Well to punish myself, mostly
due to extreme boredom, I decided to watch the Hunger Games.
I never read the book. I stayed away on general
principle. If everyone says to read it, then I generally don't. That doesn't
mean it is a bad book. I just stay away from general public mass hysteria
causing books. My niece did explain the premise and it sounded intriguing at
first. Then it spun into a tale of teenage angst and love amid a dystopian
society controlled by the opulently wealthy. Who like to enjoy violent public
screened teenage death games. All I could think of was meal of the Running
Man served with the film Battle Royale, an edible garnish of Thunder Dome and a
side of girl power. All atop a braised palenta. Not to far off is
it?
So...we have districts (zones where people of one
variety live) that put their kids in a lottery every year. This lottery pulls a
boy and girl from each district and they go into a battleground. The winning
kid/district gets food and supplies that they need until next year. Every
district needs supplies since they are all a bunch of lowly dirt merchants,
rouge traders, moisture farmers, etc. and can barley survive without goverment
(the rich people running everything) help. Then it just becomes a build up to
eventual teenage Thunder Dome! This sounds all well and good until you get a
horrid love-type story with the main girl and boy, Katniss and Peeta (who have
two of the worst names ever), thrown into the mix. There are no real surprises here as the fighting either as the events can only lead to one of two outcomes,
and there are more books in the series.
I knew as I hit the play button I was going to
probably not enjoy this move. At least I wasn't disappointed there. I guess this
is what happens when boredom, meets Netflicks, meets pop culture curiosity and
two hours to burn. This is a good premise for a story, but it pulls from so much
other stuff that it just fails. What I left with was an attempt to show the
trials of a strong young woman with all those important emotions who can kick
ass doesn't need a boy to save her. All this set against a horrible future
society where everything is black and white, rich vs. poor, strong vs. weak,
and etc. etc. etc.
I spent more time riffing and finding plot holes
than anything else. The only thing I was impressed with was the PG-13 rating
this film received. There was a lot of blood, death and dismemberment in there.
Actually, the official start of the Hungry Game fight, post the little countdown
bit,was the only bit that surprised and that I actually kind of enjoyed. I like a
bit of the ultra violence and there was some there. The amount of teenage death
and blood was very shocking. Most PG-13's have death, but not that bloody and
not kid on kid. How this didn't push a R rating was a huge surprise. I guess the
jump cutting of the death, and never actually seeing the few frames where the
weapons go into the bodies saved it from being an R film. Not sure how they
squeaked it through the MPAA, but they did.
Needless to say, I should have stayed away from
this movie as I did the book. Actually, I have yet to hear from any guy that has
read the book or watched the movie and said how good either one were. I knew
going in this would be bad, yet I had a sliver of hope. I went into Harry Potter
thinking it would be little kid drek and walked away really digging that series.
I thought just maybe this would be the case with the Hunger Games. Sadly, it was
not. I'll have no problem staying far away from anything else associated with
this series.
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