I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Suzanne Collins actually saw the novel as a movie while she was writing (heck, she got her start writing for television).
Potter, both the book series and the journey of the film series, is different in almost every conceivable way. I don't even think it's worth comparing the novels. I will say this, though, and this is just where I'm at personally, not a judgment about anyone else. Hunger Games is not a fandom for me. I enjoy the books (the first two, anyway), and I enjoyed this first movie, but I don't get the excitement I got for the books or the films. I don't get butterflies as the lights in the theater go down like I did for Sorcerer's Stone (and I'd only read the first book at that point). I don't get nervous when I feel certain moments in the story coming up, wondering how they're going to be presented in the movie. I have little interest in discussing the books with others and zero interest in fanfic (though to be fair, I have only slightly-more-than-zero interest in HP fic). And I can't imagine getting into costume or going to a con for love of this series. And as such, it suddenly seems bizarre that other people apparently do want to do these things. I don't mean that as an insult to anyone who does; it's just that I suppose I'm seeing how bizarre I must have looked in my HP days. And now I'm sad because "my HP days" is a thing I just said and it's a thing you only say when such days are in the past. COME BACK TO ME, 2004!
HUNGER GAMES VS. BATTLE ROYALE:
What, you thought children fighting each other to the Death was an original idea? :P As much as I like The Hunger Games, the movie, I'm still Team Battle Royale. Actually, rather than wanting to go back and read the first HG book again, seeing the HG film makes me want to read Takami's novel instead and I'm downloading the movie from iTunes as I type (also planning to watch The Running Man soon, as that has a similar premise as well). The book the film was based on was published a decade before The Hunger Games, and the film came out in late 2001 - around the time the first LOTR and HP movies were coming out, actually, though then only in Japan. I don't know why I'm pointing all this out, except that I've seen a couple of people who seem to be under the impression that Battle Royale was inspired by Hunger Games and ... no.
I wrote a review of Battle Royale here back in 2005, and it's a movie that has stayed with me in the six and a half years since I first saw it. In a lot of ways, though certain elements are obviously different, it feels like The Hunger Games is a less threatening kid sister to that story. I don't think either is necessarily "better" than the other (I *REALLY* hate ranking things like that), but I prefer BR personally for a lot of reasons. The satire is much harsher, whereas a lot of the HG satire (especially in the movie) feels slightly heavy-handed to me. I love the little character stories in BR, and the fact that so many of the kids know each other and some of them are even friends makes what they're forced to do even more horrifying. And I love that, even though the novel, at least, occurs in an alternate timeline (where Japan is part of a totalitarian regime - the Republic of Greater East Asia), it still feels very much like our world and like something that could actually happen if people became sufficiently afraid . For all the "Occupy Panem" comments I've seen, the Hunger Games reality seems much further removed from our own world (though with obvious parallels to it).
Also, I love that theaters are doing short runs of it this weekend and hope that people check it out and discover its brilliance.
THE HUNGER GAMES (MOVIE) VS. THE HUNGER GAMES (BOOK):
To be honest, I am not terribly invested in how much of what's in any book is left in for a movie adaptation and how much is left out. I don't think this is a product of fandom ambivalence either. Anyone who's seen my goose-hissing about the Potter adaptations probably knows that, even in a fandom I love with all my heart, fidelity to the source material is less important to me than to other fans and that I always at least *try* to make "is it a good film, regardless" my priority in evaluation.
So when, about five minutes in, Katniss went to to Hob and traded for the mockingjay pin (as opposed to getting it from Madge, as she poignantly does in the book), and I heard the young girl directly behind be let out an infuriated "what?!" ... I rolled my eyes pretty damn hard.
As a film that takes place over a scant few weeks, I think it runs too long at nearly two and a half hours, but I'd be hard pressed to point to where it should have been trimmed. But then, that's not my job. That's the job of the screenwriter, who did a remarkable job of making a very watchable film out of a checklist of must-have moments from the book. I just think it would have been interesting to see what choices would have been made if, you know, they'd actually made them.
Some Things Taken Directly From the Book That I Thought Were Really Well Done:
* The Reaping and the disparity in enthusiasm between the crowd and Effie. (Elizabeth Banks was a really great Effie and nigh unrecognizable.)
