The Hunger Games

[SurfD]

From what I read, they cut out any graphic gore so it could get the pg13 rating, but still have all the teens murdering each other (so I imagine last second cut away's).

(edit: wow, i fail at spoiler tags)

[Hutch]

Possibly fake. But I was amused, and so shall you be.

[Lakov_Sanite]

This is a very good movie, watch it.

[Thrawn]

This is a very good movie, watch it.

Agreed, I wonder if this is partially a result of having the writer of the book so involved in the screen play and production?

But it makes me hope that if they do a third movie they will change it enough to make it actually good, unlike the third book. 

[SurfD]

This is a very good movie, watch it.

Agreed, I wonder if this is partially a result of having the writer of the book so involved in the screen play and production?

But it makes me hope that if they do a third movie they will change it enough to make it actually good, unlike the third book. 

Maybe, but I doubt it.   I mean, wasnt the writer heavily involved in the movie production for Golden Compass, and that turned out to be complete shit compared to the book.

[Malakili]

Is this in any way related to the Japanese movie Battle Royale?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266308/

It seems almost identical from the descriptions I am hearing.

[Tale]

I saw this on Saturday night. It's okay. It's nowhere near as good as people are saying. Lenny Kravitz was good. The rest of the movie was patchy.

The plot device for why children fight, rather than champions of any age, is inadequate. The portrayal of an elite society that enjoys watching children kill each other is kind of weak. And they have all this insanely advanced tech, but still use people with helmets and lamps to dig the coal their society needs.

Sitting in an audience of teenagers watching kids bloodily kill other kids is creepy. Any allegories were lost on them.

[Mattemeo]

Hunger Games takes $155,000,000 in opening weekend, breaks records set by previous teen-lit Twilight series.

John Carter takes $33,000,000 on opening weekend, looks set to be biggest flop of all time.

America. What the fuck is wrong with you?

[gimpyone]

Hunger Games takes $155,000,000 in opening weekend, breaks records set by previous teen-lit Twilight series.

John Carter takes $33,000,000 on opening weekend, looks set to be biggest flop of all time.

America. What the fuck is wrong with you?

Marketing. John Carter had nothing while the Hunger Games had months and months of hype.

[Wasted]

Just saw it, its pretty good.  I really liked Woody Harrelson's character and Lenny Kravitz.  Some overly convenient deaths saved the main character from having to do anything too unpalatable, but overall I could excuse those as well as the absurdly unbalanced tech from the capitol to the districts.  

One scene where a lot of the young and weak kids die was pretty hard to watch though.

Edit to add:Battle Royale is better, I'll have to dig that up and rewatch that now.

[eldaec]

Is this in any way related to the Japanese movie Battle Royale?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266308/

It seems almost identical from the descriptions I am hearing.

Officially no, but it is a transparent rip off. Albeit a good transparent rip off.

[SurfD]

I dont know.  Wasnt the entire motivation for the "battle royale" battle completely different from the one for the Hunger Games?  I mean, saying Hunger Games is a ripoff of Battle Royale is kind of like trying to say Star Wars is a rip-off of Star Treck (or vice versa) based on the fact that both involve starships and alien planets or something.

[Lakov_Sanite]

It's not what I'd call a 1:1 ripoff. Twilight is as much a ripoff of dracula....oh god, no it's not twilight...I'm so sorry....

[Margalis]

I dont know.  Wasnt the entire motivation for the "battle royale" battle completely different from the one for the Hunger Games?  I mean, saying Hunger Games is a ripoff of Battle Royale is kind of like trying to say Star Wars is a rip-off of Star Treck (or vice versa) based on the fact that both involve starships and alien planets or something.

The relationship between the Hunger Games and Battle Royale is much more specific than that. Whether it's a ripoff or not who knows, but it's pretty similar.

[apocrypha]

Hunger Games takes $155,000,000 in opening weekend, breaks records set by previous teen-lit Twilight series.

John Carter takes $33,000,000 on opening weekend, looks set to be biggest flop of all time.

America. What the fuck is wrong with you?

Reviews. I've seen several reviews of John Carter that really, really panned it. e.g. :  "John Carter is one of those films that is so stultifying, so oppressive and so mysteriously and interminably long that I felt as if someone had dragged me into the kitchen of my local Greggs, and was baking my head into the centre of a colossal cube of white bread."

I think all the reviews of Hunger Games I've seen have been positive. I don't put a vast amount of stock into reviews myself since my tastes frequently differ from reviewers, but plenty of people do, especially when going to the cinema is so expensive these days.

[Mattemeo]

The thing is, I don't actually know anyone who went to see John Carter who didn't like it. Everyone I've spoken to who actually bothered really enjoyed it.

