The Hunger Games

The basics 

The Hunger Games is a bestselling book by American author Suzanne Collins and is the first in the ‘The Hunger Games trilogy’. The book came out in 2008 and was made in to a film in 2012, which was Directed by Gary Ross. This film is about oppression, survival, punishment, love and the entertainment industry.

What is this film about?

After a great rebellion in nation of Panem, the government devised away to instill fear in to the public, keep them oppressed, to punish them for the crimes of the past and to make a good TV show out of it too. What they created was the hunger games. The hunger game is where they pick one boy and one girl (aged 12 to 18) from each of the 12 districts to come to the capital and be forced to fight to the death in there outside arena, where there can only be one winner. We join this world in the impoverished district 12 as it starts to get ready for the 74th annual Hunger Games and we start to follow are heroine Katniss Everdeen, as she has just volunteered for these brutal games to spare her younger sister. 

My views on it

From the start of this film it sets out to be very good I must admit, the camera work is great, the mise-en-scene good, the acting is very well and so on. So what I am trying to say it ticks all the boxes. But the best thing for me is how they present the unlucky ones who are involved in the game. As soon as they are picked from random they enter this new world and gain celebrity status. They are soon eating the best food, given make overs and are appearing on TV talk shows. Each of them also try to gain as much popularity as they can due to the fact it will be beneficial for them and help them get sponsors. This for me brings a new depth into the game, it’s becomes not just about who is the strongest or who’s is  the fastest but who is the most popular and who can put on the best show for the public as well. This also gives a good reflection on celebrity culture nowadays, how people with no talent can be on reality TV shows like Big Brother and how being popular can sometimes be more helpful in shows like the X Factor then talent itself.

Like I have said this film has a lot going for it and I could keep going on and big it up more but where’s the fun in that, it has some big flaws too and these start to come about when the game itself begins. For a film that is based around a game where 24 teenagers have to kill each other, the violence and the action is very poor. This is all due to the film being made to be a 12A, so it can get a bigger audience. Because of this the film isn’t able to deliver on one of its key elements and this goes on to effect other things as well. Due to the action being weak it makes the game a lot less dramatic and less intense then it should be. It ruins the atmosphere and this once interesting and clever film starts to become a bit childish.

One of the other major problems is that we don’t get to know the other teenagers (beside the two from district 12) in the games that much. We only meet about half of them and the half we do see we don’t get to know that well. Due to this, there deaths in the game become almost redundant, as you don’t have enough time to connect with them, it’s hard to care if they live or die really.  Also it does not set up very well, if we did take an interest there characters, how we should feel about their deaths. The film doses try to set up one of the teenagers as a villain and one as being sweet and nice but there characters are so weak it doesn’t work. So we only take an interest in the two main teenagers from district 12 and the rest are just plainly boring cannon fodder to keep the story moving.

So for me this is a film of two half, the first half is great but as soon as the game begins its starts to go downhill and fast. But I would have to say I did still enjoy it and I will be there in the cinema for when the next one is released.

Favourite Quote 

Haymitch Abernathy: Look at you! You just killed... a place mat!

Rating 3/5