* Katniss and Peeta's fiery entrance was AMAZING and one of the few moments in the film that genuinely took my breath away (in the way that, say, seeing Hogwarts on the big screen did (*gulp*) eleven years ago).
* The three-finger salute to District 11 - OH, MY TEARS! That's probably when I was most emotional. I missed seeing them send her the bread, but seeing them return the salute was a wonderful moment.
* I also thought they put just the right touch on Katniss and Peeta's relationship. There's not one moment when it's played for "omg doesn't this make you weak in the knees," which I appreciated because in the book it certainly didn't for me.
* Sort of from the book, though Katniss only tells us about something like it (at least I think she does) rather than us seeing it firsthand, I loved the little moment when they played a clip from a prior year's Games. That seemed to me more violent than anything we were allowed to see, violence wise, the entire rest of the movie. And the commentary on this kid beating another kid to death with a brick being a "moment of victory" - ugh, screw you, Capitol.
Welcome Additions
* I love that they showed so much of what was happening outside the arena, though I could have done with more from the districts, especially Prim and Katniss's mother and Gale (I especially wish they'd shown a bit more of Gale during the Games, because Katniss thinks about him so much in the book). It was great to see Haymitch working the people in the Capitol for sponsor money and Seneca presiding over "mission control" (Was I the only one who thought of Appollo 13 there? "FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION.").
* Speaking of Seneca, my absolute favorite moment is probably the way they dispose of him in the end. I've heard people calling it "poetic" which I find way too precious, but it's a nice touch. His scenes with Donald Sutherland are fantastic, too, and I really loved that we saw more of Snow than we do in the first book.
* Not really an addition, but it was a casting decision that caused a lot of balking several months ago, and I hope people are eating their words now because Lenny Kravitz was a fantastic Cinna. If you'd seen him in Precious you would not have been surprised in the least.
Better Than I Thought It Would Be
Pretty much everything about the Capitol, especially the wacky fashion. Love Caesar Flickerman and his blue hair and the smile he turns on just before the lights come up. And it does not surprise me one bit that Seneca's beard has become practically its own character in the fandom - it has a Twitter page, a Facebook page, and a Tumblr. I'd say "lol fandom" but that is truly one epic beard-scaping.
** Side note: Dear Wes Bentley, I've missed you. I had such a crush on you in American Beauty and it makes me sad that that movie and the ensuing attention it brought you messed you up so badly. I am beyond glad to see you back in top form, and I'm so glad they beefed Seneca's role up a bit so you'd have something to chew on. Love, Me.
Stuff I Didn't Like So Much, In Order of Least Annoying to Most Annoying
* I was not as enamored of Josh Hutcherson as everyone else seems to be. I thought he did better at the personable stuff in the pre-game than the dramatic, action-y stuff in the arena and even his conversation with Katniss night before. I *almost* started laughing when he kept yelling at Katniss when she started hallucinating from the tracker-jackers.
* You guys know I'm the LAST person to complain about stuff being left out in adaptations, but I *really* think they should have explained the significance of the mockingjay and how it relates to the rebellion. I don't remember if it's even connected to the notion of rebellion in any literal way until later in the books, but I distinctly remember getting the impression, even from the story about how the mockingjays came to be (which definitely IS in the first book), that they were in some way a symbol of defiance against the Capitol. It doesn't bother me at all that they left Midge out, but the mockingjay pin in the movie seems like little more than fanservice. Which kind of bothers me, because it's like the symbol for the whole series. Maybe they just assumed everyone would already know, but dude ... if the HP movies have to explain what Muggles are, then the HG movies need to give a heads up on why non-readers should care about this. BECAUSE THEY SHOULD CARE VERY MUCH.
* SHAKY CAM! This REALLY bothered me and was exceedingly distracting. I'm certain there are two reasons this was done. One of them I'm sure the filmmakers convinced themselves was an "artistic" choice - they wanted to make it look chaotic and true to life (they did not succeed, in my opinion). The other is the real reason - shaky, handheld camera work obscures the violence, making it less intense and more appropriate for younger viewers, so they could get their PG-13 rating. I've nothing against them watering things down a bit, violence-wise, so that they didn't have to worry too much about scaring the kiddoes. But surely there are other ways to do that. I think it's such a cop-out to do that in something like, for example, the first few moments of the Games and then pretend it's more true to life. On the extremely rare occasions that I run, the world does not look like that to me. What shaky cam looks like is exactly what it is. Someone holding a camera and running. I found it off-putting that Katniss's hallucination-vision was easier to look at than a whole lot of the arena stuff.
