Franchise Review! The Hunger Games
I was going to make this a Movie Review! post, but that seemed a bit disingenuous, because so much of my response to the movies involves the books as well. For the record: I've read all three of the books and seen the first two movies; the third movie is out, but I haven't seen it yet, so it won't be part of this review. On the other hand, don't worry about spoiling me for Mockingjay. One of the things that I like about the movies is that they're pretty faithful representations of the books, so it's not like I don't know what happens in Mockingjay.
Actually, that's a pretty good place to start. Even with the kind of cuts that are necessary when adapting a story from one medium to another, the Hunger Games movies are remarkably faithful to the books. Sure, some characters have to vanish, and events have to be condensed, but the story translates remarkably well from page to screen. It's not all that surprising, considering that Suzanne Collins had a large hand in the screenplay, but I think that fact also says a lot about the kind of story that Collins wrote in the first place.
One of the most deeply embedded themes in The Hunger Games is the power of the media. The Capitol keeps its Districts in severe, soul-grinding poverty, but it makes sure that everyone has access to state-of-the-art television so that they can watch the Hunger Games. When the (minor spoiler alert!) Revolution comes, not only is it televised, but it's as much a war of propaganda as anything else. Throughout the first two movies, characters tell each other this constant refrain: It's a television show. They want a good show. Play to the cameras. Tell a story. Appeal to an audience. One character actually dies directly from playing to the cameras. The Story really does take precedence over life and death. Collins has an excellent eye for the power of visual storytelling, so it's not at all surprising that her novel would end up being highly filmable.
The design teams for the movie do not let her down. One nice touch that the designers added was a sense of history. Collins has written Panem to have more than a touch of the Roman Empire (the name of the country, the love of gladiator games, the chariots in the Tribute Parade, the names of the characters from the Capitol and District 2, etc.), but the designers took that one step further. They've added on visual references to another brutal totalitarian regime that was deeply genre-savvy and knew how to use the power of visual media to control its people. Take a look at President Snow's stage in this scene. Notice the Art Deco design, the use of red flags, the bold eagle . . . does it look just a tad bit Third Reich to you, too? For that matter, look at the rest of Panem. District 12 wasn't bombed back to the Stone Age, it was bombed back to 1936. Effie Trinket's microphone in the Reaping Scene is a sleek 1930s design, as is the interior of the train that Katniss and Peeta travel around in. The whole design absolutely screams late 1930s, the height of Nazi propaganda power in a world crippled by the Great Depression. Film the Tribute Parade in black and white, replace the Panem anthem with "Deutschland Über Alles," and you'd swear that the Hunger Games were a Leni Riefenstahl production.
One nice thing about the films is that they open the book's story up a little bit. Collins wrote the novels in the first-person, present-tense voice of Katniss Everdeen, our 16-year-old protagonist. She did an excellent job of capturing the interior monologue style of an undereducated, introverted teenage girl, but you might almost say that she did too good a job. On paper, Katniss just isn't all that interesting. She's not tremendously bright, she's a horrible judge of character, and she's surprisingly passive once she gets past her great moment of volunteering for the Games in Prim's place. Her story is interesting, as is the world in which she lives, but she herself is a bit of a cipher in the middle of it. It's much more powerful to watch her from the outside, in the film. Not only can you see in the blank mystery of Jennifer Lawrence's face what Katniss's appeal to the Panem viewing audience is, you can also get a much better view of the world and the forces driving it when the camera pulls away to look at other people. Donald Sutherland, in particular, has some memorable scenes in both films that give a little bit of exposition and explain some of the logic behind Panem. These scenes are far more elegant than the equivalent scenes in the book, where Katniss either has to exposit awkwardly to herself, or the logic just isn't there at all.
