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The Hunger Games: Your imagination is racist and you should feel bad
adytum
The Inevitable RiseAnd FallRegistered User regular
The Inevitable RiseAnd FallRegistered User regular
:bz TehSpectre's Amazing OP Because TumTum is a Negative Nelly :bz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S9a5V9ODuY
Synopsis
In Suzanne Collins’ riveting tale of life in North America after its destruction, a powerful Capitol emerges as residents of its twelve outlying Districts individually struggle to survive under its bleak rule. Living under the constant reminder that the Capitol obliterated District 13 when the people incited a rebellion decades before, 16-year old Katniss Everdeen quietly carves out a path of meager survival for herself, her younger sister, Prim, and their widowed mother under the Capitol’s strict regime.
Each year, the Capitol assembles its Gamemakers to create an elaborate arena filled with deadly trigger points and calls upon one girl and one boy from each of the twelve Districts to play in its nationally televised Hunger Games. On the Day of Reaping when 24 children are selected to fight to the death, Katniss is whisked away from her daily quest for survival alongside her friend Gale, and thrust into the elaborate Capital as she is prepared for the Hunger Games.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S9a5V9ODuYSynopsis
In Suzanne Collins’ riveting tale of life in North America after its destruction, a powerful Capitol emerges as residents of its twelve outlying Districts individually struggle to survive under its bleak rule. Living under the constant reminder that the Capitol obliterated District 13 when the people incited a rebellion decades before, 16-year old Katniss Everdeen quietly carves out a path of meager survival for herself, her younger sister, Prim, and their widowed mother under the Capitol’s strict regime.
Each year, the Capitol assembles its Gamemakers to create an elaborate arena filled with deadly trigger points and calls upon one girl and one boy from each of the twelve Districts to play in its nationally televised Hunger Games. On the Day of Reaping when 24 children are selected to fight to the death, Katniss is whisked away from her daily quest for survival alongside her friend Gale, and thrust into the elaborate Capital as she is prepared for the Hunger Games.
USA TODAY wrote:'Hunger Games' devours the competition at box office
By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY
The Hunger Games thundered to the third best debut in history this weekend, with $155 million, charging the box office and launching a franchise that could challenge the Twilight series.
Hunger's haul exceeded most analysts' highest expectations and marked a huge opening for a first-time film. Of the two films with bigger debuts, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 ($169.1 million) and The Dark Knight ($158 million), both are sequels.
The film, based on Suzanne Collins' popular trilogy and starring Jennifer Lawrence, broke from the gate at midnight Friday, earning $19.7 million and seventh place in the all-time midnight screening record books. Hallows remains the runaway champ, collecting $43.5 million in its midnight shows last year.
Still, Hunger mustered plenty to score the highest debut on record for March, besting Alice in Wonderland's $116.1 million.
Gitesh Pandya of Boxofficeguru says that teen fans of the 2008 novel propelled the hit. "A massive built-in audience has been hungry for this movie," he says.
In the long run, Pandya says, the Hunger trilogy could challenge the Twilight series by appealing to both genders.
"One major difference is that (Hunger) has more male appeal," he says, adding that distributor Lionsgate "has been emphasizing the action in its male-skewing TV spots, and the romance is a minor part of the story, anyway."
Males and females responded strongly to the film, promising a healthy run through March and much of April. A whopping 95% of moviegoers recommended the movie, according to survey site Rottentomatoes.com. Critics weren't far behind; 86% of reviewers gave it a thumbs-up, the site says.
The studio plans to release part two, Catching Fire, on Nov. 22, 2013. While details haven't been finalized on future installments, analysts say at least a three-part series is inevitable.
Hunger "is the first true event film of 2012," says Tim Briody of Boxofficeprophets.com. "This is largely unprecedented for any franchise, much less a new one. It's the sort of behavior you'd expect from a sequel, not the first entry in an unproven series."Hunger's numbers came despite the Sweet 16 tournament games of the NCAA basketball championship.
