Just back from the movie...
Well, I just came home from the midnight premiere of the Hunger Games movie, and I have to say it was one of the more intense movie experiences of my life. Not that I'm much of a movie fan (my tastes run to explosions, gratuitous gore and utterly gratuitous, tasteless nudity as a rule) but this one really got to me, big-time.
For starters, they actually stuck very close to the original book storyline. A few minor characters were excised, and some scenes were put in to explain to the audience what was going on, but compared to most movies "based on" books, it was incredibly faithful. I'm not sure about this...but aren't movies that are faithful to the books whose names and characters they share one of the Biblical signs of Armageddon?
The casting was also superb. My own dream cast would have had the young Sissy Spacek as Katniss (remembering her in Coal Miner's Daughter) and Jack Nicholson as Haymitch Abernathy, but they did an incredible job. Katniss is no Playboy Playmate of the Month, but she's all the more believable for that. All the kids in the arena could have been classmates of mine, which increased the impact for me. Casting Donald Sutherland as the deceptively benevolent-looking, utterly evil President Coriolanus Snow was a stroke of genius, but I've never seen him do a role badly. At first, he looks like someone's favorite grandpa, but when you take a closer look, you see just what a soulless monster he is.
The violence in the movie, while inevitable, was handled very well, I thought. Keep in mind that this isn't one of my usual sex-and-gorefests...the target audience is teenagers, and they can't be too explicit. They showed just enough to make it clear what had happened without dwelling lovingly on each bleeding wound.
I found myself feeling terribly sorry for all sorts of people in the movie. The Tributes, of course...the Careers no less than any of the others. However, I found myself feeling bad for the people in the Capitol as well. They mostly weren't evil; they struck me as very like adult-sized children. They didn't hate the Tributes; they just saw them as living toys, and when a child breaks a toy, he may cry but he'll get another toy soon. And they were generally utterly clueless about what went on in the Districts. I was quite touched at Caesar Flickerman's gesture of sympathy for Katniss at the end of her interview. I wonder how he manages to do that job year after year. If it were me, I'd dive straight into a bottle and never come out again.
People with kids should take warning; this movie may get to you. At Rue's death, I think the whole theater was in tears, and there were several others that were just about as bad. I wouldn't recommend the movie to kids under about the age of 11 or so.
If this movie isn't one of the big hits of 2012, I will take it as fresh proof of the nonexistence or malfeasance of God.