The Hunger Games

"She shot an arrow at your head."

"At the apple."

"Which was next to your head."

When thinking about this review, I have been trying to divorce my preconceived notions from the books in regards to the movie. It didn't really work that well. But I have many feelings; let me 'splain them to you.


I've been following racebending.com since the whole Last Airbender debacle. The racelift here was worse than that movie or Prince of Persia. I know that Katniss is supposed to be a Person of Color. At least, as bad as it was, Gyllenhal had a tan in SoT! Katniss spends multiple hours every day outside hunting. If she's white she should at least have more than a light bronzing on the cheek bones to highlight the Hollywood beauty standards she encapsulates. It's just so ridiculous, the white-washing... /rant. Sorry about that.

While in the theater I saw for the first time, the trailer for Snow White and the Huntsman. Stupid title and obvious love story aside, the movie actually looks good! I know, shocker. Me liking what I see from a Kristen Stewart movie. And to make it even more amazing, the poster in the theater lobby has her in armor. And it's actual plate armor, not a chainmail bikini.

Then that trailer was followed up with the trailer for the next Twilight movie. GODS ABOVE, NO!!! And that's all I'm going to say on that.

The marketing campaign for Hunger Games was pretty okay. I loved the fact that, except for some slight bits (walking through the forest, Rue's salute) they didn't show the games in any of the previews. A side affect of this is that the first hour leading up to the games themselves moved very quickly.

Madge wasn't in it. The avoci were just living scenery. That didn't matter. It was still okay. The mockingjay pin, as presented in the movie, had a good story behind it. It helped highlight the relationship between Prim and Katniss. The other changes were even better. It allowed the movie to jump out of the perspective forced in the books.

Seneca Crane's death was an amazing addition. The bowl of berries so clearly said "You fucked up right here. Goodbye." It was just so evil and awesome. Points to Snow for that.

It's just me and my OCDness but a Chekov's Gun was cocked, but not fired. Peeta's comments during the interview I expected to come back later. Perhaps some comment that he could smell the wound festering. Never happened.

And the wolf mutts, they were just big dogs. No humanoid aspects, no tribute aspects. The one thing that made me go "Oh, hell no!" when reading wasn't there. And the CGI wasn't even that great either. How much would it have costed, since they were going this route, for the studio to get several mastiffs and supersize them? It wouldn't have been that hard.

But them again, the movie is an adaptation. It's not supposed to be the end all, be all of the story. We have to books for that.

The movie gets an B+/A-. It's somewhere in there.