Not the best adaption of a book, but not the worst either

Rating: 8/10 (20 April 2013)

Before I watched the movie, knowing that Suzanne Collins wrote the screenplay, I thought that the movie would be one of the best movie adaptations of a book. I was wrong. Sure it was pretty good, but I've seen better movie adaptations of books come from screenplay writers that didn't write the book as well. Maybe that was what they should have done with the movie. Or it could be the fact that there were multiple writers. Sure, multiple writers are okay for an original screenplay, but when it's a screenplay that's being adapted from something, I think it might have been better with just one person writing it. It also felt rushed. I know that it would have been a lot longer if some things hadn't been cut, but the beginning especially seemed rushed. I think maybe they could have shown a little bit more of the reaping day. Even though I'm all for getting people to read, if someone had come to watch this without ever having read the first book, they wouldn't probably understand what was happening. One way they could have done that would have been by having a voice-over of Katniss talking about the Hunger Games. Now, I'm not saying it wasn't good, it was, but unlike with the Twilight Saga or the Harry Potter series, I don't feel like I want to go see a midnight premiere of it. I can't exactly put my finger on why it wasn't as good to me, but it just didn't seem as good. Now, I'm currently in the middle of reading the series for the first time, so, my perspective may change after I finish it.
Also, the movie had a little too much gore for my tastes. True, I think I subconsciously censored what I saw in my mind when I was reading the book, but some of the stuff, I thought was pretty gruesome. Like, showing what the tracker jackers did to one of the tributes. I also didn't like when the showed Cato break the one tributes neck. Also, it seemed a little more gruesome because of the reason as to why they hold the games. Actually seeing it made it worse knowing that the career tributes had been raised to kill people and that the ones who weren't, had to kill others, whether they liked it or not.
I think the movie could have been better, but it wasn't the worst movie ever.