dev_chieftain (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dev_chieftain) wrote2012-03-29 01:09 pm
dev_chieftain) wrote2012-03-29 01:09 pm
Okay, so I watched The Hunger Games last night.
First, it's important to note that I have not read the books. The reasons why aren't complicated. I don't often have time to read for fun. When I do, I usually like to read something that is in the genre of speculative, science, or fantasy fiction; excluding those, I might read non-fiction to learn about something I think is neat, and so on. Young adult fiction rarely falls in my radar.
Aside from that, I just wasn't interested in The Hunger Games particularly. The concept sounded like it had been pieced together from a lot of other sources I've already read and enjoyed. I felt similarly about what I heard of the Twilight books, and about Harry Potter.
However, I ended up going to see the movie for the following reasons:
-Reviewers touted the movie as being an action film with a female lead. I wanted to see that.
-Reviewers and critics described Katniss as saving herself, and rescuing Peeta in a role-reversal of the usual damsel in distress thing. I wanted to see that, too.
-Reviewers of books and movie alike insist that this is Amazing Stuff, and well, I like to believe people when they say such things.
Overall, I give the story a B for effort. It tried hard to put forth the idea that children should not have to live in violence and it was pretty earnest about that. I liked that about the story, and I liked certain moments of the movie very well. The shaky camera gave me a pretty bad headache afterward, but it also brought out the emotion in a few of the scenes, while emphasizing the underlying theme (I thought, anyway) of Panem not being as amazing, wealthy or vast as it wanted its citizens to think it was.
However, as a fellow author, I feel that the author took the lazy way out on a lot of things, since none of the things I take issue with were noted as being different between the book and the movie.
Problem A: The ending.
Have you read Fahrenheit 451? I am going to spoil the ending for you if not. At the end, Guy Montague goes off into the woods to join the rebellion against the technocratic society that he used to help burn books and signs of past knowledge. His new fellows are the remnants of a society that used to teach literature, etc. Each member of the resistance memorizes a book and can recite it to new people so they, too, will remember. It's pretty cool, and involves a drawn-out chase scene where Montague ultimately escapes the authorities by hiding in a river to avoid being scented by tracking dogs.
Well, at the end of Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins is setting us up for a sequel. So instead of running off into the woods like she seemed inclined to do at the beginning of the story, Katniss just sort of sparkles in the spotlight and stays in District 12. I could not believe that this character, who had gone through that ordeal, was being given the option to go back home to District 12 in the first place. I really couldn't believe she was deciding to stay there instead of immediately pack her things and get the heck out of dodge, loved ones snug on her back.
I might forgive this as a movie failing if the second book didn't feature a second set of Hunger Games (ala Harry Potter, the series I blame for this genre of diluted-brand-fantasy-for-the-mass being so goddamned popular for the last twelve years), but according to wikipedia, it does. I also can't help thinking that the power-play between Katniss as a rebel of District 12 and the angry old man who recognized her as a potential martyr and said 'whoa, don't let her be a martyr, that will end badly for us' was tremendously fake. If he truly found her threatening, then he could have had her eliminated at any time after the games. It's downright stupid to let her go home- if it was Running Man, she'd be killed off screen and hidden away, since the illusion of 'winning' was needed but the actual winners were not.
And since Haymitch is around to give advice to new 'reapings', why is it that Peeta and Katniss are going home instead of staying in the Capitol to help coach for the future games? Well, okay. Say I accept that the Big Typical Evil Guy is fine with letting Katniss live, so long as she goes back to District 12. That's all fine. I could suspend disbelief for that.
Still: Why, then, does Katniss choose to stay there instead of running?
If Hunger Games had given even the slightest ounce of agency to Katniss, we would have seen her leading a big old group of people off into the wilderness to escape from Panem's Capitol at the end. But instead, she just goes back to District 12.
It's like she says to herself, "Welp! I enacted some shadow of social change and reform to help my oppressed brethren! Time to go home and be oppressed some more!" I am not impressed.
