we'll laugh, but we will not be saved

[frith_in_thorns]

So, I went to see The Hunger Games. And I apparently have a lot of Thoughts about it. (ETA: okay, even more than I was expecting :P)

First of all, I enjoyed it. Not as much as the book, which I love, but I find that to me films rarely live up to their books. I was a bit worried beforehand about how well some things would translate to the screen. Fran came with me and she hadn't read the books, so we had interesting discussions afterwards about that.

Currently the internet is playing round two of race arguments over the casting, round one having been the whitewashing of Katniss, Gale, and most of District 12. I don't really want to go into that here, because other people have talked about it with far more eloquence. I wish the whitewashing hadn't happened, though - I find it pretty upsetting that the casting call for Katniss specified a white actress.

On a happier note, I think it's pretty revolutionary that we have this smash-hit film with a female lead and a female screenwriter. And the publicity makes it very clear that this is about Katniss. I love that. And I thought Katniss's actress did extremely well, and the settings and costuming were brilliant. The whole sequence up to the Games beginning was wonderful, especially the Reaping, which all looked exactly how I'd pictured it except a bit whiter. And I also really liked how they did the Capitol, with all its strange fashions. Fran said it reminded her of 70s sci-fi, in a good way.

Haymitch was not anything like how I pictured him, but I really liked him regardless - just sad that he got the massively short end of the stick in terms of character development. Fran said she didn't really get anything apart from "is drunk a lot for no apparent reason" from him, which is really sad since he's such a complex and fucked-up character. On the other hand, Cinna was almost exactly as I'd hoped, although I'd been visualising him as closer to Shemar Moore. (I now really want Shemar Moore to play Finnick in the next two films. That would be awesome.) Other character who exactly fit my head-picture: Effie Trinket. She was wonderful.

Sadly, I felt that the pace was a bit lost once the actual Games started - I think we could have done with slightly fewer shots of Katniss running through forest and slightly more of her actually doing things, such as hunting or bonding with Rue.

OMG Rue. I adored her, and while I was sad that her scenes got cut down loads from the already small amount in the book, I loved the little things like her stealing the knife, and the grin she had when suggesting the tracker-jacker nest. And I really, really did cry when she died. I was a bit disappointed they left out the scene with District 11 sending Katniss the bread, because I thought that was a really important thing by representing District unity - ie the thing the Capitol tried to destroy with the Games - but on the other hand they did have riots in 11 which I thought were really well-done. But they didn't at all show that Katniss laying Rue out in flowers was an act of rebellion (not supposed to care about other Tributes), so that was a shame.

It was a nice touch showing the Gamemakers toying with the Tributes, and their big virtual overlay was cool. And I did like that they had Seneca, too, it gave some nice perspective on what Katniss was doing.

One thing I didn't think was done well - it really wasn't shown that Katniss was purely playing the romance angle to get gifts from sponsors, to try and get out. When I asked Fran about this afterwards she had thought that it was showing Katniss falling in love with Peeta for real, and that all of it was genuine. So, yeah. And again with the berries, which was the central thing really - they didn't explain exactly why it worked, that if they both died then the Capitol wouldn't have a Victor and they couldn't allow that to happen (now I remember Snow saying at an earlier point that they had to have a Victor, because it allowed just the right level of hope for the Districts, but I really think it wasn't explicitly stated anywhere near as well as it could have been).

So yeah, this is my main criticism of the film: that the political message was massively diluted, to the point of being easy to miss, really. And it sort of became all about the Games - being happy that Katniss won, when the point of the book was that she didn't, really, by 'winning' she put herself in way more danger. And what I love about the books is the politics, so. I think Fran's comment about the end was: "It sort of felt that the other people [Snow etc] won, and I wasn't sure whether was a good or a bad thing." I don't know, probably other people had different take-home messages, but that was our opinion. And I think they're going to have to do quite a bit of political catch-up to make Catching Fire make sense.

I do have to say, though, that my very favourite scene was one not in the books at all, although it was mentioned: Seneca's forced suicide. Being escorted into a lovely room and locked there, with only a table and a glass bowl full of nightlock berries - that was wonderfully creepy and massively in keeping with the series's tone.

So, to sum up: enjoyed the film, preferred the books, but am looking forward to the sequels.

Comments

[sahiya]

Interesting. So, I haven't read the books - just haven't gotten around to it because of classes and because I've been reading for my qualifying exam - and there were a few things here that you didn't think were clear enough in the film that I thought worked for me. Haymitch, for instance - I think it's pretty clear (or at least I thought so) that he's a drunk because even when you win at the Games, you lose. It fucks with your head and you are never, ever a normal human being afterward. It isn't explicitly stated, that's true, and that might've just been me reading into, but I didn't think it was that hard to get at least that much out of it.