No studio challenged Hunger this weekend, leaving the top of the box office to holdovers.
The remake comedy 21 Jump Street took second with $21.3 million, followed by The Lorax with $13.1 million.
John Carter, the $250 million sci-fi flop, was fourth with $5 million. The fantasy film has done $62.3 million in three weeks.
The action film Act of Valor rounded out the top five with $2.1 million.
Hunger helped propel movie attendance to 22% over the same period last year.
Final figures are due Monday.
Here are my thoughts, from the film thread:
I disagree completely with a previous forumer's assessment of The Hunger Games. It was, in just about every way, superior to the book. Granted, that's not a very high hurdle to clear.
Many of the terrible parts of the film were where they tried to adapt important scenes from the book, or used exposition to detail irrelevant background information. Some of the references to the book were out-of-the-blue; for instance, they start referring to a character (Foxface) with her nickname from the book with no discussion or explanation; they should have just referred to her as "the redhead".
They managed to rewrite the two worst parts of the book into something decent, but inexplicably mangled the direction of the final, climactic battle. They nailed the emotion of most of the scenes with Katniss, but because they didn't introduce or give background information on any of the non-main characters, some of their scenes fell completely flat. In particular, Foxface and Thresh. Why would anyone care about a character that's had less than 30 seconds of screen time and no spoken lines?
The camerawork, lighting, and scene design were all well done, and the direction was above-average for most of the film, with a few minor quibbles. The acting was outstanding. I wish they would have used less CGI (do you really need to use CGI for smoke coming out of a chimney? C'mon!), but such is the state of the industry.
Overall a decent effort. I award it a resounding three and a half meh's out of five.
And some other lolpinions from fellow PAers:
The Good
MalReynolds wrote: »I pretty much agree with this (above-quoted) assessment. When I got out of the movie, I said to my friends, "They need to adapt this into the book and replace the actual book, because the movie doesn't lose focus nearly as bad as the book does, and also, there was a lot of technology-magic bullshit in the book that was mitigated in the movie."
It had half my theater tearing up at several parts, and most of the folks around me hadn't seen it, because they were speculating to each other about what was going to happen next.
Most of the changes they made when adapting the movie were excellent, but there was a loss of detail that confused one of my friends (who went in blind) as to what exactly was going on most of the time.
But it sure was a pretty movie. And very intense. There was a lot of gasping in my theater at the beginning of the Games over how brutal it was. Even though I knew what was going to happen going in, it still felt very gripping.
EDIT: And I am in no way a fanboy of the book; the way the book handled certain details and situations drove me fucking batty, and a large swaths of the book are poorly written and framed, and the ending of the first book kind of retroactively ruined the previous two hundred pages. Being said, when I finished it, I thought, "This would work much better as a film."
Not having read the book, I liked The Hunger Games, but didn't love it. It feels like it would have been better with another half-hour of running time.
Some things needed to be foreshadowed/explained better. It wasn't that any part of the story was difficult to understand; it was more that I was left with the bad kind of questions. Not the "this is intriguing, I wish I knew more" kind of questions--rather, the "this feels kind of like bullshit, why should I believe this would happen?" kind of questions. The immersion-killing kind.
And more importantly, emotional moments were blunted because we barely got ten lines from characters like Rue. All in all, I suspect this movie would've done a lot more for me if I read the book and was able to connect it to characters and exposition found within. That's just how it feels--I haven't actually read the book, so I don't know. Regardless, standing on its own, it needs some work.
nightmarenny wrote: »To the person complaining that the movie was hurt from a lack of backstory for several characters having gone in blind I think you're wrong. The movie felt really well paced and I doubt it could have survived the added running time.
We care about Katniss. We are given more then a enough to "get" characters or at least see them as three-dimensional characters. I don't know who the hell "Foxface" or the guy from end's deal really was but it doesn't really matter when it comes to the plot. Which was tight and enjoyable.
I'm also very impressed with the sheer amount of exposition and the smoothness of it.