Problem B: "Saving herself" apparently doesn't mean what I thought it meant.
Katniss does an excellent job of not saving herself throughout the movie, and I confess I was left a little perplexed. The three top examples I can cite:
-Oh no, I've been burned very badly! Don't worry, have some magic burn cream that turns it into a scab in just a few hours. Courtesy of your pal Haymitch, and deus ex machina!
This was the most forgiveable instance, because we'd been informed in advance that it was likely to be necessary and how it could happen. I still didn't buy the magic burn cream wicking away her wounds, but how she got it made perfect sense. Unless, of course, you have a problem with the subject-to-sudden-gusts-of-wind parachute of medicine just happening to land near enough for her to actually use it.
-Oh no, I'm stuck up a tree! Don't worry; Rue has an idea of how to get me down. (This dovetails also with 'oh no bees! But Rue has magic healy leaves for me and she'll watch over me while I sleep, so it's cool.')
You know, as cool as it is for Rue to show up and help Katniss out by pointing out the beehive, it was pretty bizarre that she spotted the beehive and Katniss, who'd been stuck in that very tree and would have heard them buzzing at SOME point while sleeping up there, did not. Furthermore, doesn't it seem kind of vicious for Rue to have Katniss take out the competition while also putting herself at risk of genetically enhanced killer hallucinogenic bee-stings? I was severely interested in Rue when I briefly thought 'man! That little girl is smart and deadly! How clever she is, to play on her adorable little girl charms to take out a potential of SIX COMPETITORS all on her own!'
But no, it was really just that she wanted to help out Katniss. Which is fine, except for the part where I know I'm supposed to think it's "okay" to kill people by torturing them horribly with poison instead of just getting it over with and stabbing them, damn it. Also, I get the impression that it's "okay" for the brainwashed teens who were raised expressly to fight or die in this tournament, because they're jerks about it. Don't worry, Katniss, you did the right thing. But since you didn't trust Peeta and well, you did kill anyone at all, however circuitously and evilly, you get to have wicked hallucinations for a while.
It's cool though! Rue will give you the magic herbs you need to heal. And she will somehow defend your body while you sleep it off, despite being a tiny unarmed girl. Totally.
-Oh no, I'm about to get killed by a knife-wielding psychopath! Despite her smaller stature and my stronger muscles, I can't get up! Don't worry; the guy from District 11 is here to kill her for me so I can stay precious and pure. Which, by the way, is Problem C.
Problem C: If it's supposed to be so emotionally moving, then why is it Katniss only kills the straw-characters, and only through the most removed and complicated fashion possible?
I'm not gonna lie: There are about three actual characters in this movie. They're played by Ms. Lawrence, Mr. Harrelson, and Mr. Kravitz. And for most of the movie, that means there's only one actual character, because the other two aren't part of the actual games.
This is not because they're better actors, though I think being older does help. It's because the rest of the sacrifices are just actually, literally sacrifices. Just because it's veiled in the deceptive coating of comfort doesn't mean it's less horrible to kill them. The movie avoids making you feel bad about the slaughter because there simply are no other characters. It doesn't matter if Katniss kills them, because we don't get to see their interviews and their lives and feelings. We don't get to know them as people before the games, so it's not like we care that they're dead, after. Furthermore, it's implied that it'd be okay for Kat to kill the kids from Districts 1 and 2, for example, because they're snobs who got special training for the Hunger Games and the privilege of volunteering. We're encouraged to feel, "Oh, they acted like jerks, so it's all right that she killed them. Thank goodness Katniss is still alive and safe, and pure of heart. She just wants everybody to make it."
Katniss gets to evade the dehumanizing horror of the match by not having to kill anyone directly. She uses a bow, which means she can kill at range; when she doesn't, she uses genetically engineered bees (a far more horrible, painful death than just being stabbed-- but it's okay, she got stung too) and the other competitors take care of the rest for her. While I think the use of the bow is a good idea, because it lets her have an advantage, I would have much preferred to see the struggle Katniss had to go through of actually killing people. Not strawmen-- it doesn't count if we as an audience are comfortable with watching them die. People. Actual people. People like Rue.
