Style Improves & Still True To Book

Rating: 9/10 (5 March 2017)

The first "Hunger Games" movie's popularity to each person ran roughly equal to their enjoyment of the written works. Essentially, how much you liked/disliked the book was exactly how much you liked/disliked the movie. With "Catching Fire", however, director Francis Lawrence actually turns in what may very well be a superior product to Suzanne Collins' tome.
For a basic plot summary, "Catching Fire" sees Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) back from their original Hunger Games experience now living on "Panem's dime" while on the promotional tour for the next games. When President Snow (Donald Sutherland) doesn't like the symbol that Katniss may be turning into, he rigs the upcoming Quarter Quell (75th edition of the Games) with a special new set of rules unprecedented in the history of the event.
While the first "Hunger Games" movie was impressive in its own right, I believe that "Catching Fire" is superior because it is a bit more "versatile". The original movie was very dark in tone and serious throughout. I have read all the books, so I completely realized that the tone is quite serious, but I really appreciated the lighter moments of "Catching Fire", those moments when I felt like it was okay to laugh or smile at something that was transpiring.
The main cog in making the machine work is Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss. Other great performances from characters like Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson), Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth), Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci), and Primrose Everdeen (Willow Shields) are packed with subtle nuances all their own, but it is truly Lawrence who holds this whole thing together. Her screen presence alone is a force to be reckoned with. Even if her portrayal of Katniss is quite a bit different (at least physical) from how she is portrayed in the books, Lawrence has easily made the character entirely her own.
Thus, while the first movie in this series whetted my appetite for more, "Catching Fire" satiated the hunger by mixing some brevity and wit into some deadly serious subject matter. It changes the style of the series-so-far while also staying pretty true to the source material.