The Hunger Games.

Well, let's talk about this mess then... Also, go buy this film, holy shit, it was one of the most awesome things I've seen. Hope you enjoy the review!

What happened? The search for the next Twilight has been ongoing, although Twilight probably wont reinvent your life, it reinvented Hollywood. The 'teen movie' is largely a new phenomenon in the realm of film as it is, but a film like Twilight aimed largely at teen girls, now this was exciting. And so pretty quickly a slew of films began to shoot out of Hollywood, some were utterly terrible like Beastly but some were really good like I am Number Four. However for whatever reason these films never seemed to catch, as utterly terrifying as it is for an old man twenty years too early, it is starting to look like the studios are deciding what to make into franchises not on the quality of the movie but on how many Tumblr reblogs there are. So when The Hunger Games came along, complete with a humongous fanfare from basically everyone, it looked like they had finally found the next Twilight. Then by the summer everyone seemed to have forgotten what it was.

I personally had never heard of the Hunger Games but with a few months until its release, The Hunger Games exploded. Suddenly it was everywhere, the thing on everyone's lips. This may seem unimportant to many of my teen readers or those still reblogging stills on Tumblr to this day but I'm 21 years old, it's a curious age as you will find because you're on the very edge of 'real life' so many of the people I surround myself with are really pushing to grow up and don't like to be associated with largely teencentric films like The Hunger Games. So the fact they were all excited for this, that said a lot. So when the film was released and quickly forgotten about, it really took me by surprise, I mean sure it sucked but it should be clear by now that the overall quality of the product really is very low down on their list of priorities and it would seem the bigger buzz, the more chance of the franchise lasting. Sure Hunger Games landed a sequel but by the summer basically everyone had forgotten about it, it also just didn't seem to catch in that big way that Twilight had.

Now that isn't to say the film wasn't successful, the money it roped in broke records, it was topping charts and everything, hell even the critics liked this, so what the hell went wrong? Then again a lot of the praise seemed to come from people who loved the books, which I didn't. Sure I could see where Collins was coming from in her writing, but the mixture of an amateurish writing style and so many stolen ideas, I found it very hard to get passed to soak in the deeper message. And comments like The Hunger Games being 'dark', 'deep', 'intelligent', 'grounded', 'thoughtful', 'emotional' and 'mature' are utterly hilarious, did anyone actually watch the film or did they just write their review and watch the trailers? I know I'm not always on the mainstream critics side but never before have I seen such a widely praised film, that is in reality so utterly terrible. Even Avengers wasn't that hyped. How anyone can claim this rushed, muddled mess of a film is better than any of the Twilight films blows my mind. The Twilight films aren't good but if they are bad the Hunger Games is a steaming turd.

Also, the utter miscasting of Jennifer Lawrence infuriates me that so many people gave her praise. She was, for a start, completely the wrong race but secondly that flawless skin, dazzling teeth and rocking body was apparently supposed to be on a girl from one of the poorest places in the Hunger Games universe. Then again Josh Hutcherson is basically the opposite of Peeta Mellark in the books and he got cast. And you could argue these are unnecessary nitpicks but if Twilight had made a casting choice like this, for example, the reaction from critics would have been very different. It's funny too because so many race swaps were made throughout the film and those crying racism were shot down as ignorant and then later that year the race swapping in Cloud Atlas would get the thing critically panned. And those who criticised Lawrence's body size were shot down as 'sexist'. It would sure seem a lot of people were paid off when it came to the Hunger Games, I've never seen so many critics scrabbling to defend a film and insult its attackers, especially when so many attackers had a point. Honestly the more I read about the general response to this film, the more it filled me with utter frustration. The Hunger Games is shit. What was everyone smoking?

The plot. So in the universe of the Hunger Games there are 13 Districts and The Capitol. Once upon a time the districts tried to rebel against The Capitol and failed. Then basically The Capitol spends all its time slinging its weight around mainly because it can. Our protagonist is Katniss Everdeen who ends up in The Hunger Games to stand in for her little sister along with some dude who gave her bread once. Thus begins their training and preparation for the games, the games themselves involving lots of kids killing each other in a forest while a shaky cam chases them around.

Honestly that plot doesn't even make any sense, there is surely no better way to stop a second try at a rebellion than to make all your enemies combat ready, utterly afraid in that dog backed in the corner kind of sense and putting the most importance on the youth who are the most idealistic and in turn most likely to rebel...oh wait. What The Capitol is doing is giving the Districts both the motives to rebel again and the means as well. Hell there is even a riot come rebellion of sorts inside the film and I'm guessing this isn't the first time, are The Capitol just too stupid to get the point? Is that the point in the first place?

Honestly The Hunger Games has a lot of interesting things to say, I admit that. But it's so blunt, so unapologetic and in your face about its messages it ends up feeling more like a comedy sketch of what would happen if the Nazi's won rather than a serious critique of where our modern culture might lead. I was more annoyed by the film ranting in my face on its soapbox, than really paying attention to what it was saying, interesting or not. And after just watching Ruby Sparks, that cleverly subverted the genre it was critiquing...to make its critique without ever needing to result to soapbox ranting and then seeing this film fumble with its messages and repeatedly drop the ball is just embarrassing. It's a flabby mess, the film needs a redraft and much tighter writing, it really feels like they just filmed a first draft of what had the potential to be a great screenplay and three people fucking wrote this, including the original author! Then again considering the book it was based on also felt like a half formed idea still in first draft stage this is unsurprising.