The only kill that counts, as far as I'm concerned, is the kill that kills someone Katniss didn't want to kill. Otherwise, the point of the story is something else. If the point of the story is that she beat the Hunger Games with the power of the Human Spirit (a plot device I actually like; I think of it as the Flash Gordon/Pulp way of winning a fight), then Katniss doesn't need to kill anyone at all. She needs to be a far more outgoing person, and to sway the combatants to her side, turning the twenty four sacrificial lambs into a cooperative entity that fights back against The Man. Given Gale's dialogue at the beginning of the story, it would have fit just fine. I mean, it would have been nice if Katniss had suggested it herself, but here's the thing.
Katniss's response to "we should stop watching and not let them have power over us. We shouldn't let the Hunger Games control us" was "it'll never happen." Katniss is ridiculously fatalistic. She doesn't believe she can get through the bloodbath without killing. Yet despite that, the story focuses not on how she manages to deal with the fact that she's going to be killing people and that she has to do it, but on how she avoids ever actually doing so.
Let me explain.
As big a deal as was made of Katniss concentrating on shooting her bow, she actually only used it to attack three people. Person one is justified because he was attacking her and killed Rue. Person two is justified because she was already attacking Katniss with throwing knives. And person three is the last competitor who isn't from District 12. He's willing to kill Peeta, he's willing to die. He's suffered the games, just as she has. Though he's a non-entity until that single moment, in the moment before Katniss kills him, her enemy is made into a character. He's resigned to his fate and feels powerless.
So the only kill in the movie that mattered was this guy. After all the talk of Katniss shooting squirrels right through the eye, I would have been impressed if she shot her enemy through the eye in this moment, unfazed by his hold on Peeta. I would have been really impressed if she'd hesitated just long enough that he actually snapped Peeta's neck, and then she shot him. I know, I know-- that would have made Katniss less unique if she only won the games "standard", but I also think it would have made for a better story. I was interested to see Katniss get to understand Haymitch better, as a fellow survivor of a gruesome battle royale.
Instead, she shoots his hand (freeing and saving Peeta), and then Peeta throws him to the magic holo-wolves. Katniss does end the poor bastard's life, but out of sympathy, not because she had to make a hard choice. She basically cheats her way through the Hunger Games, empowered by the author's own hand, without ever having to confront the hard choice that the games are supposed to be all about.
Problem D: The ol' Intent Stare
Katniss had this problem to ludicrous degrees. The actress clearly was capable of doing better than Deer In Headlights Stare all day, but a large part of the movie focused around her staring blankly at people and looking terrified. This is not really interesting to watch (I would have accepted a voice-over internal monologue if there is one in the books that I missed out on, guys!) and considering how well she did "rage", "upset and crying" and "terrified for her friend's life", I was disappointed to see the actress spend most of the movie acting like a statue. Whoever decided to direct it that way, I hope you can blame the script. Because geez. What was that?
Problem E: Deux ex Make the Show Go Our Way
The fireballs to make the forest fire, the imaginary dogs, the night-to-day-to-night-whenever-we-feel-like-it? What the hell was that? Lazy, is what. If she's inside of a goddamn simulation, who cares if she's near the border? She can't leave because there's a wall there. Make it an electrified wall if you want. In fact, that would have made sense since then escape attempts equal death. Instead, we have this ludicrously over-elaborate plot with the people running the show creating a forest fire (which should have spread and taken the whole forest, since it didn't rain and we all saw how Bambi turned out. Forest fires are nothing to sneeze at. But it simply faded away after injuring Katniss).
Then there's the "we want to finish it soon" part of the film, where they're trying to rush the Games. Instead of no longer providing food, or something really simple like that, the show maintainers create holographic dogs to go after the competitors. ....why? I mean, Panem's rich, right? Why not...actual dogs? Or wolves? Why not just release them into the enclosure?