Perfection Itself
Jennifer Lawrence. Period. I don't even think I need to say anything else, but I will. Her performance here, especially in the early scenes, reminded me a lot of her Oscar-nominated performance in Winter's Bone (and I kind of hope more people check out that movie as a result of fangirling her as Katniss). I still think she's a *smidge* too old (I totally pictured Tania Raymonde (Alex from LOST) as I was reading, but she would have been too old by the time the film was made, too). Favorite moment of hers by far was when she was walking into the tube and being raised into the arena (as seen in the pic above). She also REALLY sells the insecurity and fear that often gets mistaken for arrogance. I am the very last person to go around talking "Oscar" in March, but I will say this. If the Academy were to recognize her again next January for this role, I would be rather pleased. Because seriously? She's that good.
Bottom Line: I liked it. I like Battle Royale even more. And I like the films in my One True Fandom still more. Don't ask me where LOTR fits in here. I'm not capable of that level of mathematics.
So, I went to see The Hunger Games yesterday morning (at 9:15, which is an indecent hour to see a movie unless it's part of a 24-hour marathon - trying too hard, Lionsgate?). I made a special playlist for my iPod for the occasion, which included Temple of the Dog's "Hunger Strike," Barbra Streisand's version of "You'll Never Walk Alone," and DragonForce's "Through the Fire and Flames," among other heart-stirring tracks. In other words, the Most Amazing Way To Get Ready To See A Movie. I was pleased to see a nearly full house and even more pleased that so many of them giggled and hissed at the Breaking Dawn 2 trailer. I also heard an excited "That's Katniss!" during the House at the End of the Street trailer when Jennifer Lawrence appeared.
I have some stuff I need to say about the movie and it falls into three categories. First, though, a picture.
OMG I WANT TO CRY JUST LOOKING AT THIS. I ALSO WANT TO TELL KATNISS IT'S GOING TO BE OKAY, BUT THAT WOULD BE A LIE SO I WILL JUST ASTRAL PLANE HUG HER INSTEAD.
HUNGER GAMES (ADPTATION) VS. HARRY POTTER (ADAPTATIONS):
Stop right there. Don't you dare do that. I solemnly swear that anyone who sets this movie up against the HP film franchise and says anything like "why couldn't the HP movies be like this?" is going to get an earful from me, because they just quite simply don't know what they're talking about. I saw the title of Melissa's recent review on LeakyNews ("THIS IS HOW WE SHOULD ADAPT BOOKS") and could feel my blood starting to boil, but thankfully she never actually went where I was afraid she was going to go. I still strongly disagree with the title, but that's a whole other conversation.
The Hunger Games is Exhibit A in an argument I think I've made before (many times, probably) that some stories are more suited to a visual medium than others.
cleolinda pointed out, and she's absolutely right, The Hunger Games is essentially *about* the visual medium, which is why in some ways the movie manages to actually improve on the novel. (Katniss flipping the channels on the TV window in her Capitol bedroom is a great example.) I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Suzanne Collins actually saw the novel as a movie while she was writing (heck, she got her start writing for television).Potter, both the book series and the journey of the film series, is different in almost every conceivable way. I don't even think it's worth comparing the novels. I will say this, though, and this is just where I'm at personally, not a judgment about anyone else. Hunger Games is not a fandom for me. I enjoy the books (the first two, anyway), and I enjoyed this first movie, but I don't get the excitement I got for the books or the films. I don't get butterflies as the lights in the theater go down like I did for Sorcerer's Stone (and I'd only read the first book at that point). I don't get nervous when I feel certain moments in the story coming up, wondering how they're going to be presented in the movie. I have little interest in discussing the books with others and zero interest in fanfic (though to be fair, I have only slightly-more-than-zero interest in HP fic). And I can't imagine getting into costume or going to a con for love of this series. And as such, it suddenly seems bizarre that other people apparently do want to do these things. I don't mean that as an insult to anyone who does; it's just that I suppose I'm seeing how bizarre I must have looked in my HP days. And now I'm sad because "my HP days" is a thing I just said and it's a thing you only say when such days are in the past. COME BACK TO ME, 2004!
