A Movie A Week: Week 12 - The Hunger Games

Movie: The Hunger Games
Theater: AMC Discover Mills 18
Snack: Skittles and Coke

You may have noticed that I seem to have skipped week eleven.  As it turns out, I seem to have numbered two weeks as "Week 4."  So, I am now trying to correct my numbering.  I suppose I just could have waited a few weeks, skipped week thirteen and claim that I was just superstitious, but I don't have the attention span to plan that far in advance.  At some point I may go back and correct the numbering on previous entries, but until then I must apologize the the number eleven for its absence on my blog.

I was first exposed to the novel "The Hunger Games" when I received a copy through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.  It didn't seem like it would be my sort of thing, so I didn't expect much from it.  However, free is free, so I went ahead and gave it a read.  I was very pleasantly surprised.  I found it to be a bit slow at first, but the further I read, the more compelling I found the story and the characters.  As I neared the end, I truly could not put the book down.

The movie followed a similar pattern.  The early scenes in District 12 were fine, but I can't say that I found them particularly exciting.  What we lose without Katniss's narration is a lot of backstory.  I was fine without it, but then I had read the book, so I already knew this world.  The character of Gale was not as present in the film as he was in the book.  to be honest, I would have been happy to have seen the character jettisoned entirely as I find the whole love triangle thing a bit tiresome.  However, I accept that I am probably in the minority on that.

Much like the book, once the film got past the initial set up, it was quite effective at drawing me in.  One departure from the book that I was quite pleased with was the way the film would switch back briefly from the arena to show us what was going on behind the scenes and the reactions of the powerful to what was happening in the arena.  The cast is fantastic.  The real surprise for me is Woody Harrelson as Haymitch.  He is not at all what I pictured reading the book, but his performance won me over completely.  My only casting complaint is that the actors who play Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and Cato (Alexander Ludwig) look too similar when they are both wearing the tribute uniforms in the arena.  It is not a problem when they are on screen as Ludwig is a head taller than Hutcherson, but when only one was on screen it sometimes took me a minute to figure out who was who.

The movie had a fantastic opening weekend, which was well-deserved.  So, we are pretty much assured of a sequel.  I haven't finished reading the other books (I'm only about halfway through the second one), so I can't really judge if they live up to the standard of the first book.  Hopefully future movies in the series live up to the standard set by this one.