Hunger Games

I'm a week behind but I want to comment on the Hunger Games. I went last night to watch the movie. My plan was to go the opening weekend, but my cousin's plan was to read the book the week after opening weekend. Who could deny her the opportunity to read the book? So I waited. I was so so excited to see the movie! I heard an entire week of people raving about it and I wanted to see it. I'll be honest, the books kept me up until the wee hours of the night and I wanted to see how they would turn this compelling story into a movie. It had been ages since I had been pulled into a book and willingly allowed myself to stay up until 3am reading a book.

The movie, while good, did not live up to my expectations. Expectations is probably not the right word. I expected the movie to not be as good as the book because movies never are as good as books. However, Harry Potter did a fairly good job so I thought that this might be a similar situation. Boy was I wrong. I left the theatre incredibly disappointed. Where was the details of relationships? The first book develops a lot of the characters, their history, their situation, the history of the country, etc. This did not happen at all in the movie. I almost felt like they producer assumed you had read the book. I was so disappointed! I also really wanted to see the Capitol's costumes more- the cinematography was used in a creative way to show the main character's emotions and thoughts but that also meant taking away from the viewer's ability to really soak up all the details of the costumes. I mean, who wouldn't want to stare at these crazy outfits- right?!

(Image from thehungergames.wikia.com/wiki/The_Capitol).


On a positive note, they did a really good job at keeping the violence to a minimum, which I appreciate. This is a violent book and series and therefore the movies could have been ten times more violent but they were not. If anything, I think the books were more violent than movie- which is incredible! I also left the theatre wanting to re-read the book again. So perhaps that is also a positive thing.

So to summarize my post. If you have not read the book and have not seen the movie, read the book first. If you have seen the movie but not read the book, read the book! If you have read the book and are planning on seeing the film, walk into it knowing you will be disappointed.

My friend posted an interesting critique about the book from an author's perspective. I found it helpful because she was able to articulate my feelings towards the book. You can find it here.

Over and out.