I was not clear on why the competition was held inside of a holographic false-wilderness but I was especially not clear one why they were changing what time of day it was arbitrarily. Did the author just include this feature so she could have it be whatever time of day she wanted and not worry about continuity errors?
Overall, the whole event was managed in a way that left me wondering how the Expendably Wacky Beard Guy had gotten and kept his job in the first place. If you want someone in particular to win, can't you just engineer their success? If you want someone in particular to lose, can't you kill them? If you're lobbing fire at them already, I mean...what's the point in only doing it halfway?
Problem F: Editing
Overall, the movie was still a good watch. I wouldn't say "enjoyable", since it took itself extremely seriously and it was about a moderately serious premise, but I don't regret watching it. However, the movie is an overwhelming 2.5 hours long, and involves so many slow pans, long shots of eight different angles of Katniss tensely drawing her bow and preparing a shot, and long, drawn out scenes with no surprise and no punch to them that I was honestly surprised to find that some content had been cut out of the movie, for whatever reason, from the book.
I feel like better editing could have shortened the movie by about forty five minutes and made it more interesting. I hear the book is VERY fast-paced and full of action, and I don't doubt that the book would have been harder to dissect and find flaw with than the movie because of this difference.
Oh, but the whole mockingjay pin thing was WAY more trite than I'd expected it to be! Seriously? She JUST gave it to her sister for luck/protection (and it failed, too-- hence, drawn for lottery), so her sister immediately gives it to her the next hour or whatever. I thought that was pretty weak. I hope in the books it didn't happen like that, because if I can blame it on weird editing timing, then the pin being ridiculously significant to the franchise would be less goofy.
ANYWAY.
So would I recommend the Hunger Games movie? Sure. If you've read the books, I think you'd like it. I do hear it's pretty true to them, and the movie was still a good watch. I liked Haymitch, Rue, Katniss and Fashionista Guy, and even though I found the repetition of "girl on fire" almost as silly as saying "may the odds be ever in your favor", I liked the costumes too. I will forgive the silly spinning-dress-on-fire scene and the unsubtle symbolism of a sacrifice being set on fire because I like to think that the Fashionista Guy and Katniss wanted to fight The Man by calling attention to the screwed up nature of the Games.
Aside from that, I just wasn't interested in The Hunger Games particularly. The concept sounded like it had been pieced together from a lot of other sources I've already read and enjoyed. I felt similarly about what I heard of the Twilight books, and about Harry Potter.
However, I ended up going to see the movie for the following reasons:
-Reviewers touted the movie as being an action film with a female lead. I wanted to see that.
-Reviewers and critics described Katniss as saving herself, and rescuing Peeta in a role-reversal of the usual damsel in distress thing. I wanted to see that, too.
-Reviewers of books and movie alike insist that this is Amazing Stuff, and well, I like to believe people when they say such things.
Overall, I give the story a B for effort. It tried hard to put forth the idea that children should not have to live in violence and it was pretty earnest about that. I liked that about the story, and I liked certain moments of the movie very well. The shaky camera gave me a pretty bad headache afterward, but it also brought out the emotion in a few of the scenes, while emphasizing the underlying theme (I thought, anyway) of Panem not being as amazing, wealthy or vast as it wanted its citizens to think it was.
However, as a fellow author, I feel that the author took the lazy way out on a lot of things, since none of the things I take issue with were noted as being different between the book and the movie.
Problem A: The ending.
Have you read Fahrenheit 451? I am going to spoil the ending for you if not. At the end, Guy Montague goes off into the woods to join the rebellion against the technocratic society that he used to help burn books and signs of past knowledge. His new fellows are the remnants of a society that used to teach literature, etc. Each member of the resistance memorizes a book and can recite it to new people so they, too, will remember. It's pretty cool, and involves a drawn-out chase scene where Montague ultimately escapes the authorities by hiding in a river to avoid being scented by tracking dogs.