I also thought it was pretty well implied (albeit implicitly) that Katniss laying out Rue was an act of rebellion. Again, not stated, but it was pretty damn clear to me that by the rules of the game, they could not have been happy to have Katniss taking time to give Rue a proper burial - like a human being, not an animal (because that's what the Games do, right? turn people into animals). I also didn't think they had to explain why it wouldn't work for Katniss and Peeta to kill themselves - Snow and . . . was it Seneca? (there are a lot of secondary character names I'm not clear on) had that whole conversation about "don't make her a martyr" and that worked well enough for me. That would've been two martyrs, then, so twice as bad.

Anyway, a bunch of stuff might not have been explicitly stated in the film, but I also don't think it needed to be. It was pretty east to extrapolate it from what we got. Films have to be more economical than novels, it's the nature of the medium, and as someone who didn't read the books first, I thought it was really quite a good film, in and of itself.

[frith_in_thorns]

Okay, fair enough, and in that case I'm really glad they worked! I'm not always great at picking up messages in visual media compared to text. And I did enjoy the film, very much! I just also enjoy picking things apart :)

Seneca was the Head Gamekeeper, with the awesomely sculptured beard.

(I do really recommend the books, though!)

[sahiya]

Oh, I'll read the books, don't worry! But possibly not until after my quals (June 1st - not all that far off, EEP!).

[louisekdyson.livejournal.com]

This is really interesting to read. I went to see the film yesterday, and have since bought and read the first book in the trilogy (shut up, brain, I don't really need a PhD). I definitely agree that it wasn't at all clear how much of the "romance" was true, either from Katniss or from Peeta. I did come out thinking it was probably true from Peeta and not from Katniss, but the book has a lot more nuance about that and the consequences of that. I did think that most of the politics (from the first book) did more or less make it through, except for not having the Avox. I did like the way they showed what was going on "behind the scenes" during the Games.

Anyway, I really enjoyed both the film and the book. I'll probably buy the other two now :-)

[frith_in_thorns]

You should definitely read the other two books, I very much enjoyed them :)

Actually, one of the other things I thought about the film, but forgot when I was writing the post, was how much more neat and tidy it was than the book. I mean, Katniss hardly hunted anything, presumably to avoid shots of the cute dead bunnies... Also when Clove got her with a knife in the forehead. And there was hardly any blood, which was so massively unrealistic that I found it quite funny - it kind of broke right through my suspension of disbelief :P

[louisekdyson.livejournal.com]

I think they had some problems with getting the 12a rating for the film? Apparently they had to cut out some bits and also "digitally removed" some of the blood splashed. I'd guess they also just didn't put as much in to start with to try to keep the rating young. (reposted so it's in the right thread :-))

[frith_in_thorns]

Ah yeah, that would make sense. I have to say I was surprised that they did manage to get it to a 12A, really!

[wildcat88.livejournal.com]

Good review. I've read the books and saw the movie the first day.

I agree with you about the politics being downplayed and the romance not being explained, though I know that they had to make massive edits to cut it down to a 2 hour movie.

As to the "whiteness" of District 12, from my take on the books, that is what would be considered present-day West Virginia. Certainly not all Caucasian, but also not particularly racially diverse. I would expect to see mostly poor Caucasians there. The casting of 12 was exactly as I had pictured it in the books. But I did notice that other than District 11, the rest of the tributes were not very diverse. However, it's been a while since I read the first book and I don't remember how she describes them except for Foxface (maybe?) with the red hair.

I'm not sure how much of it you saw, but there was an uproar here when Jennifer Lawrence was cast as Katniss because she's naturally blond. The plan all along was for her to dye her hair, but fans here seem to be incredibly rabid so I assume the casting folks did their best to match the author's descriptions. Plus the author had some input into the casting.

It also made news here that the UK version had 7 seconds of "blood" cut from the film to get it the lower age rating. Not sure which 7 seconds got cut but I thought that was interesting.

I think they intentionally left a few things vague, like the repercussions of her "winning", because that will be the focus of Catching Fire. I think they'll flesh Haymitch out more in the later movies too. Since I've read all three, I know what's really going on, but I don't know that the first book gives more on Haymitch than what was on screen.

[frith_in_thorns]

I do feel they could have cut down a few shots of Katniss sitting in trees to do a couple of seconds of explanation in some places :P

And yeah, that's rather what I meant with mentioning Katniss and Gale being whitewashed. Since the books explicitly drew a contrast between the light town people, with blonde hair, and the darker people who were the poor and were the mining class, I'm rather sympathetic with the "rabid" fans who were upset when Katniss's casting call specified a white actress, since it refused to even consider the possibility that she could be played by a PoC. (District 12 is in the Appalachian mountains, so a lot of people had assumed that she and many of the others were of Native descent.)

Again, 11 was the other district to be specifically non-white, and poor, being across a large portion of the Deep South, and with explicit slavery parallels being drawn. I don't think any of the other tributes had real descriptions.