Speaking of the worldbuilding . . . it's pretty darn good. Yes, there are some logical inconsistencies. The division of labor in Panem seems more than a bit inefficient, and the Districts that we see seem a bit oversimplified in their monocultural functioning. And when Catching Fire rolls around, with its "Hunger Games: All-Stars!" plot, I find it a little hard to believe that each and every district somehow manages to cough up at least one male and one female Victor. Especially if, as stated, Districts 1, 2, and 4 tend to win most of the time. I mean, look. I'm a Cubs fan. If a Major League Baseball franchise, made up of expensively trained, professional athletes, can somehow avoid winning a World Series for over a hundred years, it's a little bit of a stretch to imagine that, say, District 10 could produce a functional selection of Hunger Games Victors in just 74 years. But honestly, that's nitpicking. Every world has its logical inconsistencies, including the real world (see: the Chicago Cubs). Panem does seem very real, right down to the discrepancies between rich places where things function and poor places where things don't function and people come up with creative ways to exploit that situation.
The performances are uniformly excellent. For my money, the standout here is Stanley Tucci as Caesar Flickerman. He tears into this part with great gusto, giving a performance that blends a pitch-perfect parody of a game-show host/sports announcer with a few moments of almost human warmth. You can tell that, as integral a part of this horrible system as he is, Caesar Flickerman isn't a bad guy. He's very good at his job, and he's very good at not thinking too much about how the kids that he shows off are two weeks away from dying horribly in pain and terror. He really does seem to enjoy meeting them and interacting with them, however briefly, and he is a master performer, coaxing the best possible performances out of his ever-changing list of amateur castmates.
The structure of the trilogy as a whole is a little weird. For all that the ending is only partially resolved, The Hunger Games feels like a complete and satisfying novel. Mockingjay is a brilliant story, featuring the same characters in a completely different genre. The weak link really is Catching Fire, which has to take the original characters between these two radically different situations, while introducing a whole new group of characters and getting us to care about them. It's a tough job, and I'm not a hundred percent convinced that "recycle the plot of the first book, only more so" was the best way to do it. On the other hand, getting a second shot at that basic storyline was a gift for the film-makers, since the movie version of Catching Fire really improves on The Hunger Games in production values and cinematography. Six of one, half a dozen of another, I guess.
I realize that I actually have to leave the house fairly soon, so it's time to end this review. Here's the bottom line: I really like The Hunger Games. The franchise is smart, scary, and compelling, and it has quite a bit to say about the human condition and the modern world. The story stands up to multiple revisitings, and both of the movies I've seen so far have been utterly compelling viewing. I'm really looking forward to having a free evening to go see the third movie.
Actually, that's a pretty good place to start. Even with the kind of cuts that are necessary when adapting a story from one medium to another, the Hunger Games movies are remarkably faithful to the books. Sure, some characters have to vanish, and events have to be condensed, but the story translates remarkably well from page to screen. It's not all that surprising, considering that Suzanne Collins had a large hand in the screenplay, but I think that fact also says a lot about the kind of story that Collins wrote in the first place.
One of the most deeply embedded themes in The Hunger Games is the power of the media. The Capitol keeps its Districts in severe, soul-grinding poverty, but it makes sure that everyone has access to state-of-the-art television so that they can watch the Hunger Games. When the (minor spoiler alert!) Revolution comes, not only is it televised, but it's as much a war of propaganda as anything else. Throughout the first two movies, characters tell each other this constant refrain: It's a television show. They want a good show. Play to the cameras. Tell a story. Appeal to an audience. One character actually dies directly from playing to the cameras. The Story really does take precedence over life and death. Collins has an excellent eye for the power of visual storytelling, so it's not at all surprising that her novel would end up being highly filmable.
The design teams for the movie do not let her down. One nice touch that the designers added was a sense of history. Collins has written Panem to have more than a touch of the Roman Empire (the name of the country, the love of gladiator games, the chariots in the Tribute Parade, the names of the characters from the Capitol and District 2, etc.), but the designers took that one step further. They've added on visual references to another brutal totalitarian regime that was deeply genre-savvy and knew how to use the power of visual media to control its people. Take a look at President Snow's stage in this scene. Notice the Art Deco design, the use of red flags, the bold eagle . . . does it look just a tad bit Third Reich to you, too? For that matter, look at the rest of Panem. District 12 wasn't bombed back to the Stone Age, it was bombed back to 1936. Effie Trinket's microphone in the Reaping Scene is a sleek 1930s design, as is the interior of the train that Katniss and Peeta travel around in. The whole design absolutely screams late 1930s, the height of Nazi propaganda power in a world crippled by the Great Depression. Film the Tribute Parade in black and white, replace the Panem anthem with "Deutschland Über Alles," and you'd swear that the Hunger Games were a Leni Riefenstahl production.