Well, at the end of Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins is setting us up for a sequel. So instead of running off into the woods like she seemed inclined to do at the beginning of the story, Katniss just sort of sparkles in the spotlight and stays in District 12. I could not believe that this character, who had gone through that ordeal, was being given the option to go back home to District 12 in the first place. I really couldn't believe she was deciding to stay there instead of immediately pack her things and get the heck out of dodge, loved ones snug on her back.
I might forgive this as a movie failing if the second book didn't feature a second set of Hunger Games (ala Harry Potter, the series I blame for this genre of diluted-brand-fantasy-for-the-mass being so goddamned popular for the last twelve years), but according to wikipedia, it does. I also can't help thinking that the power-play between Katniss as a rebel of District 12 and the angry old man who recognized her as a potential martyr and said 'whoa, don't let her be a martyr, that will end badly for us' was tremendously fake. If he truly found her threatening, then he could have had her eliminated at any time after the games. It's downright stupid to let her go home- if it was Running Man, she'd be killed off screen and hidden away, since the illusion of 'winning' was needed but the actual winners were not.
And since Haymitch is around to give advice to new 'reapings', why is it that Peeta and Katniss are going home instead of staying in the Capitol to help coach for the future games? Well, okay. Say I accept that the Big Typical Evil Guy is fine with letting Katniss live, so long as she goes back to District 12. That's all fine. I could suspend disbelief for that.
Still: Why, then, does Katniss choose to stay there instead of running?
If Hunger Games had given even the slightest ounce of agency to Katniss, we would have seen her leading a big old group of people off into the wilderness to escape from Panem's Capitol at the end. But instead, she just goes back to District 12.
It's like she says to herself, "Welp! I enacted some shadow of social change and reform to help my oppressed brethren! Time to go home and be oppressed some more!" I am not impressed.
Problem B: "Saving herself" apparently doesn't mean what I thought it meant.
Katniss does an excellent job of not saving herself throughout the movie, and I confess I was left a little perplexed. The three top examples I can cite:
-Oh no, I've been burned very badly! Don't worry, have some magic burn cream that turns it into a scab in just a few hours. Courtesy of your pal Haymitch, and deus ex machina!
This was the most forgiveable instance, because we'd been informed in advance that it was likely to be necessary and how it could happen. I still didn't buy the magic burn cream wicking away her wounds, but how she got it made perfect sense. Unless, of course, you have a problem with the subject-to-sudden-gusts-of-wind parachute of medicine just happening to land near enough for her to actually use it.
-Oh no, I'm stuck up a tree! Don't worry; Rue has an idea of how to get me down. (This dovetails also with 'oh no bees! But Rue has magic healy leaves for me and she'll watch over me while I sleep, so it's cool.')
You know, as cool as it is for Rue to show up and help Katniss out by pointing out the beehive, it was pretty bizarre that she spotted the beehive and Katniss, who'd been stuck in that very tree and would have heard them buzzing at SOME point while sleeping up there, did not. Furthermore, doesn't it seem kind of vicious for Rue to have Katniss take out the competition while also putting herself at risk of genetically enhanced killer hallucinogenic bee-stings? I was severely interested in Rue when I briefly thought 'man! That little girl is smart and deadly! How clever she is, to play on her adorable little girl charms to take out a potential of SIX COMPETITORS all on her own!'
But no, it was really just that she wanted to help out Katniss. Which is fine, except for the part where I know I'm supposed to think it's "okay" to kill people by torturing them horribly with poison instead of just getting it over with and stabbing them, damn it. Also, I get the impression that it's "okay" for the brainwashed teens who were raised expressly to fight or die in this tournament, because they're jerks about it. Don't worry, Katniss, you did the right thing. But since you didn't trust Peeta and well, you did kill anyone at all, however circuitously and evilly, you get to have wicked hallucinations for a while.
It's cool though! Rue will give you the magic herbs you need to heal. And she will somehow defend your body while you sleep it off, despite being a tiny unarmed girl. Totally.
-Oh no, I'm about to get killed by a knife-wielding psychopath! Despite her smaller stature and my stronger muscles, I can't get up! Don't worry; the guy from District 11 is here to kill her for me so I can stay precious and pure. Which, by the way, is Problem C.
