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The Hunger Games

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Adapting a wildly popular book series to film is always tricky. Sometimes it fails miserably such as in The Golden Compass. Sometimes, the series has ups and downs like the Harry Potter series. It's easy to make a film feel like a quick summary of the book, to ignore the complexities of the characters you grew to know and love. I suppose the important thing we look for when watching a movie based on a book series is that the spirit of the books makes it to the screen. There are certain emotional connections that need to resonate similarly between the book and the film. With The Hunger Games, that is absolutely the case.


The Hunger Games takes place in a dystopian future in which the remains of North America, destroyed by war and disaster, is now known as Panem. Panem is made of 12 districts surrounding the ruling city known as The Capitol. As punishment for an uprising from the distant past, every year two children from each district between 12 and 18 are chosen by lottery to fight to the death on live television. This is The Hunger Games. Our story revolves around Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) who volunteers to fight in the games in place of her little sister whose name was drawn. It has a lot to say about a lot of things (violence, reality television, war), but tends to stick to the story rather than preach. It's pretty intense for a young adult novel and it holds the type of material that my adult friends and I can discuss and debate about for quite a while.

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and believe that readers and non reader alike will appreciate the film, but I have a few quibbles. The camera work during the fight scenes were overly shaky and up close, making the scenes hard to focus on. Another quibble is that the emotional connection between Katniss and Rue wasn't quite as strong mostly because of time restraints. These quibbles are minor. It is still a rather emotional experience to see 24 children ordered to kill each other for the entertainment of a rich and disconnected Capitol, just to keep the poor intimidated enough not to revolt.

As for the non-quibbles, may I start by saying that I love Jennifer Lawrence? She is one amazing actor. I was blown away by her in Winter's Bone. So, if you haven't seen Winter's Bone yet- get on Netflix and stream it. As Katniss, she was spot on. Emotionally distant, protective, vulnerable, not necessarily friendly. Good job, lady. Here is an applause for you-> ::applause::

It's easy for fans of a book to be upset when they see changes in the movie adaptation. But in this case, I really feel like most of the changes were necessary and even interesting. Seeing the announcers cheerfully discuss the events of the games a la Sports Center really highlighted how distanced they were to the tragedy being displayed on live television. Something else I appreciated about the movie was that the romantic aspect wasn't overly emphasized. Yes, this is a major plot point, but it doesn't overshadow the rest of the story. It's refreshing to see a strong female lead who is completely dressed and whose goal does not revolve around being in a relationship.

So, I would say that this adaptation is a great success. The box office numbers seem to agree with me.

 Hey look, Hollywood! You don't have to sexualize a female lead in order to gain the male demographic! Hey! You don't have to alienate one gender in order to appeal to another!

Let's see if anyone is listening...

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