The reviews read like these people have seen an entirely different film. Even Mark Kermode, a man whose opinion I respect in general even if I don't always agree with, is completely off.
It comes across like some sort of planned assassination attempt, and it's truly baffling.

[Khaldun]

It's what the buzz was, so it's what they review.

I think the Hunger Games film is quite good, and I like the series as well. I'm getting really sick of the "it's just Battle Royale", because Battle Royale could just be said to be Lord of the Flies, or really any "most dangerous game" sort of story or trope.

What's good and specific about The Hunger Games is not "teens fight to the death", it's the extremely pointed and quite well-timed critique of our own social moment. The Hunger Games is 2012's The Grapes of Wrath. Folks who are all like, "Oh, the tech would be more evenly distributed" need to: a) read some history and b) travel a bit in the world we actually live in. And maybe c) listen to the world-building in the film/books that makes it clear that the technological deprivation of most of the districts is programmatic, deliberate oppression in retaliation for an insurrection 74 years ago. You can certainly say, "But that's a stupid society" and congratulations, you'd be getting one of the underlying points of the story. If you want to tell me that's definitionally unrealistic, you're really not paying as much attention as you should to actually existing human examples of similar stupidity past and present.

Battle Royale has some similar critiques going on, but the fascist society in that book/film is making a different point with its teen-killing competition, I think--largely that this is how you make a society where no one trusts anyone else in order to make them more dependent upon the state.

[Margalis]

What's good and specific about The Hunger Games is not "teens fight to the death", it's the extremely pointed and quite well-timed critique of our own social moment. The Hunger Games is 2012's The Grapes of Wrath.

Can you really say this is true when the audience for this is largely teens and pre-teens who for the most part do not notice or care about any of this stuff?

The cynic in me says this is like a movie that claims to have a message about violence that is filled with violence shot in a super-cool fashion.

[shiznitz]

Just because those who find it most enjoyable miss the underlying message does not discredit the underlying message.  The books are clearly about repression.  The movie seems to have not abandoned that.  Some minority of viewers will get it.  That is how art/literature works.

[Khaldun]

Yup. I mean, early seasons of "The Simpsons" sometimes stuck it pretty hard to some sacred cows in American life, but I think some sizeable subset of its audience just saw "Funny sitcom with cartoon people" instead. Doesn't mean that the message won't sink in later. Heck, there were probably people who saw "The Grapes of Wrath" when it premiered and thought, "Them Joads is nice folks, shame about their troubles."

[Lakov_Sanite]

What's good and specific about The Hunger Games is not "teens fight to the death", it's the extremely pointed and quite well-timed critique of our own social moment. The Hunger Games is 2012's The Grapes of Wrath.

Can you really say this is true when the audience for this is largely teens and pre-teens who for the most part do not notice or care about any of this stuff?

The cynic in me says this is like a movie that claims to have a message about violence that is filled with violence shot in a super-cool fashion.

This movie was decidedly NOT filled with violence, much less than I had imagined knowing the premise going in.  The whole competition from cat's perspective is much more about surviving against the wild and predators than it is "rawr, blood, kill"

[Margalis]

Yeah, that's certainly true. (Meaning: the last couple posts excluding Lakov's) But there are also plenty of things that purport to have some sort of message (or get one ascribed to them) that either do not have one or sabotage it.

For example I think many people would view Natural Born Killers that way. I personally view Starship Troopers that way, as well as A Clockwork Orange to some degree.

I suppose it is in the eye of the beholder. And whatever message Hunger games may or may not have has got to be better than Twilight's.

As far as the violence goes, I see a ton of people hoping for an unrated / R cut. Make of that what you may.

[Lakov_Sanite]

In the 2h30m runtime I think maybe 60min of that was the actual competition? Even then, you really don't see a lot of the killing which is surprising. I can see people wanting more blood but the movie had a lot more depth than I was expecting and I think the points the books are trying to make do come across.  It's hard not to see the sort of reality tv american idol aspect of our society in the movie.

[Khaldun]

Sure. the point is not that HG or Twilight lack messages, it's that one has a much more interesting and IMHO resonant-at-this-moment message. Twilight's messaging is in some ways better disguised, particularly the call-out to Mormonism. It takes a bit of willfulness not to see what The Hunger Games is saying.

Though I have been struck at how many people are into cosplaying as Katniss. HG is not a happy world--feels very different to me to embrace being Katniss than it does to embrace being a student at Hogwart's during the Harry Potter series, for all that both of their lives are filled with conflict and pain. Katniss is a great character (and very well acted in the film, in my view) but taking up the bow in the games doesn't even have the grim satisfaction that Maximus in "Gladiator" finds when he calls out the audience at the North African arena for their enjoyment of death and pain.

