How did this movie start with 100% at Rotten Tomatoes?! Was it a scam?

Rating: 1/10 (28 March 2012)

SPOILERS FOR MULTIPLE MOVIES INSIDE.
In the middle of the movie, the most emotional moment, I turned to the right in my row and noticed a woman crying. Within just one minute that turned into several people, herself included, laughing out loud. I've never experienced this before in my life and I think it summarizes really well just how pointless and poorly done this movie is.
In The Running Man (1987) convicts chase each other to death for entertainment of masses. As far as I remember they were all death row inmates and the justification was they were dead already, so we might as well turn their sentences into entertainment. At least one of the contestants was wrongly convicted and fights the game itself.
In Gladiator (2000) fighting to death was based on historical facts. In addition to that the main character was resigned to death because his family was killed by a ruthless psycho ruler. He used the game, which he is forced into anyway, to get to him.
Now we have The Hunger Games. A group of completely innocent kids, one of which was 10 or even younger, are forced to fight to the death. The ruling class is totally thrilled, while the poor subjects watch the live broadcast in hope their kids would come out alive. We are thrown right in the middle of that and the movie does not care to explain to the audience just how a human society managed to degrade to such level as to make gladiator games seem like innocent play. All we know there was a war, and in order to maintain peace we have these Hunger Games which mainly serve as intimidation by the ruling class, but also as American Idol-type entertainment.
Problem #1: The movie ignores the reality of human nature. "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities" - Mark Twain. Hunger Games attempts to break this rule and it either fails miserably or the audiences are so desensitized that the movie creators did not feel the need to sweat basing the fiction on human nature and realities. Are we really that desensitized? Judging by the praises for this movie, it sure seems tat way. No contestant seemed depressed or try to escape the system, which is what you would expect in such situation. They switch from "I hope they don't pick me" to "ok, how do I win this thing" with equal emotion and mental adjustment to when I change socks. They even quickly start to enjoy the pre-game show.
Problem #2: Even cruel games have rules that can't be changed in the middle of a game. Hunger Games simply does not have any rules in contrast to its own premise of iron-fist control. At one point Katniss is forced back into the game with deadly fireballs on top of a forest fire which she would have to escape to survive. They are literally shooting to kill her, and I am thinking "isn't the forest fire enough to convince her to move on?" The fireballs were completely irrational and unnecessary. They only seemed to place a check mark in front of "this movie has explosions." Then, the control decides to change the rule from "only one can win" to "two can win" and then back to "one can win" once there was only two left. Then it changes that rule again to "two can win" because the game faced an outcome with no winners. This was probably done with the intention to intensify the suspense, but it made the game itself weak and even more pointless than I was willing to swallow. This actually prevented me from forgetting about the impossibly fantastic premise and getting into the game.
In addition to these 2 philosophical problems, Hunger Games is cinematically mediocre at best. It only does special effects well but nowadays that's a given. Acting reminded me of Terra Nova TV series. In fact the entire movie kind of resembled an episode of Terra Nova. There is only one main character in the movie and the rest are extras. They did not really invest much in the development of supporting roles. Even Katniss was a barely developed role. The boy she is in love with plays no role whatsoever. The boy that has a crush on her is an extra with a crush. I know his character is a supporting role, but it is so poorly developed and acted that I refuse to accept him as one. The makeup and costumes are just plain bizarre. Again, if the movie invested a little bit in the history of how it all came to be.
To summarize, I will mention another peculiar thing about this move. It feels like an open frankensteining from other movies. This new creation feels like all these moves crammed together in a limited amount of time: Acting and settings: Terra Nova TV series or a Star Trek Next Generation feature film. The Capitol city: Alice in Wonderland. The control center: Avatar. The arena and script: Gladiator and The Running Man with a hint of Truman Show. - Story development and dialogue: The Last Airbender (the shameless failure by M. Nigh Shyamalan)