Many have praised the films use of filmic techniques, the balance of the flamboyant, bright world of the Capitol to the grey District 12. Balancing two shots off of each other to create new meaning is basic film making and isn't somehow more special because this film did it. And sure, maybe The Hunger Games does do the whole, 'could you imagine if this is real, what would you do if it was?' thing but so have many other films and I never once felt like this was somehow the better critique or the most topical, hell I don't really feel this has any more relevance than The Running Man did in the late 80s and I at least liked that film.

Plus the film seems to get more muted as the film progresses. Despite the horror on the characters faces in the first half, this all seems to vanish when the Games actually begin and it somehow stops feeling like as big a deal as it seemed to be set up as originally. This probably isn't helped by the films constant cut away's to the Gamemakers, this was an entire invention of the film and it is no surprise that it doesn't work. I understand why the Gamemaker's are so nonchalant about what they are doing but it just makes the film feel like it's coming to an emotional halt every time it goes back to them, taking away the tension of the actual events.

This probably also isn't helped by choosing to centre the film around one central character, I felt a very similar problem in the book as I did the film. In a horror film, it makes sense to follow the kids because they have only one threat coming after them but The Hunger Games basically reverses that. Meaning that we know very little about any of characters and most of their actions happen off screen so none of the audience really get to feel a sense of threat or dread by their presence, if we got to see the villains gleefully running around the woods killing people, then it'd give them some weight when they pop up on screen to face our protagonists but as it stands Cato could have just been off jerking in a cave for all I know and that isn't scary. And with how so very bloated this film is, it really seems almost baffling that the film didn't share some of that time to the characters, to give them more of a sense of presence. You're a film, you can't hide behind a first person narrative.


Probably the worst part of the Hunger Games is its pacing. It has real Twilight syndrome when it comes to pacing, despite being a long two and a half hour slog, it still feels for the most part like it's moving way too fast. How does both this and Twilight manage to both feel rushed and yet still nothing actually happens? The film has lass than half an hour of exposition until Katniss is whisked off to The Hunger Games preparations and sure that is what the film is called but they could have spent more time setting the scene. Then when the Hunger Games finally starts, aside from a few key moments, it basically wastes an hour of screen time on shots of Katniss running in a forest and then skims over all the important details we need to appreciate the key moments. All this generates is an emotional detachment, although I can appreciate the horror of the situation  we know so little about anyone I in turn don't really care about anyone. So sure you can appreciate their actions and their heroism but that doesn't make you appreciate them as people. You would think with the choice to centre it around Katniss, rather than the games in general, it'd give her time to flesh out and it doesn't. We know very little more about her than we do any of the other contestants.

Honestly it's hard to appreciate anything with the way the film speeds passed. The Hunger Games could have had a fascinating universe, like the stuff about trying to generate a fanbase to please to get ahead in the games, that is a really interest idea. With the way internet fandoms are going, this may well be the future. That goes for a lot of things, I mean could you imagine how poignant The Reaping would be if we spent time showing our characters rising tension and fear? I mean it must be utterly terrifying, you would probably spend months leading up to it having sleepless nights but then this is just a part of daily life too, seeing the build up to this could have made this an epic moment...instead, it's just a bunch of people watching a bad film and then taking part in a raffle, for how it plays out. And as mentioned before, this issue stretches into the games and beyond.

One of the worst moments of this is a key character death nearly two hours into the film. All the construction is screaming at us 'IT'S SAD, FEEL SAD' but the person dying, the person getting this huge death sequence, was largely in the background of the film, if there at all, until about ten minutes previous and barely did anything in those ten minutes either. So the scene feels entirely flat and shallow beyond the general shock factor probably spawning from the characters age.

I mean it's well acted, don't get me wrong, the micro expressions Hutcherson pulls when he is picked and as he is driven away tell us so much more than the fucking film does but you need a solid character beneath that to really have any weight. The same goes for a lot of the more emotional moments too, although the chemistry is strong between the cast, the relationship beneath it is hollow. Deliberately,  in some cases but not really in the way they intended. That is the problem with this film, characters are defined by action and choices, not emotions, mannerisms or anything that really makes them feel like human beings, we aren't playing an RPG, this is a film, it needs to have characters.

The special effects in this are atrocious, overuse of CGI and green screening when the effect could be just as easily be done practically looks bad any way but when the CGI and green screens also look this cheap and unrealistic, constantly being assaulted by it just makes it like ten times worse. It's hard to believe this was made for seventy eight million.

It's easy to walk out of The Hunger Games thinking you've seen more than you really have. There are a few sequences which at the time make the film feel like it really has shined however watching it back again I forgot just how consistent the shaky cam was in reducing scenes to an incoherent blur. At first I simply assumed the shaky cam was used in action scenes to provide a feeling of intensity, panic and the other emotions swirling around the characters heads as they were literally scrambling for their lives. But then on this second and then my third viewing it began to become very clear that the reason the fight scenes are all one big incoherent blur, as if the camera is caught in some kind of whirlwind, is because the 12a rating means they can't really show anything. The book and the games demands something truly bloody and brutal, the 12a rating demands it be as kid friendly as possible without becoming a PG. That motion sickness is actually a giant piece of film censoring, disguised as something in the diegesis. This is interesting when an indie film tries to hide its budget and still provide set piece action but it really doesn't work the same when a big budget film is just trying to pathetically pander to as wide an audience as physically possible.

So do I recommend it? In a year where we had both Rise of The Guardians and ParaNorman, why would we even need this pile of garbage? If you've not seen it yet and were wondering whether to give it a go, don't and don't believe the hype.

Think About It!

-Locke