The Bad
So I saw the Hunger Games premier last night and, while it was good, the liberties taken by the movie were idiotic. All the quality was from the books, and the choices by the writers and directors were pretty dumb.
For starters, the casting: Katniss is a stunted 16 year old with the voice of an angel. Jennifer Lawrence is 21 years old, 5'8", and can't sing. At all. She was actually one of the largest cast members. This, of course, gives a lot of problems showing her disadvantages and how small she is in the face of things.
For the story, they cut out a lot of the relationship building which softened (if not negated) the blow when a charcater died. Now, I understand that time is limited, but they also spend a lot of time on behind-the-scenes scenes and colour commentary that weren't in the book, had no real point, and are frequently redundant. There was also a good bit of time spent on the other contestants. One other major additional problem with these additions is that they took the focus off the immediate surroundings of Katniss, removing the claustrophobia from the story, which the director decided he could put back if he just did a lot of long, slow close-ups of Katniss' face, because that's exactly how that works.
There were also scenes that the director clearly didn't understand. Take this line of exchange:Girl from #2, taunting Katniss: I'm going to kill you just like we killed that litle girl. What was her name? Rue?So, why did he let Katniss go? Who knows!
Thresh, from #2's blind spot: You killed Rue?
#2: No, I didn't. It was someone else. I-
Thresh smashes her skull, turns toward Katniss
Thresh: I'll let you go this time, for Rue.
Lastly, no one looked like he or she had gone through the Hunger Games. Katniss had her pretty little braid right through the end, and absolutely none of the wounds in the film looked life threatening.
I'll get into more analysis later, but It's all pretty bad except for the interviewer and hishallucinationcameo.
What are your thoughts?
adytum on
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Specifically Bagginses' comment about
Read the books though. They were alright I guess.
That's some hype machine they got goin' there though.
4 inches away from a face, shaking like a crazy bear! YOU CAN'T SEE A THING!
For some reason it sort of felt like the movie had less hopelessness to it
I thought that subversive actions against the Central district would get a little play.
But I guess all those things wouldn't translate easily to a two hour movie, so I'm more than willing to forgive it. It was definitely worth my ticket price thought, and I'm very interested to see how they handle the rest of the series.
A movie about teens stabbing each other until only one remains - playing in all theaters, PG-13 rating.
AMERICA!
Also, I think the book is slightly better than the film, but the film did an excellent job of conveying the important aspects of the story.
I think the idea is that only people old enough to go "wtf is this drivel" see it.
I saw a ton of what looked to be elementary and middle-school kids in the audience, and at least one younger child. It was weird.
We're more sqwicked out by sex than violence in the US, this shouldn't be new or shocking information.
That is exactly why we need The Hobbit to come out yesterday.
:^:
I saw this opening night. Guess which seat I got.
<front row> BARFS ALL OVER FLOOR </front row>
PSN - sumowot
Many LOLs were had.
PSN - sumowot
Haha, slightly off topic but it made me think of #30 on this 'if movie posters were accurate' thing.
http://www.listal.com/list/more-truth
Oh my god.
Synopsis
In Suzanne Collins’ riveting tale of life in North America after its destruction, a powerful Capitol emerges as residents of its twelve outlying Districts individually struggle to survive under its bleak rule. Living under the constant reminder that the Capitol obliterated District 13 when the people incited a rebellion decades before, 16-year old Katniss Everdeen quietly carves out a path of meager survival for herself, her younger sister, Prim, and their widowed mother under the Capitol’s strict regime.
Each year, the Capitol assembles its Gamemakers to create an elaborate arena filled with deadly trigger points and calls upon one girl and one boy from each of the twelve Districts to play in its nationally televised Hunger Games. On the Day of Reaping when 24 children are selected to fight to the death, Katniss is whisked away from her daily quest for survival alongside her friend Gale, and thrust into the elaborate Capital as she is prepared for the Hunger Games.
Here are my thoughts, from the film thread:
And some other lolpinions from fellow PAers:
The Good
The Bad
What are your thoughts?
