Good, But Needs Work.

Rating: 8/10 (7 April 2012)

OK, look. Everyone who's bashing this movie for not being 100% consistent to the book, grow up. It would be impossible to fit all the accuracy and detail of a book into a movie. If they did this, the movie would've been, like, 5 hours long. I will admit, they did get some things wrong, like how Katniss got the Mockingjay pin. Madge gives it to her in the book, but a merchant (possibly Greasy Sae) gives it to her in the movie and there's no explanation for it whatsoever. And they could've easily given Madge a two-second appearance to give her the pin. They could've shown Katniss and Gale trading in the Hob a little more and bringing the strawberries to the mayor, which would've given more time for them to exchange dialogue and delve into the characters a bit more. But these were minor details that could've been easily overlooked. As for the shaky camera, yes, there were scenes that called for it, such as the Cornucopia scene and the final fight with Cato. They needed to do this because they can't have the vast amount of violence in the book shown in a movie that's targeted towards the adolescent demographic. And the following movies are going to be even worse in that sense. They can't have someone getting their skull bashed in and still keep a PG-13 rating. But apart from that, yes, they did have to narrow down the events of the Games. They couldn't show the entire extent of the games because, once again, the movie would've been excruciatingly long. They fitted what was needed to get Katniss from point A to point B and keep as much consistency as possible so as not to disappoint the fans.
Basically, the production staff and new director will take all this into account. They'll take this time to notice their mistakes and try to fix them. That's what they do. The film business is just that. A business. They've just been given a series as popular as The Hunger Games. They will not butcher these movies because they know that the fanbase is huge. And if they make the movie as close to the books as possible, they know fans are going to want to see the movie and they can keep strolling to the bank. So have faith, people. This was only their first installment. Catching Fire is bound to be amazing. But only time will tell.