One nice thing about the films is that they open the book's story up a little bit. Collins wrote the novels in the first-person, present-tense voice of Katniss Everdeen, our 16-year-old protagonist. She did an excellent job of capturing the interior monologue style of an undereducated, introverted teenage girl, but you might almost say that she did too good a job. On paper, Katniss just isn't all that interesting. She's not tremendously bright, she's a horrible judge of character, and she's surprisingly passive once she gets past her great moment of volunteering for the Games in Prim's place. Her story is interesting, as is the world in which she lives, but she herself is a bit of a cipher in the middle of it. It's much more powerful to watch her from the outside, in the film. Not only can you see in the blank mystery of Jennifer Lawrence's face what Katniss's appeal to the Panem viewing audience is, you can also get a much better view of the world and the forces driving it when the camera pulls away to look at other people. Donald Sutherland, in particular, has some memorable scenes in both films that give a little bit of exposition and explain some of the logic behind Panem. These scenes are far more elegant than the equivalent scenes in the book, where Katniss either has to exposit awkwardly to herself, or the logic just isn't there at all.
Speaking of the worldbuilding . . . it's pretty darn good. Yes, there are some logical inconsistencies. The division of labor in Panem seems more than a bit inefficient, and the Districts that we see seem a bit oversimplified in their monocultural functioning. And when Catching Fire rolls around, with its "Hunger Games: All-Stars!" plot, I find it a little hard to believe that each and every district somehow manages to cough up at least one male and one female Victor. Especially if, as stated, Districts 1, 2, and 4 tend to win most of the time. I mean, look. I'm a Cubs fan. If a Major League Baseball franchise, made up of expensively trained, professional athletes, can somehow avoid winning a World Series for over a hundred years, it's a little bit of a stretch to imagine that, say, District 10 could produce a functional selection of Hunger Games Victors in just 74 years. But honestly, that's nitpicking. Every world has its logical inconsistencies, including the real world (see: the Chicago Cubs). Panem does seem very real, right down to the discrepancies between rich places where things function and poor places where things don't function and people come up with creative ways to exploit that situation.
The performances are uniformly excellent. For my money, the standout here is Stanley Tucci as Caesar Flickerman. He tears into this part with great gusto, giving a performance that blends a pitch-perfect parody of a game-show host/sports announcer with a few moments of almost human warmth. You can tell that, as integral a part of this horrible system as he is, Caesar Flickerman isn't a bad guy. He's very good at his job, and he's very good at not thinking too much about how the kids that he shows off are two weeks away from dying horribly in pain and terror. He really does seem to enjoy meeting them and interacting with them, however briefly, and he is a master performer, coaxing the best possible performances out of his ever-changing list of amateur castmates.
The structure of the trilogy as a whole is a little weird. For all that the ending is only partially resolved, The Hunger Games feels like a complete and satisfying novel. Mockingjay is a brilliant story, featuring the same characters in a completely different genre. The weak link really is Catching Fire, which has to take the original characters between these two radically different situations, while introducing a whole new group of characters and getting us to care about them. It's a tough job, and I'm not a hundred percent convinced that "recycle the plot of the first book, only more so" was the best way to do it. On the other hand, getting a second shot at that basic storyline was a gift for the film-makers, since the movie version of Catching Fire really improves on The Hunger Games in production values and cinematography. Six of one, half a dozen of another, I guess.
I realize that I actually have to leave the house fairly soon, so it's time to end this review. Here's the bottom line: I really like The Hunger Games. The franchise is smart, scary, and compelling, and it has quite a bit to say about the human condition and the modern world. The story stands up to multiple revisitings, and both of the movies I've seen so far have been utterly compelling viewing. I'm really looking forward to having a free evening to go see the third movie.