Some thoughts on The Hunger Games, the movie this time

Once I'd finished writing up my thoughts about the Hunger Games books, I went ahead and watched the movie. I have to say I wasn't overly impressed.

The major flaw of the movie is the same one I see in a lot of movies based on books: The movie never felt like a coherent story of its own, it was just the book on super duper fast-forward. Most of the important bits from the book are there, in some form, but they've been trimmed for time almost to the point of losing their meaning, and they go by so quickly that I have no idea how anyone who hasn't read the book will have any clue what's going on. All the scenes are there but nothing gets the time or attention it deserves. The entire alliance with Rue lasts ten minutes onscreen. The time Katniss and Peeta spend in the cave is just over nine minutes. The fire attack is less than one. Scene after scene it's the same thing: get the gist of it onscreen and then move on to the next one.

The loss of Katniss's internal monologue really hurts the story as well. So much of what's going on is only going on in her head, how she's feeling, what she's planning, especially in the arena where there can be no external dialogue because she's trying to hide silently. There's no real way around that when you're turning a first person narrative into a movie, but it still hurt the story. The filmmakers efforts to mimic the first-person perspective consisted mainly of trying to confuse the audience in a few places when Katniss was confused: Blurring the shot when she's knocked out by the explosion, or using extreme-closeup shakycam to turn a fight or a run through the woods into an incomprehensible mess.

One advantage to ditching the first-person is that the movie can have scenes that aren't from Katniss's perspective, and does so to great effect. There are several scenes between Gamemaker Seneca Crane and President Snow, and scenes in the Gamemakers' control room, that help move the story along. And a scene from District 11 after Rue dies that helps setup the situation we'll find there during the victory tour in Catching Fire. Several times the movie cuts away to Caesar Flickerman hosting the coverage of the Games so he can supply the audience with information that came from Katniss's internal thoughts in the book.

The filmmakers captured the look and feel of the world very well, I thought. District 12 looked wonderfully drab, except of course for the three incredibly beautiful movie stars who live there. The Capitol was a bit of a mixed bag, the first shots of it, the long view from the train and the shots of people in the streets, weren't as impressive as I was looking for, but the interior shots in various buildings looked very good. The arena looked good as well.

The acting was another mixed bag. I thought Jennifer Lawrence was good as Katniss, she communicated Katniss's mental state in a way that helped make up for the lost internal monologue. Josh Hutcherson is very bland as Peeta. Liam Hemsworth doesn't really do much more than pout a lot as Gale. The supporting cast is better: Woody Harrelson is very good as Haymitch, though the movie doesn't really touch on the more serious sides of his character. Lenny Kravitz is good as Cinna, for the minute or so he's on screen. Donald Sutherland is sufficiently creepy and slimy as President Snow.

Overall, while there were things I liked about the movie, it skipped so quickly through almost everything it did that it was ultimately unsatisfying. Though I see it made $155 million dollars this weekend, so what the fuck do I know?

Final grade: B-