The Hunger Games - Movie vs Book
The Hunger Games – Movie vs Book
I finally got to see The Hunger Games movie last night after reading the book last week. As a writer I don’t do internet piracy and it only got released here in Japan on DVD on Jan 16th. It’s also been compared to my book The Tube Riders so I was pretty excited to see it.
The Trailer
Quite often after watching Harry Potter movies people would say to me, “You should read the book”. I can understand why now. The HG movie didn’t suck, in fact it was quite good, but it did omit or gloss over quite a lot of content and there were sections that I probably wouldn’t have understood had I been watching without having read the book first.
(warning – spoilers coming up)
What I liked
The bleakness of District 12. It was pretty realistic, as was the almost absurdly colorful Capitol. It was teeny and fantastical yet believable.
The telling of the backstory. The book is from Katniss’s point of view which meant it was necessary to fill in the backstory and the wider world in a certain way. Explanations of things such as the sponsors and the arena, while brief, were done quite well.
Jennifer Lawrence. She really is a great actress. She’s not especially good looking and also has the perfect level of awkwardness to portray Katniss from the books. She was also really good in The Winter’s Bone.
Effie Trinket. In the books she becomes something of a comical airhead idiot but in the movie she was a cross between creepy weird and hot.
Donald Sutherland as President Snow. In the books (okay, I’ve only read 1 & 2 so far) Snow is a non-event. He has a typically unspectacular young-adult name, doesn’t really do anything and isn’t particularly sinister when he shows up. In the movie he was way better. He didn’t really do a lot but what he did was great.
Rue. She was dead cute and her death was really sad, even if she had way less screen time than she has in the books.
What I didn’t like
The portrayal of Peeta. Yeah, so Josh Hutcherson is the heart-throb of the moment and all that, but his character didn’t really have any meat to it. The movie conveniently forgot about him killing the girl at the campfire in order to make him look nicer. He also wasn't shown fighting off Cato, nor was there any explanation as to why he was hurt. He also didn’t seem to be particularly sick after his leg was half chopped off.
The omission of certain details. Clearly the movie was made on a budget, but where were the hovercrafts to pick up the bodies? The mutts went from being really scary representations of the dead tributes to being rubbish computer-animated dogs.
The bread-throwing scene from the backstory. Shown as flashbacks, it forgot that Katniss was supposed to be a near-starvation twelve-year old and instead had her at the same age, looking despondent as she leaned against a tree. A big scene in the book was made kind of irrelevant in the movie.
The camera work. Arty, POV or whatever, the shaky camera did my head in. I hope they stop that for the second movie, but I think it’ll get worse if anything.
Gale.He did nothing except look moody a few times. It would have been easier to understand if the complex relationship between the two leads had been explained properly like it was in the book, but he just looked like a pouting extra from Buffy the Vampire Slayer inserted to play a jealous boyfriend, and if I hadn’t read the book that’s what I would have assumed he was.
Overall
Not a bad movie, but the book was better. It probably would have benefited from being a bit longer. I’ll still watch the second one though. I gather there’s a bigger budget this time around, which should make some difference.
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She did a really good job I thought. It could have been a lot worse - they could have cast someone like Keira Knightley. I tried to watch it as if I'd never read the book and I think there would have been many times when I was thinking, "What's that all about?"I enjoyed it though. I'll definitely watch the second film. Just started reading the third book and its okay so far.
Celise wrote: "As a film student, that shaky camera drove me crazy. They have a real budget for the second film and a different director so hopefully no more of that.If I hadn't read the book I would not have u..."
OH MY GOD WE ARE THE SAME PERSON.
My sister's in love with The Hunger Games, but every time I hear her watching it I go through all these problems in my mind.
Chris wrote: "She did a really good job I thought. It could have been a lot worse - they could have cast someone like Keira Knightley. I tried to watch it as if I'd never read the book and I think there would ..."I'll have you know that Pirates of the Caribbean is my favourite film series, so I find myself naturally inclined to be enamored with Keira Knightley. But I'll let that comment slide, because obviously that wouldn't have been a good choice for this particular role. ;)
And it's so true Nathalie, every time I see the movie I resist pointing out all of the mistakes.
