Review: The Hunger Games
The annual "Hunger Games" are about to begin in the dystopian society of Panem (North America after a really bad and shitty war) and young Katniss volunteers to save her sister from the fight to the death between 24 boys and girls from the twelve districts where only one can survive. Together with her friend Peeta she tries to struggle through the horrible fights and the arbritrariness of the mass media that stage the Hunger Games as a big reality tv event.
Let’s get two things straight before we begin:
1. I hate dystopian future visions like whoa. Like really really whoa.
2. I only went to see this movie because I had hoped to see the Avengers trailer in cinema on the big screen. They didn’t show it. Fuck this shit.
Right, so now that I can hear the HG-fandom weighing the right stones to kill me let’s start with the actual review. xD
The movie was great, hands down.
Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss (what is that name, plz, someone explain this to me…) did an amazing job: since this movie relies on a strong female character only they needed someone who wouldn’t falter under that much pressure and not only did Lawrence that she also presented a strong, independent woman who was ACTUALLY NICE TO PEOPLE OH MY GOD. Normally, the heroic female requires either the help of a man in the very end or she is a bitch that no one in real life would like to become friends with: Katniss is likeable all around: she has a very hard life, she faces death and a deteriorated society almost devoid of normal human emotions and still manages to smile and joke and be mostly positive about her situation, her friends and family. Oh my God, I love her although I have to admit that I actually didn’t like Lawrence that much as Mystique in X-Men: First Class but now that she finally got a role to show her potential (and not be an annoyance to the epic gay love of Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr ;D) she totally won me over with her very physical, strong and relatable performance. Beautiful, beautiful woman, I bow to you. <333
The other actors were… hmm, okay, I think. Since the focus lay on Katniss only, the other roles were mostly stereotyped versions of already-well-known character types: the mentor that cleans himself up because he sees the spark in his new student, the one-with-the-brainz, the Pinkie Pie, the loyal friend-zoned friend, the pure, innocent little sister, yaddah, yaddah. But still everyone did a good job - and I really, really really don’t see get how a part of the fandom of this book/movie could freak out over the fact that Rue, another tribute, a 12year old girl, was played by a POC-actress and not by a white one as she apparently was in the books? Come on, people! *scowling face of hatred*
Peeta was really a sweet damsel in distress all the time and the switch of gender roles was perfect: one doesn’t doubt Katniss’ strength but neither did one question Peeta’s devotion to her and it didn’t matter which sex they belonged to. The one and only time this was even brought up was during the aftermath of Peeta’s public declaration of love towards Katniss:
After the tv-show Katniss punches him and tells that this confession will make her look weak but the mentor argues that it will make her desirable which she needs to be in order to attract sponsors. This is a very clever move I daresay: making “being desirable” a part of the tv-land’s lies and oppressing system sends a very good or at least a very different message to young girls.
The camera work was fantastic, the actors were great and the characters very relatable, they created a thrilling atmosphere and I was on the edge of my seat for a good third of the movie.
One of this movie’s biggest challenges, I could imagine, was to show the death of children in a not-too-gory way and they outdid themselves with that: quick shots, a bloody knife here and there, not enough to actually see something but one could feel the threatening atmosphere and the imminent lethal danger everywhere which just underlined how great the camera techniques were executed. Breathtaking, I tell ya!
Mind you, I didn’t know anything about the books or the story until the movie but even I could follow the plot and different conflicts without any trouble (which is not always the case, right, Harry Potter 3?!??! Sorry, I’m still not over the whole Marauder-denying part of that movie).
So yeah, overall the movie was awesome and apart from some really cheap and badly looking CGI effects (that fire looked more real in LotR - and that movie is fucking 10 years old OMFG!!!) I have nothing to say against it.
Although I’m still wondering how the fuck they managed to get a FSK-12 (PG13) rating for this one no matter the not-so-bloody-but-still-horrible-deaths. There was still a great deal of trauma potential in there: casually snapped necks, the murders of young children getting played for laughs, a twelve year old impaled with a spear, how the everloving fuck did that get past the censors??! I mean they did censor the whole endfight of “The Hulk” from 2008 where two green CGI monsters threw cars at each other into a two second long sequence of boringness! But children dying in a totalitarian regime’s gladiator games that’s played for fun? Sure why not! Jesus Christ, we aren’t that far away ourselves from the Hunger Games I fear. *shakes head over the ignorant greedy schemes of movie marketing companies*
Oh and another point but that’s not the movie’s fault: my hate for dystopian topics derives from the simple fact that they are always the same. Always.
A great big war or other catastrophe sparks a horrible change in society? Check.
A method of oppression is used by the government to make the public hopeless and easier to control? Check. (Here it was famine and starvation, in V for Vendetta and 1984 is was 24/7 surveillance, in Brave New World it was hypnosis and “happy pills” and a caste system and the list could go on forever).
A society devoid of any empathy at all? Check and double check since some of the tributes themselves were nutcases with a desire to kill.
A certain person is somehow dropped from the perfect system and starts to question it? Check although I have to give the movie kudos since Katniss is not that special at all: granted, she can hunt and take care of herself but theoretically speaking all the other tributes had the same chance to become like this too. (Take “Equilibrium” for example where Christian Bale’s character only starts to question the system because of his undying love for Sean Bean he tries to find out why his partner was so fascinated by books or heck, take “Napola” where the one guy to act against the Nazis’s devilries is the one boy that looks thin, sickly and has black hair in a group of sturdy, blond blocks).
So yeah: that’s not the movie’s or the book’s fault at all, it’s just not my genre of film/literature at all and although I can appreciate the love for details or how well crafted the movie was it certainly won’t become one of my favorites. I really just wanted to justify myself, btw (A-levels in English class were a pain in the ass during that special topic. God, I hate you, dystopia.)