I...can't look away
It REALLY captures the shaky-cam, doesn't it? Maybe there's an actual shaky-cam filter people are just slapping on clips during the editing process.
Kids are more likely to emulate sexual acts than they would barbaric killings, especially with the killings conveyed in a negative light as they are in the film.
So yes, AMERICA! But in a good way.
Her is a total non-spoilery hint for you: Teenagers want and have sex. Even in AMERICA.
Pretending that if you stop them from watching a movie about it will somehow make the above spoiler not come true is stupid. It won't even make it more likely, because 99% of teenagers fit the above description.
In other news: Saw the movie last night, going in blind without having read the books. I thought it was good. I get the Battle Royale comparisons, but how people missed the Theseus and the Crete Labyrinth and Reality show influences where beyond me. I have Battle Royale on DVD and it would not have been my first go to for cries of "copycat". The Running Man maybe.
i dont even
Explain how the acting or the cinematography was bad.
Edit: I thought the acting was mostly good, but the cinematography was definitely terrible. It was all either shaky-cam or completely unimaginative.
I didn't like the close ups, I didn't like the shaky cam, but more than both, I didn't like the near constant angle change.
I found almost any action scene very, very hard to take seriously. Every time the characters were forced to make a combat move or to pick up something supposed to be a weapon, I was annoyed with the exaggerated movements.
Fuck, I didn't find their running convincing.
The male lead had a very nice almost constant "I'm serious because I got my wrinkled face on", no matter what he was saying. I want to say that the actors seem disinterested in their own roles and deliveries...but maybe it was just the dialogue?
Good for all those people that like it! Maybe the film simply doesn't work for me!(I'm not a fan of the books either, so I didn't enter the theater with high hopes...entirely possible I had negative preconceptions before even walking in)
Edit: Post above said "lazy". Oh, I'm so down with that word to describe it. It's the word I'd use for that film from now on.
The cinematography was awful. Everything was zoomed in way too much all the time and the shakycam was shakier than Bourne or Cloverfield. I was nauseous and had eye strain leaving the theater. The acting was fine aside from the kids in the games that weren't Katniss, peeta, or rue.
I would have walked out if someone told me before going in that the super zoom cinematography lasts through the whole movie.
My theater seemed genuinely upset during the bloodbath at the beginning of the Game. There were several audible gasps and 'Oh my Gods,' and it was the one time I found the shaky cam to be genuinely effective. It let the audience see the horrific shit that was happening without showing 12 year olds getting run through with swords. Except when it did show that.
I also liked
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Thank you Steven Spielberg and Joseph Lieberman.
(Spielberg for suggesting a PG-13 rating and Lieberman for making it illegal to market R rated movies to teens).
Who knew?
Err, no? It's based on a book aimed at the young teen market.
But as per the actual content of the movie and being able to portray it in a more cohesive and clean manner, R would be better.
It's not that it "wasn't gory enough," more that it was just really hard to tell what was going on whenever things got too shaky.
That's funny, people in my theater actually CHEERED after one of the deaths.
which disturbed me far more than anything in the actual movie.
I am aware that its based on a book. THE MOVIE on the other hand has to show the violence and what would be youth oriented fiction on the page is R-rated violence on screen.
The movie chooses to show it with shaky cam in order to get a pg-13 rating. Which in years passed would have shot as a R-rated movie and shown to teens anyways. Halloween, Nightmare on Elm street, Scream where all R rated movies marketed to teen audiences.
With the PG-13 rating movies get water down in order to be released to a teen audience. This was not the case in times passed.
The movie art form has suffered as a result, we get gobs of movies with water down violence getting pg-13 and hysterical R is a kid says fuck more then once.
Steady cams would have put this straight in R territory. As it was, there was a lot of "oh my god" in my theater.
The change of perspective gives me hope that the movies could actually improve on the sequels. Would be awesome.
That's a little more fucked up.
It's not as bad as say, watchmen, but similarly it's just too straight of an adaptation to be an enjoyable movie in its own right.