Interesting Concept But Very Insulting

Rating: 5/10 (5 April 2013)

I haven't read the book. No nothing about it. Based on what I watched though in The Hunger Games, the concept is brilliant. Wars destroying everyone and everything, reverting back to Roman like times but also having a mix of modern times with Reality TV, having tribute games to satisfy the 'the suffering/the anniversary of when it all ended and/or satisfying the Gods in some sense of the matter', et al.
But the big gap in the film, the major gap that is insulting is having kids do the fighting as the tributes, kids killing each other in gruesome, horrible ways. No one in their right mind would accept this and there would have been a lot more riots from the get go then the one that is in the film. Not saying that children/adolescents haven't been executed in time of wars or just killed in wars period, but the point that people would actually want to watch a Reality Tribute TV show about adolescents killing each other is just plain stupid.
I can buy that people could be conditioned over time with watching tough warrior adults killing each other on Reality TV, that's why Arnold Schwarzenegger's The Running Man is a good flick because it could ring true. Plus in The Running Man, they are criminals killing each other in the Arena. But with kids being picked to kill each other, no way, there's just some things people would never be conditioned on no matter how much you tried to condition them to accept it, and watching kids kill each other on Reality TV is one of them.
It is said that Michael Haneke hates human beings. This may or may not be true. But it has also been said that Michael Haneke was so upset on what movie audiences liked, such as torture films that were glorified to be cool and entertaining. Ergo Michael Haneke made a film called Funny Games. Haneke demonstrates in both versions of Funny Games how unbelievably awful true torture is, that it isn't entertaining or glorifying in any way, so in some sense of the word, Funny Games was Haneke's way of bringing people back into reality and was also in some sense his big F U to audiences who love torture films.
My point is, if Michael Haneke was ever to get a hold of directing any of the sequels that were to come for The Hunger Games(which i'm sure there will be a dozen, only until they stop making lots of money), you better believe Haneke would show the true nature of what it would be like to watch kids kill each other on TV. Nothing glorified about it, as was the case with The Hunger Games, Haneke would make us sick to our stomachs the way he did with Funny Games after he was finished doing a Hunger Games Sequel. But of course, Haneke would never get ahold of a sequel to The Hunger Games. That's just a hypothetical. The Producers of these types of movies want to make money and keep people in the dark, not brought into the light.