The Hunger Games (2012)

Best movie ever!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

3/4After reading The Hunger Games books, I immeadiately HAD to watch the movies. I knew the odds were in their favor in a subjective sense. While I can't say I liked either the book or the movie better, I'd say the book tells the story in a more complete and emotional manor, while the movie makes the same story more accessible. (The Hunger Games movies pay homage to their source material, unlike some other re-makes).The 12 districts of Panem, who are under a dictatorship that requires a teenaged boy and girl from each district every year. The selected people are put into an arena where they will fight to the death on live TV. The story centers around Katniss Everdeen, (Jennifer Lawrence) who volunteers for the games in her sister's place. Jennifer Lawrence gives a great Everdeen, and Josh Hutcherson gives a great Peet's, but most of the non-leads (with some exceptions) felt lacking. Example: when a certain highly likable character is killed, it fails to wrench your guts.If I had to pick one thing I was very disappointed about in this film, it would definitely be the CGI. Some of the action (ESPECIALLY a certain scene toward the end of the film....no spoilers) looks incredibly fake to the point where you aren't in the movie anymore. While it's definitely no Battlefield Earth in terms of poor CGI, it should be kicked up a notch considering the high demand for this movie.Despite some flaws, this movie is probably my favorite "YA" movie (if not one of it's sequels) and one definitely worth a watch. It takes great care to give you the same experience you had when yo read the novel, and it's a ton of fun as well.

This is a terrible adaption of the Hunger Games book. So many details are left out which makes the plot bland, boring and simplistic. Characters don't develop bonds and relationships, it just happens. When a character feels remorse it makes no sense because they haven't developed a relationship, they were just allies for 20 minutes. The first thing you see when the movie starts is boring text explaining what the reaping is and why the have the hunger games. So straight away they throw the rule of show don't tell out the window from the top floor. Its just so lazy. And its completely pointless anyway as it is explained again in short film that all the tributes watch. The pacing of this movie is also unbearable. Things just happen one after the other. Even the dialogue is lightening fast a lot of the time. Its hard to keep up with the conversations. The plot itself is somewhat interesting, but it is completely watered down to the bare minimum in the movie. Many key details are skipped over and ignored and I can only imagine this movie must be so boring and confusing for anyone who hasn't read the book.

What I admired most about "The Hunger Games" was how it managed to resist the temptation to leap into the second unit material straight away - a misstep so many films of this genre, especially those geared towards the same demographics as this one is, have done so. Instead, "The Hunger Games" earns the right to 'go there', so to speak - taking its time to establish character and situation. What I also appreciated was its subtext to do with violence and entertainment; de-sensitisation and trivialisation, and more broadly how governments are able to utilise such things to control populations. Jennifer Lawrence plays the rather conspicuously named Katniss Everdeen, a young woman living somewhere in a North America which has gone to the dogs through war and now suffers life under a totalitarian regime in the far-future. Where she lives, the equally conspicuously named Panem, possesses in its constitution a highly questionable law which dictates that, every year, one male and one female between the ages of 12 and 19 from each of the country's dozen or so districts must face off to the bloody death in a large gamezone carved out of the forests in what are the eponymous 'hunger games'. The reasons for this brutal regulation pertain to the dictatorial government wanting to keep up the traditions of honour and willpower synonymous with its national identity, but these days everybody largely agrees it is down to the sheer fact that said contest makes for damn good television. Questions pertaining to how old the nation is and what they did before television was invented are not answered... As a character, Everdeen is nobody special - nobody in Panem is, because the grip the rulers have on the country keeps anybody from broadening out too far into becoming anything at all. She maintains her friendships; lives in her rudimentary village; takes care of her younger sister and spends enough time fooling around with a bow and arrow to become a bit of a crack-shot. Will the skill come to benefit her later on in the tale? Disaster strikes when, through reasons I will leave unspoilt, Everdeen winds up appearing in the yearly contest having been selected as the female to represent her district. This plunges Lawrence's character into a whole new world of colour; energy and fame, not to mention life-threatening danger on account of having to do battle with a motley group of compatriots from the other districts which range from robust, muscular black males on the very brink of being too old to compete to mousey younger girls too young to possess any real clue as to what is even happening. "The Hunger Games" is not an especially exhilarating character piece, but it does do the basics required of both the action and horror (and, in part, romance) genres especially well. The film is an energetic post-modern fusion of all sorts of things ranging from "Predator" to "TRON" by way of the 2000 Japanese film, to which it seems to owe its greatest debt, "Battle Royale". It allows its premise and the sheer scope afforded to it in terms of whatever content it might possess to make a scathing attack on modern American (even Western) free-market consumer entertainment. This is unsubtly presented to us for the first time quite early on when one character quips about the contest that "...if no one watched (on TV), they (the government) wouldn't do it", eventually becoming a film depicting a society with a violent, deranged spectacle at the very core of its identity. Indeed, while nothing in the world (that we know of) can quite match the barbarity of what Gary Ross' film depicts here, we should be aware by now that WWE is adored by millions; heavyweight championship boxing matches can make billionaires out of its participants in one evening and that some of the highest grossing films of all time are action (or violence) packed blockbusters. This begs the question: how do WE - the film-going audience - react to the violent action when it finally starts? Are we entertained? Do we fall into the trap of rooting for a character because we want them to succeed? Is it not too often the case that the target audience for the film roll from multiplex screening to multiplex screening absorbing the latest actioner? By the time the "Games" themselves have begun, the film has earned the right to take us to where we go. To complain that they are episodic, and that the set-pieces & killings might happen in any order, seems silly, but the best action films have always had a sense of grace and timing to their second unit sequences as events unfold around their characters: "Terminator2" and "Jurassic Park" might be two good examples from recent history. The screenplay possesses very little of any terrific profundity, while the lead's taking in under her wing of a fellow female contestant far too young to survive on her own merely proves what we already knew: she is a good older sister - a more affecting arc may have been to establish her earlier as a bully to her sibling and have her return much kinder. Irrespective, there is enough in "The Hunger Games" to get stuck into and enjoy.

I give all four films a high rating of 2 because of the excellent acting--especially by Woody Harrelson, the relaxed genius--and the top grade cinematography. I would have given them a much higher rating had our Creator been invoked (or even mentioned), but who am I fooling, right? Our society today gives little attention to the One In Charge, why would a dystopian society be any better? After all, it is a dystopia. Dysfunctional. No wonder why. So, it all ends, and there sits Katniss with her second baby, dressed very much like a Christian country woman from the 1950s with her pastel print dress. The writer and director wants the results of Christianity without Jesus the King. Interesting. In that way, though, the film perfectly reflects our own digimodern society. And didn't you love the Hillary Clinton/President Alma Coin comparison? I certainly did. Same haircut, same witchiness, same hunger for power.