Haha, I liked the first two PotC movies, although I thought the second two were a bit overkill. As for Keira Knightley, I kind of went off her when I watched Never Let Me Go. I felt she was miscast in that film.
I don't know, I didn't really like Ruth in the book and I thought she fit that character. Then again, I knew she would be playing her when I read the book so I probably interpreted it differently. And the third PotC movie is my favourite, though the fourth one completely lost me. Even the original cast was no longer interested in doing a fourth. Now the fifth is set to be released summer 2015.
I didn't even realise there was a book. I think Johnny Depp is a brilliant actor, though. He can carry pretty much anything. He was once in a movie called From Hell in which he played Jack the Ripper. The end sequence was filmed on a cliff outside my village and for a week the car park of the pub I worked in at the time was filled by a big marquee full of TV crew types. They used to come in for lunch. Never saw Johnny though - he flew in by helicopter to film and flew out again the same day. They built a full house on the clifftop and then tore it down again when they were done. One of the pub regulars rented them some chickens to have wandering about on the front path!
I love From Hell! I'm surprised he hasn't won a single Oscar to his name yet. Keira has won several. Maybe he just never does the right kind of movie for one of those. Anyhow, back to the topic of Jennifer Lawrence- I recently saw her in Silver Linings Playbook and I think she's quite flexible in her abilities. I was also just thinking about what they will do for the Mockingjay film. Will they have to add in more action?
I don't know. I just got to the hospital scene and that was pretty good. The problem with having a big war is that it's difficult to show all the angles when you have it in first person point of view. People have to constantly update the main character. I've heard this is a problem, but I haven't finished the book yet so I can't really judge.Have you seen The Winter's Bone? That's pretty dark but she's good in it. It's kind of the way us Brits imagine rural America to be like ...!
Have you read Divergent? I keep hearing it mentioned in the same breath as THG but I've never heard of it. I really love dystopian fiction but I'm not big on the romance parts. My book has hardly any so it doesn't appeal to teens much. I'm trying to write a bit more into part two. If Divergent is decent I'll give it a read, though.
I was just recommended Divergent and it does have ssimilar themes as THG I'm sure. Winter's Bone is on Netflix here in Canada so I will probably watch it soon. She is also apparently really good in House at the End of the Street..I see what you mean about first person. It worked well for the first two at least.
It was perfect for the first two, as was the use of present tense for the narrative. It gave the impression of loads of action going on at high pace. It's more difficult when there's other stuff going on though that the main character isn't in the middle of. It means lots of lengthy conversations.Which part of Canada are you from? Never been but I have a bunch of friends from there.
Southern Ontario. No accent, I sound like any typical actor in a movie. I'm near Toronto and 2 hours away from the American border at Niagara falls. I lived in Montreal Quebec until I was three though.
I have friends from Toronto, Vancouver and Novia Scotia. You get a lot of Canadians passing through where I live because it's a ski resort. Without exception they're all awesome skiiers/snowboarders! Does it get really cold there? About -10 is as low as it gets here. It's been raining the last two days.
Well the last few days it was below -20 (Celsius of course) but usually it's nowhere near that cold. We just have a couple days a year like that, usually in January. It was even a green Christmas for me! A year ago I was working at a horse show with an American and he was complaining that it was so hot and he had thrown out all of his short and T-shirts before coming up here because he thought it would be cold. Our summers are around 25-30 regularly.
Wow, that's freezing! It was minus 6 here last night, which we consider pretty cold. We get rain in January these days, must be global warming...I've just got to the part in Mockingjay where Katniss and Gale have been sent to the Capitol. Peeta has just showed up. No one major has died yet or anything. I'm hoping to finish it in the next day or so. The last few chapters were a bit of a slog to be honest. It's definitely the weakest book of the three.
It's been raining here for two days now.I agree, I'm not sure why Mockingjay seems like such a struggle for a lot of the readers. Suzanne Collins intended from the beginning to make this a trilogy, it's odd that with so much planning the last was kind of a flop.
If I hadn't read the book I would not have understood the bread scene. And I don't think Josh Hutcherson fit the character, and yes, the softened Peeta down far too much.
I love Jennifer, a perfect Katniss in her unconventional beauty and her acting talents are great. But Katniss was supposed to be disgustingly thin, which JL is not. But we can overlook that for every other thing that made her suitable.