Problem C: If it's supposed to be so emotionally moving, then why is it Katniss only kills the straw-characters, and only through the most removed and complicated fashion possible?
I'm not gonna lie: There are about three actual characters in this movie. They're played by Ms. Lawrence, Mr. Harrelson, and Mr. Kravitz. And for most of the movie, that means there's only one actual character, because the other two aren't part of the actual games.
This is not because they're better actors, though I think being older does help. It's because the rest of the sacrifices are just actually, literally sacrifices. Just because it's veiled in the deceptive coating of comfort doesn't mean it's less horrible to kill them. The movie avoids making you feel bad about the slaughter because there simply are no other characters. It doesn't matter if Katniss kills them, because we don't get to see their interviews and their lives and feelings. We don't get to know them as people before the games, so it's not like we care that they're dead, after. Furthermore, it's implied that it'd be okay for Kat to kill the kids from Districts 1 and 2, for example, because they're snobs who got special training for the Hunger Games and the privilege of volunteering. We're encouraged to feel, "Oh, they acted like jerks, so it's all right that she killed them. Thank goodness Katniss is still alive and safe, and pure of heart. She just wants everybody to make it."
Katniss gets to evade the dehumanizing horror of the match by not having to kill anyone directly. She uses a bow, which means she can kill at range; when she doesn't, she uses genetically engineered bees (a far more horrible, painful death than just being stabbed-- but it's okay, she got stung too) and the other competitors take care of the rest for her. While I think the use of the bow is a good idea, because it lets her have an advantage, I would have much preferred to see the struggle Katniss had to go through of actually killing people. Not strawmen-- it doesn't count if we as an audience are comfortable with watching them die. People. Actual people. People like Rue.
The only kill that counts, as far as I'm concerned, is the kill that kills someone Katniss didn't want to kill. Otherwise, the point of the story is something else. If the point of the story is that she beat the Hunger Games with the power of the Human Spirit (a plot device I actually like; I think of it as the Flash Gordon/Pulp way of winning a fight), then Katniss doesn't need to kill anyone at all. She needs to be a far more outgoing person, and to sway the combatants to her side, turning the twenty four sacrificial lambs into a cooperative entity that fights back against The Man. Given Gale's dialogue at the beginning of the story, it would have fit just fine. I mean, it would have been nice if Katniss had suggested it herself, but here's the thing.
Katniss's response to "we should stop watching and not let them have power over us. We shouldn't let the Hunger Games control us" was "it'll never happen." Katniss is ridiculously fatalistic. She doesn't believe she can get through the bloodbath without killing. Yet despite that, the story focuses not on how she manages to deal with the fact that she's going to be killing people and that she has to do it, but on how she avoids ever actually doing so.
Let me explain.
As big a deal as was made of Katniss concentrating on shooting her bow, she actually only used it to attack three people. Person one is justified because he was attacking her and killed Rue. Person two is justified because she was already attacking Katniss with throwing knives. And person three is the last competitor who isn't from District 12. He's willing to kill Peeta, he's willing to die. He's suffered the games, just as she has. Though he's a non-entity until that single moment, in the moment before Katniss kills him, her enemy is made into a character. He's resigned to his fate and feels powerless.
So the only kill in the movie that mattered was this guy. After all the talk of Katniss shooting squirrels right through the eye, I would have been impressed if she shot her enemy through the eye in this moment, unfazed by his hold on Peeta. I would have been really impressed if she'd hesitated just long enough that he actually snapped Peeta's neck, and then she shot him. I know, I know-- that would have made Katniss less unique if she only won the games "standard", but I also think it would have made for a better story. I was interested to see Katniss get to understand Haymitch better, as a fellow survivor of a gruesome battle royale.
Instead, she shoots his hand (freeing and saving Peeta), and then Peeta throws him to the magic holo-wolves. Katniss does end the poor bastard's life, but out of sympathy, not because she had to make a hard choice. She basically cheats her way through the Hunger Games, empowered by the author's own hand, without ever having to confront the hard choice that the games are supposed to be all about.
