Wednesday this week was an extremely busy day for me. Well not just me but Shorty too. The night before she stayed back at work and came home for dinner only about 10.30PM, only to head back to the office first thing next morning. One thing she knew she didn’t want to miss though was the screening of Hunger Games that we had on Wednesday night.
If you haven’t seen my previous entry on The Hunger Games, you can check out the trailer here.
I had checked Rottentomatoes.com the night before and Hunger Games rated 91% with critics and98% of audiences loving it. That’s friggin high.
Shorty ended up having to work pretty late though, so dinner for her was some food I took away in this little plastic container. I took this picture of her eating takeaway like a boss on the way up to the cinema.
The movie though… was worth every bit of anticipation. In fact now that I’ve seen the full movie, I think they not only made the perfect movie but the perfect trailer too. The trailer showed exactly what the movie was about but didn’t give away any details on how the games actually were.
So what is The Hunger Games about?
It’s set in the future in a country called Panem which has a rich Capitol and 12 other poorer surrounding districts. In the years before, the surrounding districts had waged a rebellion against the Capitol which the Capitol won. So as a reminder of the pain that war causes the Capitol hosts this huge yearly event called the Hunger Games where each District would randomly pick and send one male and one female between the age of 12-18 into a huge jungle arena where they would fight to the death. The last man (or woman) standing will be promised freedom and riches.
What I thought about the movie?
I think we live in a time where movies with good special effects don’t necessarily come with a good plot or story. Like I love Avatar for how beautifully made and entertaining the movie was but the story is predictable from the start. You also never really fall in love or form a personal bond with any of the main characters. The same goes for Transformers. We know what the story is about. Decepticons want to destroy Earth and we know at the end, the good guys (Autobots) will prevail. Transformers and Avatar are still great movies and among my favourites. But what would a movie with good special effects and a good story be like?
The answer to that in my opinion is in The Hunger Games. The whole story evokes lots of emotion in me. Laughter, relief, sadness, suspense and it made me think about how it is that humans have a natural or unnatural love for violence even if it comes at the expense of others. Why do horror movies for example do so well sometimes? Today we’re disgusted when we’re told about how Gladiators fought to their deaths in the Colloseum in Ancient Rome as a crowd cheered on but who knows that could come back to modern society one day.
Throughout the whole movie though Shorty and I felt terrible for the people who were selected for The Hunger Games. The story and the themes behind The Hunger Games isn’t all that make it a great movie. It’s the characters.
When the main characters came on screen, the honest truth is that I had an initial dislike for all of them. As the movie went on though, that dislike faded away. By the end of it you’ll find yourself emotionally attached to the main characters.
The movie does remind me of that Japanese movie that came out many years back. Even saw this article that compared both the movies (without giving away spoilers) and I think it sums it up really well.
Unlike Battle Royale though, one thing I like about The Hunger Games is that it didn’t find the need to take advantage of the violence in this movie to make it gory or gross to watch. I know there’s an audience that loves that but gore makes even me feel uncomfortable sometimes and I found Hunger Games to be fairly tolerable on the gore.
I loved this movie… and I gotta thank Stephanie from NEF for engaging me and giving me the opportunity to watch and write about it. After watching this, Shorty told me that she was going to read the book too.
This is one movie you guys have to watch. If you don’t believe me… then believe both the critics and the audience at Rottentomatoes.com.
I really hope they make the sequels Catching Fire and Mockingjay.
PS: Oh btw…. Lenny Kravitz has a part in the movie too. HAHA!