HUNGER GAMES VS. BATTLE ROYALE:
What, you thought children fighting each other to the Death was an original idea? :P As much as I like The Hunger Games, the movie, I'm still Team Battle Royale. Actually, rather than wanting to go back and read the first HG book again, seeing the HG film makes me want to read Takami's novel instead and I'm downloading the movie from iTunes as I type (also planning to watch The Running Man soon, as that has a similar premise as well). The book the film was based on was published a decade before The Hunger Games, and the film came out in late 2001 - around the time the first LOTR and HP movies were coming out, actually, though then only in Japan. I don't know why I'm pointing all this out, except that I've seen a couple of people who seem to be under the impression that Battle Royale was inspired by Hunger Games and ... no.
I wrote a review of Battle Royale here back in 2005, and it's a movie that has stayed with me in the six and a half years since I first saw it. In a lot of ways, though certain elements are obviously different, it feels like The Hunger Games is a less threatening kid sister to that story. I don't think either is necessarily "better" than the other (I *REALLY* hate ranking things like that), but I prefer BR personally for a lot of reasons. The satire is much harsher, whereas a lot of the HG satire (especially in the movie) feels slightly heavy-handed to me. I love the little character stories in BR, and the fact that so many of the kids know each other and some of them are even friends makes what they're forced to do even more horrifying. And I love that, even though the novel, at least, occurs in an alternate timeline (where Japan is part of a totalitarian regime - the Republic of Greater East Asia), it still feels very much like our world and like something that could actually happen if people became sufficiently afraid . For all the "Occupy Panem" comments I've seen, the Hunger Games reality seems much further removed from our own world (though with obvious parallels to it).
Also, I love that theaters are doing short runs of it this weekend and hope that people check it out and discover its brilliance.
THE HUNGER GAMES (MOVIE) VS. THE HUNGER GAMES (BOOK):
To be honest, I am not terribly invested in how much of what's in any book is left in for a movie adaptation and how much is left out. I don't think this is a product of fandom ambivalence either. Anyone who's seen my goose-hissing about the Potter adaptations probably knows that, even in a fandom I love with all my heart, fidelity to the source material is less important to me than to other fans and that I always at least *try* to make "is it a good film, regardless" my priority in evaluation.
So when, about five minutes in, Katniss went to to Hob and traded for the mockingjay pin (as opposed to getting it from Madge, as she poignantly does in the book), and I heard the young girl directly behind be let out an infuriated "what?!" ... I rolled my eyes pretty damn hard.
As a film that takes place over a scant few weeks, I think it runs too long at nearly two and a half hours, but I'd be hard pressed to point to where it should have been trimmed. But then, that's not my job. That's the job of the screenwriter, who did a remarkable job of making a very watchable film out of a checklist of must-have moments from the book. I just think it would have been interesting to see what choices would have been made if, you know, they'd actually made them.
Some Things Taken Directly From the Book That I Thought Were Really Well Done:
* The Reaping and the disparity in enthusiasm between the crowd and Effie. (Elizabeth Banks was a really great Effie and nigh unrecognizable.)
* Katniss and Peeta's fiery entrance was AMAZING and one of the few moments in the film that genuinely took my breath away (in the way that, say, seeing Hogwarts on the big screen did (*gulp*) eleven years ago).
* The three-finger salute to District 11 - OH, MY TEARS! That's probably when I was most emotional. I missed seeing them send her the bread, but seeing them return the salute was a wonderful moment.
* I also thought they put just the right touch on Katniss and Peeta's relationship. There's not one moment when it's played for "omg doesn't this make you weak in the knees," which I appreciated because in the book it certainly didn't for me.
* Sort of from the book, though Katniss only tells us about something like it (at least I think she does) rather than us seeing it firsthand, I loved the little moment when they played a clip from a prior year's Games. That seemed to me more violent than anything we were allowed to see, violence wise, the entire rest of the movie. And the commentary on this kid beating another kid to death with a brick being a "moment of victory" - ugh, screw you, Capitol.
Welcome Additions
* I love that they showed so much of what was happening outside the arena, though I could have done with more from the districts, especially Prim and Katniss's mother and Gale (I especially wish they'd shown a bit more of Gale during the Games, because Katniss thinks about him so much in the book). It was great to see Haymitch working the people in the Capitol for sponsor money and Seneca presiding over "mission control" (Was I the only one who thought of Appollo 13 there? "FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION.").
