The Hunger Games - Review

I'm just going to start out by saying this will have spoilers, so don't read on if you don't want to read anything about the movie and/or the book.












We good? Good.
So... I did like the movie. I want to come out and say that. It was very well done and pretty well acted. I feel like the first half with the reaping and the training was the closest to the book this movie got, though. The games were too easy and had a lot of omissions and were very fast paced. They also had close to no explanation to little details that were in the book. They just kind of threw the audience in there. My boyfriend hadn't read the book prior to seeing the movie so I had to explain a lot to him after we got out of the theater.
I said the first half was quite close to the book and I mean that. I loved the way they did the reaping and I loved the farewell to Katniss and Peeta. The arrival at the Capitol was probably where it started to stray for me. I liked the interviews with Caesar, but I didn't like how they introduced the tributes. They made some of their names prominent but ignored others.

My main issue with this movie was the games. They were very fast paced and they were really easy. The book made the games seem legitimately brutal. The tributes lost weight, they got hurt, they struggled for food and water, etc.. In the movie everything just kind of seemed readily available to them and by the time the games were over, Katniss and Peeta seemed quite healthy and well off. And what the fuck, Peeta still has his leg. I don't understand that at all.

As far as the violence goes, people that are complaining about the PG-13 rating and claim people shouldn't take their teens and children to the movie are full of shit and they obviously didn't watch it. I was expecting a lot more violence and blood and it just wasn't there. You obviously see kids die but oddly enough I think the most graphic death was Glimmer when she gets stung by the Tracker Jackers. You see Rue get stabbed and you see Katniss kill Marvel with the arrow, but everything else was more implied with sound cues and very fast editing. The way most of the tributes were killed at the Cornucopia was very quick and you don't really see a whole lot. If you are worried about taking 11 and 12 year olds to this movie I wouldn't be too concerned. Younger than that? Maybe not. Not only would the violence that is there creep them out a bit but the overall political tone to the film would probably fly right over them. Not to mention how hard it is to keep kids sitting still for almost 2.5 hours. The movie is quite long.


Overall I did like the movie. I feel like my disappointment about any part of it is just because I read the book first. If I wouldn't have read the book before the movie I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more. I look forward to movies for Catching Fire and Mockingjay.