No More Camera Shake, please!

Rating: 7/10 (4 April 2012)

All in all, The Hunger Games was a good movie. They did a good job of sticking to the book, though there were some minor details they left out, but it didn't change the story too much so I think it worked for the most part. And since the main character was also the narrator of the books and you never saw anything other than her point of view, I thought it was interesting how they showed the outside world when she was in the arena. However, since the books are in the first person narrative, the emotion of the story was not conveyed as well I it could have been, but how would someone convey that without a fully narrated movie, which would become irritating? The only thing I really disliked was the close-up, camera shake style that was used. You could barely make out what was going on in the fight scenes, or even some of the non-fight scenes because they did it this way. I understand that they wanted you to understand the fight or flight stuff. And it had to be kept PG-13 so the inability to really see the deaths and bloodiness was part of the reason for the style, but really too much shaking can sometimes induce nausea! Other than that, I think they did an awesome job with it! They kept to the book much better than some movies I have seen adapted from books. My only hope is that they do not continue the nauseating camera shake style for the rest of the series. There are better ways to show the action and emotion of a scene. Still, highly recommend The Hunger Games! Enjoy!