Problem D: The ol' Intent Stare
Katniss had this problem to ludicrous degrees. The actress clearly was capable of doing better than Deer In Headlights Stare all day, but a large part of the movie focused around her staring blankly at people and looking terrified. This is not really interesting to watch (I would have accepted a voice-over internal monologue if there is one in the books that I missed out on, guys!) and considering how well she did "rage", "upset and crying" and "terrified for her friend's life", I was disappointed to see the actress spend most of the movie acting like a statue. Whoever decided to direct it that way, I hope you can blame the script. Because geez. What was that?
Problem E: Deux ex Make the Show Go Our Way
The fireballs to make the forest fire, the imaginary dogs, the night-to-day-to-night-whenever-we-feel-like-it? What the hell was that? Lazy, is what. If she's inside of a goddamn simulation, who cares if she's near the border? She can't leave because there's a wall there. Make it an electrified wall if you want. In fact, that would have made sense since then escape attempts equal death. Instead, we have this ludicrously over-elaborate plot with the people running the show creating a forest fire (which should have spread and taken the whole forest, since it didn't rain and we all saw how Bambi turned out. Forest fires are nothing to sneeze at. But it simply faded away after injuring Katniss).
Then there's the "we want to finish it soon" part of the film, where they're trying to rush the Games. Instead of no longer providing food, or something really simple like that, the show maintainers create holographic dogs to go after the competitors. ....why? I mean, Panem's rich, right? Why not...actual dogs? Or wolves? Why not just release them into the enclosure?
I was not clear on why the competition was held inside of a holographic false-wilderness but I was especially not clear one why they were changing what time of day it was arbitrarily. Did the author just include this feature so she could have it be whatever time of day she wanted and not worry about continuity errors?
Overall, the whole event was managed in a way that left me wondering how the Expendably Wacky Beard Guy had gotten and kept his job in the first place. If you want someone in particular to win, can't you just engineer their success? If you want someone in particular to lose, can't you kill them? If you're lobbing fire at them already, I mean...what's the point in only doing it halfway?
Problem F: Editing
Overall, the movie was still a good watch. I wouldn't say "enjoyable", since it took itself extremely seriously and it was about a moderately serious premise, but I don't regret watching it. However, the movie is an overwhelming 2.5 hours long, and involves so many slow pans, long shots of eight different angles of Katniss tensely drawing her bow and preparing a shot, and long, drawn out scenes with no surprise and no punch to them that I was honestly surprised to find that some content had been cut out of the movie, for whatever reason, from the book.
I feel like better editing could have shortened the movie by about forty five minutes and made it more interesting. I hear the book is VERY fast-paced and full of action, and I don't doubt that the book would have been harder to dissect and find flaw with than the movie because of this difference.
Oh, but the whole mockingjay pin thing was WAY more trite than I'd expected it to be! Seriously? She JUST gave it to her sister for luck/protection (and it failed, too-- hence, drawn for lottery), so her sister immediately gives it to her the next hour or whatever. I thought that was pretty weak. I hope in the books it didn't happen like that, because if I can blame it on weird editing timing, then the pin being ridiculously significant to the franchise would be less goofy.
ANYWAY.
So would I recommend the Hunger Games movie? Sure. If you've read the books, I think you'd like it. I do hear it's pretty true to them, and the movie was still a good watch. I liked Haymitch, Rue, Katniss and Fashionista Guy, and even though I found the repetition of "girl on fire" almost as silly as saying "may the odds be ever in your favor", I liked the costumes too. I will forgive the silly spinning-dress-on-fire scene and the unsubtle symbolism of a sacrifice being set on fire because I like to think that the Fashionista Guy and Katniss wanted to fight The Man by calling attention to the screwed up nature of the Games.
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But, if you have the book on hand for free to read, that's just an investment of time instead of time AND money, so I'd say go for it. It can't possibly take that long to read, everyone described it as really fast-paced and exciting so I assume it's the sort of read you can't put down.