"And may the odds be ever in your favour."
Hello everyone!
LOL.
I don't really know why I'm so into this series right now, considering everything, but it looks as though I'm going to go through the rest of the books and movies I don't have on the blog yet (I'm missing both the remaining books and one more movie) so I mean, fun I guess?
There's always fun to be had when you have big blockbuster movies like that.
But I will say I've definitely remembered why I liked these movies as opposed to some others (looking at you, Divergent), as they follow the books pretty closely and make actual adaptations not 'based off of' kind of flicks.
The difference is pretty massive, depending on what explanation you're going for.
As this adaptation knows what it's doing, however, let's just jump right into The Hunger Games!
Links to previous reviews related to this topic can be found at the bottom of the page, as per usual.
So as you know from the book, Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) is a girl in District 12 of Panem, which rose out of the ashes of North America, and then once the districts rebelled against their rulers, number 13 was bombed out of existence, and to prevent and of this from happening again the Hunger Games were started.
This has since become a 'way to celebrate and bring the country together', as stated by the gamemaker ... because nothing speaks unity more than getting 24 boys and girls and having them slaughter each other to the death while the rest of the country watches like it's the Olympics.
Like President Snow says: it'd be easier to just take 24 of them and kill them, if they wanted fear, but to inspire some hope, to keep people going, the lone victor and survivor needs to actually be the focus here.
Otherwise, despondency might just kill their country faster than anything else.
Anyway, back to Katniss, who has nothing to bring home to her family on Reaping Day because her friend Gale (Hemsworth) doesn't want her to get in trouble with the Peacekeepers (the soldiers keeping the peace, duh), and so she focuses on trying to keep her sister Prim calm. There's no way Prim will get called to participate.
Only, Effie (the woman looking like the weirdest person ever but who grows on you) actually DOES pull Prim's name from the bowl, forcing Katniss to volunteer to save her sister's life.
She and Peeta Mellark (Hutcherson) are then whisked away to the Capitol, and their mentor Haymitch can immediately see that of the two of them it's Peeta who's the likeable one. Katniss just thinks she can barrel through this on a hope and a prayer, and scowling face.
Even her stylist Cinna (Lenny Kravitz) at one point tells her that Haymitch has the right of it when he has Peeta proclaim his unrequited love for her during an interview with a bizarre-looking Stanley Tucci (I swear he had to have SO much fun filming this though).
So they finally head into the arena, where Katniss keeps going at it solo until the gamekeepers decide to herd her over to the others again, at which point she drops some genetically engineered wasps on top of the sleeping opponents, staking out the tree she's on at that time.
She herself gets stung too, but survives the stings and the hallucinations (during which we learn her father was killed in a mining explosion) with the help of another contestant, a little girl named Rue.
Together, they make a plan to take out all the supplies gathered back at the starting point of the game, which is a ringing success (read: big BOOM), but Rue gets caught on the way back and killed, prompting Katniss to give her a decent would-be burial. Her salute into the cameras, a traditional way of saying farewell and good luck in her district, prompts an immediate reply from District 11 (Rue's district) which erupts into rebellion.
This annoys the president, who tells the gamemaker to flat-out kill Katniss, because they can't afford rebellion; Haymitch convinces him not to make a martyr out of her and so instead, the rules of the game are changed so that the victors can only be the participants of the same district.
Katniss goes to find Peeta, who was wounded after pretending to be working with the Careers so he could protect her, and so while they play out their romance on camera, she's trying to figure out how to keep him alive.
She manages with a little medicine from the gamekeepers, but not before getting into an altercation there with a girl who the boy from District 11 kills in retaliation for Rue. With Peeta now healed, they accidentally cause the death of the girl from District 5 when Peeta picks some poisonous berries, which he doesn't recognize, but Katniss does, though they have very little time to mourn as there's a new addition to the game in the form of ... gigantic ass monster dogs?
I don't know, the things are as big as horses, they're scary, and want to eat them, so the duo run back to the starting point where they fight the last remaining tribute standing, the guy from District 2. He nearly kills Peeta, but ends up at the mercy of those monster things before Katniss takes pity on him and kills him.
This SHOULD mean the end of the games, but now it looks like the two of them need to duke it out (game rules, huh?) which Katniss opposes and shares the poisonous berries with Peeta so they can both take them. This frightens the gamemaker who proclaims them both victors.
Haymitch tells Katniss she's made enemies because she made fools out of the Capitol, and she needs to be careful; she and Peeta return home to their own district, while the gamemaker is locked into a room with the poisonous berries and no other way out. The President, meanwhile, is watching footage of the two victors and wondering what his next move will be before he leaves.
Which is some cliffhanger for movie two, let me tell you!
The filmmakers made an interesting decision to swap the camera angles during the telling of this by making it first person occasionally, like when Katniss gets on the train for the first time, or when Rue dies, looking up into the trees. The angles and shots are always provocative and make you think, trying to put you into the shoes of these tributes who are just trying to survive.
Another thing that's different from the book is the fact we get to see a lot of what's happening OUTSIDE the games, while the book only gives us Katniss's point of view. Here, we see Haymitch make the decision to cajole sponsors, the President's discussions with the gamemaker in his rose garden, the people in District 12 watching (I see you Gale, you sulky ass idiot who didn't want to watch to begin with but ended up watching like everybody else, AND JUDGING KATNISS FOR TRYING TO STAY ALIVE WITH PEETA), the rebellion in District 11.
It gives the story a much broader scope that the book only ever hints at, and I've forgotten a lot of that over the years to be honest.
The cast did a stellar work, I think, especially Jennifer Lawrence in portraying the fairly innocent Katniss, which I have no doubt will change as we continue going further and further into these movies. Innocence only lasts for so long, after all.
But enough of my theorising, tune in next week for the review of Catching Fire!
xx
*images and video not mine
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