[01101010]

Though I have been struck at how many people are into cosplaying as Katniss. HG is not a happy world--feels very different to me to embrace being Katniss than it does to embrace being a student at Hogwart's during the Harry Potter series, for all that both of their lives are filled with conflict and pain. Katniss is a great character (and very well acted in the film, in my view) but taking up the bow in the games doesn't even have the grim satisfaction that Maximus in "Gladiator" finds when he calls out the audience at the North African arena for their enjoyment of death and pain.

Because rangers are cheap. Takes skill to be a warrior. 

[naum]

Saw it Sunday at an early matinee showing, the next time slot had a line stretching around the theater.

It was a good flick, no suspense for me, as having read the book the only interest was seeing what was added and subtracted. I wondered how they would handle video translation, seeing that the book (have not read volumes 2 & 3 yet) is entirely from Katniss perspective, and there is a lot of her figuring and ruminating, which serves to layout the world and storyline.

The violence was too sanitized, but that's what they had to do to earn a PG-13 rating. Still, you have to wonder about kids under high school age, how they could possibly process the metaphor and meaning of the tale. I saw some toddlers in the audience too, which baffled me.

Lots of silly reviews are trying to paint this as a tea party tale or left wing overture or even Christian homage -- over thinking it, though it is a commentary on contemporary "bread and circuses" -- a world with grotesque wealth holdings with most of the world existing at a subsistence level.

[Tale]

There is no effective conveying of social commentary in this movie. Yes, it's like our reality TV shows, but it doesn't say anything revolutionary about them or about our society. It's certainly not comparable to The Grapes of Wrath. It's not bad, but it's not a great film. Perhaps the book says more, but people who only see the film are watching children stab each other and a couple of bad kisses.

[Ingmar]

More  to be had here (note there are significant story spoilers):

http://jezebel.com/5896408/racist-hunger-games-fans-dont-care-how-much-money-the-movie-made

[MahrinSkel]

This makes more sense if you know that in certain circles, the dominance of the Districts by the Capitol was seen as a metaphor for civil rights and/or Reconstruction.  So, much as they flipped out over Heimdall being played by a black actor in Thor, they are seeing the casting of black actors for the sympathetic victims of the Hunger Games as a betrayal of what they saw as the "real message" of the book.

--Dave

EDIT: Here's an example of what I mean, almost certainly written before this "controversy" (VDare is only a little less open in their racism than Stormfront).  Any more than this, and we're heading straight for Politics.

[Zaljerem]

I enjoyed the film, but the shaky-cam in the first thirty minutes almost made me literally ill. My daughter too; I thought we were going to have to leave the theater for a moment, but thankfully it smoothed out. I don't usually have problems with vertigo but we both were extremely affected. I left the theater with a slight headache.

Shaky-cam is the worst cinematographic technique ever. I know they were going for emotion, confusion, fear, etc., but try not to make me sick in the process? I've seen smoother video from a teenager waving around an iPod.

[Rishathra]

I'm surprised, not by the racism, but that people would be shocked and surprised that the District 11 tributes were black.  In the books, it was pretty heavily implied (though not explicitly explained as such) that the "agriculture district" had, if not an entirely black population, then at least a significant portion.  The feeling I got was Antebellum South minus the Antebellum.  It was one more way the Capitol exerted control over the districts, by dividing them along cultural and ethnic lines.

[Riggswolfe]

I enjoyed the film, but the shaky-cam in the first thirty minutes almost made me literally ill. My daughter too; I thought we were going to have to leave the theater for a moment, but thankfully it smoothed out. I don't usually have problems with vertigo but we both were extremely affected. I left the theater with a slight headache.

Shaky-cam is the worst cinematographic technique ever. I know they were going for emotion, confusion, fear, etc., but try not to make me sick in the process? I've seen smoother video from a teenager waving around an iPod.

I agree. After reading reviews about the shaky-cam I decided not to see this movie. If I wanted shaky-cam I'd watch my dad's old home movies. When I go to a movie I go to see professionals at work not shaky-cam bullshit. It's why there is only 1 Bourne movie in my 'trilogy'.

[Tale]

that people would be shocked and surprised that the District 11 tributes were black.

As far as I can tell, only racists are surprised.

And I didn't even notice any shakycam.

[lamaros]

Yeah, that's certainly true. (Meaning: the last couple posts excluding Lakov's) But there are also plenty of things that purport to have some sort of message (or get one ascribed to them) that either do not have one or sabotage it.

For example I think many people would view Natural Born Killers that way. I personally view Starship Troopers that way, as well as A Clockwork Orange to some degree.

Aside: I could never manage to watch NBK for those reasons you describe. But I didn't feel like that with the other two, so maybe it is a personal thing.

[sickrubik]

Also, NBK is not a good film.

Also, fuck Oliver Stone.