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This fan made trailer is far more accurate to the events in the book:
The changes in the movie were a bit confusing, Katniss was always a realist and so her saying "you're okay, you're okay . . ." were a bit off character and completely contrary to the what the Katniss was thinking in the novel. But I do understand that without that inner dialogue it's hard to humanize the character by her actions alone. She is a survivalist and not one usually prone to emotion.
There's a really good, professionally done fanvid on Youtube called "the second quench."
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I imagined the Capital was close to Denver...with the "destroyed" district beyond it so on the other side.
But yea I nailed 12 as West Virginia.
Trying to picture where the other districts are. I think Detroit is one of the districts. Maybe four...where they make the cars and stuff... :O)
Any ideas?
Was anyone else as irritated by the jumpy camera, fast cuts, poor framing, and blurry images as I was? I think it ruined an otherwise good movie. It worked great for the fighting. Especially the bloodbath at the start of the games. This was not what I was expecting from the director of Seabiscuit and Pleasantville.
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We live in a time where teens are doing disgusting horrible acts to each other. Anything from rape, violence, death, purposeful maiming, etc. I weep for our callous society as we continue to degenerate into nothing more than beast ruled by instinctual violence and greed.
Shadowcat covered some of this, but we live in a time where teens (and everyone else) are doing fewer disgusting horrible acts to each other (per capita) than ever before. We just hear about them a lot more. Hell, if you think high school in the '50s was all malt shops and sock hops, check out Rebel Without a Cause or read about the gang fights that were generally a fact of life.
You might read The Better Angels of Our Nature, which outlines how human existence in the Western world has been getting more or less progressively LESS violent with time.
Never forget that people have been playing the "I weep for where we're headed" card since ancient Greece.
Never forget that people have been playing the "I weep for where we're headed" card since ancient Greece.
Sumer. I read translations of inscriptions to that effect in Western Civ. All the classic complaints: children are disrespectful, not properly religious, loud, unconventional, do what they like instead of what they're told, spend all their time with their friends, etc.
Every generation has a surplus of people convinced that they are the last gasp of civilization. They'd be closer to the mark if they thought the next generation would be its first.
I haven't seen the movie, but I grew up with the Smurfs. I ended up painting myself blue and wearing white spandex. (I don't know why they don't let me march in the parade. Honestly I've about got it down, don't I? Almost naked and blue... Maybe they need to watch more Bert & Ernie.)
When I was think more about He-Man, I require a fur speedo and straddle felines.
When ghosts appear I dig out what I learned from Pac Man and take steroids so I can eat them.
When bored I sometimes use the witchcraft I learned from Samantha Stevens to rewrite reality to my liking. If my nose is stuffed up, I go wands out with my Harry Potter skills.
When people steal national landmarks or cultural treasures, I track them down by answering trivia questions about geography.
But then doesn't everybody? Don't tell me you grew up on GI Joe. You'll be jumping out of vehicles that are about to explode! What kind of life lesson is that?
Don't tell me you grew up on GI Joe. You'll be jumping out of vehicles that are about to explode! What kind of life lesson is that?
Naw -- for me it was the Superfriends vs. the Legion of Doom, and later on the Greatest American Hero. I wanted to be cunning and ruthless, like Lex Luthor, except not lose at the end of every episode. I also figured that if I spent enough time practicing, I could learn to fly -- when I asked about other seemingly-impossible tasks I was incapable of, like backflips and stuff, people always told me, "it takes a LOT of practice," so the logic seemed clear.
I saw the movie after reading the books, I really enjoyed the books and felt that the movie was much richer for my having the background knowledge and character insight. I highly recommend books then movie!
I also want to mention that I saw this movie with my 10 year old son and a group of about 7-9 other 5th grade boys (ages 10-11) after a slumber party (the birthday boy was a fan of the books and chose this movie). After the movie, I casually eavesdropped on their conversation, overall their reaction was "I can't believe they made kids kill kids! That was so terrible!" So then wandered over and said "Wow! That was a pretty intense movie, what did you think?"
The point of the books (and the movie) was exactly to show that the Hunger Games were an atrocity, and that's what these boys seemed to take away with them.
I would use discretion in allowing younger kids to see this movie, but callousness and violence are not traits imposed upon kids by movies. They arise when parents (primarily) or other adults do not talk about these issues with them and therefore allow mass media to form their impressions for them.
Oh, and I have to agree that the first 20 or so minutes of the film represent the most egregious use of hand-held camera I have ever had to suffer through! :P
10 years old seems a little young for this sort of film IMO, but I'm so glad your son and his friends came away with the right message and were mature enough to handle it.
Gotta say, I thought 10-11 was a little young as well (having read the books), which was most of the reason I wanted to be there when they saw it (of course getting to see the movie myself was a plus!). I too was impressed by the kids' maturity, they were really great!
So the hunger games has now grossed over 251 million. Strangely everyone here seems to be talking about John Carter.
As long as a thark has his head and one hand, he may still conquer!!!!!
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Question for those that have read the books: What did everyone think of the changes in the movie? Did anything bother you? I had 5 peeves which I posted back on page 1 behind the spoiler.
Nothing really bothered me. The background on District 12 and the other people there (particularly more with Peeta's parents, the Mayor's family, etc) could have been fleshed out a bit more as to make more of an impression when the events at the end of Catching Fire/beginning of Mockingjay happen and I have a feeling that Cinna and his assistants may end up kind of merged into one character by Mockingjay, but everything else is just fluff that serves the story, not necessarily moves it forward.
The movie does lose a lil something in that it can't really capture the first person perspective of Katniss, with her mental dialogue, but honestly, I don't think there would have been any good way to do that.
As someone whose wife damned near forced him to read the first book (and read the other two shortly thereafter), I think the movie was better than people here and online in general have claimed. In many regards, I see what was done with the plot as Adaptation Distillation, and no I'm not linking to That Place - most of you probably already have it bookmarked.
That said, some explanatory...
First, the change from receiving the pin from Madge, in the books, to Greasy Sal's analog in the movie, was mostly to deal with the already-present loads and loads of characters. It would not have translated as well to the screen, in my estimation, but wasn't a dealbreaker for me. The lack of time spent with Gale and Katniss getting more prey in the woods was also for sake of pacing, which was overall nicely done. However, this only served to make Gale seem like a shallow love interest, which was probably what prompted so many drooling fan-cretins to compare it to Twilight. Heymitch's introduction comes later than in the books, but his entry was suitably dickish, though not nearly as dramatic as anticipated. Also, Heymitch was way younger than I imagined in my head, because I pictured him being more or less ruined from years of drinking and recovering from his own games. By the same token, since he's not old enough to have been through a Quarter Quell, in retrospect it didn't seem so odd. President Snowe did not remotely look how I imagined, but that is mostly due to the fact that in my head he'd immediately and irrevocably became voiced by Sen. Joe Lieberman. Peeta's casting irked me for the cleft chin, but his lack of time getting characterization hurt his performance's impact. Lenny Kravitz rocked as Cinna, and I saw the movie with, surprisingly, a woman who said her sister played the trainer at the Games. Nice touch. I remain amazed how many people don't recall that Rue and Thresh were 'dusky'. The Tracker Jacker sequence was the most polite hallucination sequence I'd ever seen, especially considering it explained itself in her head. One thing people kept overlooking after the supply explosion - when things went boom, you notice the camera tends to go fuzzy, frequently, as well as the fact that there was a tinnitus tone overlaid to the sound, along with the static that faded in over the scene when it focused on the ear that was damaged. The miracle medicines used were, to an extent, a shorthand for the level of tech available, beyond the game controls.
More letter as I remember.