I'm still hungry, feed me more, movie!

Rating: 7/10 (15 February 2013)

Hunger Games only feed my interesting even more, but this Gary Ross movie fails to make me full. The movie is based on the 2008 science fiction novel by Suzanne Collin, telling the story of teenager Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) who lives in a post-apocalyptic nation of Panem AKA North America where The Capital, a highly advanced metropolis, exercises political control over the rest of the nation by having The Hunger Games, an annual event in which one boy and one girl aged 12â€“18 from each of the twelve districts surrounding the Capitol are selected by lottery to compete in a televised battle to the death. You probably asking why don't they rebel against this cruel matter. They can't kill everyone, they rebelled in the past, why not now. That is the idea. By the capital killing their children without remorse or second thought. They demoralize the districts and keep them down. Africa is absolutely ridden with child soldiers, so it's somewhat possible. I know it's bit unbelievable, but just go with it. The movie fails to also mention Avoxes from the novel, the people who rebel against the Capital anyways. I imagine District 9 would be frequent winners of these games. They have illegal aliens. Just joking. Jennifer Lawrence is great as Katnis, but she does have some lacking values such as Lawerence gives near emotionless deliver of lines. Well that technique is commonly used to show uneasiness, tension, and stress. Sort of like from Katniss' POV, it's just not well-delivered. Not only that, but its hard to buy the fact that she is supposely 16, when she already start in more adult roles before this film. It's seem out of place. Katnis is chosen for Hunger Games with little to no training against well career tributes whom districts with a better economy since they had resources to train for the hunger games. She isn't going alone, she is follow by Peeta Mallark (Josh Hutcherson) a short, boring one-dimension boy character. To make them have a chance of surviving, alcoholic trainer Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrison) is wanted them to fall in love, so they can get sponsors to help them with the game. What is missing the movie is Katniss's inner monologue wrestling with the fact that she doesn't love Peeta, but has to. To show young love to become a audience favorite. The fumbled romance can actually be contextualized as two people being manipulated into this awkward thing they think is romantic love but really isn't, because it's what fans both in the novel and outside the novel want. It hurts the film. The story, especially the movie, works best as a scathing satire of reality television, but the absurdly shaky camera, especially in the fight scenes was annoying as hell. If they're trying to set a frenetic tone to simulate actual fighting their doing it wrong. The movie does a fantastic job of depicting the ignorant high classes with the capital civilians with awful clothing. The people of the capital see these children as characters on a screen and even when they don't they won't blame the government for bringing them there, they will blame the other child for killing him/her. It's interesting in a way, because in real life, people pay to see movie just with the fact that children are killing other children. We don't blame society, we blame the child. Truly eye opening subject here. Another thing, Hunger Games fail to show us hunger. It's not presented in the movie well enough. Most of the actors looks well-fed. In a world, where they can create animals like wolf mutts, why couldn't they create animals to be eaten? Doesn't matter anyways, cause the bad CGI makes them look fake, even the fire dress looks fake. The music by Taylor Swift 'Safe and Sound' and the soundtrack by James Newton Howard is amazing. The PG-13 rating didn't really hurt the film, as most of the death were pretty gruesome, and some of them were really emotional such as the death of a member of District 11. I hated the fact that the movie wrote out several really important plot points like Katniss having to adapt to going deaf halfway through and Peeta thinking his leg might be cut off. I think it's importation to the plot. Also, part of the appeal with the world building was the inter-district politics which play such a huge role in the sequels missing here.The books are original enough that you don't notice how the basic story structure is shamelessly pillaged from Running Man and Battle Royale. Everyone is saying it's a copy of Battle Royal, what about "Knights of forty islands". The first novel by Sergey Lukianenko in 1990? 6 Years before, Battle Royale was finish. The story is very similar. Just because something came out second doesn't always mean its a rip off. Similar ideas are always going to be around. Besides, the Hunger Games focuses more the the 'glamorized' idea of the games. The author took the premise of our reality TV shows and went far right with it. Never really got why the Hunger Games seemed to be linked to Twilight. Other than the love triangle and conflicting emotions of a female main character, there were no real similarities and let's be honest here: the Hunger Games was just better than that pathetic portrayal of vampires in all aspects. At less here, the female lead is a free independent string woman unlike Bella. The movie is not as good as the book, but that's because the book is written in first person, with a lot of detail and plot points derived from Katniss' personal thoughts. This could not be translated into a movie seriously (I would have hated hearing her narrate it) so other methods had to be used. The movie work as what it can do, and that's really good enough.