* Speaking of Seneca, my absolute favorite moment is probably the way they dispose of him in the end. I've heard people calling it "poetic" which I find way too precious, but it's a nice touch. His scenes with Donald Sutherland are fantastic, too, and I really loved that we saw more of Snow than we do in the first book.
* Not really an addition, but it was a casting decision that caused a lot of balking several months ago, and I hope people are eating their words now because Lenny Kravitz was a fantastic Cinna. If you'd seen him in Precious you would not have been surprised in the least.
Better Than I Thought It Would Be
Pretty much everything about the Capitol, especially the wacky fashion. Love Caesar Flickerman and his blue hair and the smile he turns on just before the lights come up. And it does not surprise me one bit that Seneca's beard has become practically its own character in the fandom - it has a Twitter page, a Facebook page, and a Tumblr. I'd say "lol fandom" but that is truly one epic beard-scaping.
** Side note: Dear Wes Bentley, I've missed you. I had such a crush on you in American Beauty and it makes me sad that that movie and the ensuing attention it brought you messed you up so badly. I am beyond glad to see you back in top form, and I'm so glad they beefed Seneca's role up a bit so you'd have something to chew on. Love, Me.
Stuff I Didn't Like So Much, In Order of Least Annoying to Most Annoying
* I was not as enamored of Josh Hutcherson as everyone else seems to be. I thought he did better at the personable stuff in the pre-game than the dramatic, action-y stuff in the arena and even his conversation with Katniss night before. I *almost* started laughing when he kept yelling at Katniss when she started hallucinating from the tracker-jackers.
* You guys know I'm the LAST person to complain about stuff being left out in adaptations, but I *really* think they should have explained the significance of the mockingjay and how it relates to the rebellion. I don't remember if it's even connected to the notion of rebellion in any literal way until later in the books, but I distinctly remember getting the impression, even from the story about how the mockingjays came to be (which definitely IS in the first book), that they were in some way a symbol of defiance against the Capitol. It doesn't bother me at all that they left Midge out, but the mockingjay pin in the movie seems like little more than fanservice. Which kind of bothers me, because it's like the symbol for the whole series. Maybe they just assumed everyone would already know, but dude ... if the HP movies have to explain what Muggles are, then the HG movies need to give a heads up on why non-readers should care about this. BECAUSE THEY SHOULD CARE VERY MUCH.
* SHAKY CAM! This REALLY bothered me and was exceedingly distracting. I'm certain there are two reasons this was done. One of them I'm sure the filmmakers convinced themselves was an "artistic" choice - they wanted to make it look chaotic and true to life (they did not succeed, in my opinion). The other is the real reason - shaky, handheld camera work obscures the violence, making it less intense and more appropriate for younger viewers, so they could get their PG-13 rating. I've nothing against them watering things down a bit, violence-wise, so that they didn't have to worry too much about scaring the kiddoes. But surely there are other ways to do that. I think it's such a cop-out to do that in something like, for example, the first few moments of the Games and then pretend it's more true to life. On the extremely rare occasions that I run, the world does not look like that to me. What shaky cam looks like is exactly what it is. Someone holding a camera and running. I found it off-putting that Katniss's hallucination-vision was easier to look at than a whole lot of the arena stuff.
Perfection Itself
Jennifer Lawrence. Period. I don't even think I need to say anything else, but I will. Her performance here, especially in the early scenes, reminded me a lot of her Oscar-nominated performance in Winter's Bone (and I kind of hope more people check out that movie as a result of fangirling her as Katniss). I still think she's a *smidge* too old (I totally pictured Tania Raymonde (Alex from LOST) as I was reading, but she would have been too old by the time the film was made, too). Favorite moment of hers by far was when she was walking into the tube and being raised into the arena (as seen in the pic above). She also REALLY sells the insecurity and fear that often gets mistaken for arrogance. I am the very last person to go around talking "Oscar" in March, but I will say this. If the Academy were to recognize her again next January for this role, I would be rather pleased. Because seriously? She's that good.
Bottom Line: I liked it. I like Battle Royale even more. And I like the films in my One True Fandom still more. Don't ask me where LOTR fits in here. I'm not capable of that level of mathematics.