First Day of Discomfort

I talked in a previous post about The Hunger Games, both the book and the movie. Because I'm obsessed with the series (not really, I mean, the entire previous post was about how much I hate/want to take a broadsword to fan-girls/boys/gender-neutrals who take the source material too seriously), you guys get to have a full review of the movie! Congratulations! Woo! I know you don't care but I'm going to keep using exclamation points so that you'll think this is important and keep giving me attention! (But seriously, if no one is paying attention to me at any given moment, I revert to my true form as DJ Jazzy Jeff.)

Don't let this happen to me.

First, a quick, vague synopsis of the movie for anyone who has managed to steer clear of this particular phenomenon: The Hunger Games may or may not follow Katniss Everdeen, a sixteen-year-old girl who might lives in a dystopic future. Something might have happened in the past, and the area that used to be the grand ole' US of A could now be known as the Capitol and the 12 districts (the rest of the world either doesn't exist anymore or doesn't interact with this particular dystopia). The Capitol, due to the actions of the districts 74 years earlier, might possibly but probably not have created the Hunger Games--an gladiatorial event where each district sacrifices one boy and one girl to fight to the death for the entertainment of the whole of the country--to keep everyone in line. Katniss potentially becomes said female tribute after her sister is or is not drawn from the lottery and Katniss volunteers. What may or may not fictionally and theoretically follow is a literal (in the literal sense, not a figurative literal or even a concrete literal sense) blood bath, where we watch the games unfold and the children die.

The movie is a doubly troubling one to review, both because of I am so familiar with the source material and because of the emotions that the movie generates. As much of a stink as I made about obsession with source material before, it's still extremely difficult to separate what you expect the movie to do from what the movie actually ends up doing. Multiple times I found myself having to adjust to the movie's viewpoint and universe and pushing the book to the back of my mind. That being said, all of the changes that I saw were necessary shifts; the original events would not have been able to work as a direct translation from page to screen.

For those not familiar with it, the book is told entirely from Katniss's perspective. After several chapters, the reader starts to feel just as isolated as Katniss is (OR IS SHE?!?!?). Because the movie would become incredibly frustrating without either a) a voice-over of Katniss's thoughts or b) complete silence on the events as they unfold around her, the director and the screenwriter (who happened to also write the book) sacrifice--in a smart move--a bit of the isolation for a lot of the explanation. It's a move that takes a bit of the pressure off of Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and pushes some of the acting responsibilities to the supporting cast, but everyone steps up to the plate.

I can't call the acting flawless (mostly because of Josh Hutcherson's inability as Peeta to make me believe the majority of his emotions at any time he is on screen), but most everyone delivers. Lawrence is stunning and powerful in every scene, taking every trial and disaster truly affecting and heartbreaking. Other supporters, particularly Woody Harrelson (as her mentor, Haymitch) and a surprisingly effective Elizabeth Banks (as the annoyingly effervescent Effie Trinket), truly embody their characters and breathe just the perfect amount of comedic relief and connection to solid ground that a movie like this could easily lose.

The moral theme, one that tends to be either simplified or entirely lost in blockbusters like this, is strong but not forceful. In my film class we talked recently about reflexivity in film, or when a movie explicitly acknowledges the fact that it is a movie. I wouldn't say The Hunger Games goes that far, but it does take a few big steps in that direction, using its plot to show the moral bankruptcy that must exist for a populace to enjoy watching a bunch of children dying while showing us at the same time that we are, in fact, enjoying children dying. By placing the audience on the same level as the gluttonous Capitol, the movie reaches a level of directness that the book is unable to achieve: the bad guys are not just out there, we are the bad guys, and we need to feel as terrible about it as the movie makes us feel.

Visually, the movie is a treat as well, and not in a way that most summer movies would be. The cinematography is stunning, jarring when it needs to be but eerily still when the situation calls for it. One particular shot (which you can see in most of the trailers, so I don't count it as a spoiler) which shows Katniss's walk to the arena, flanked by two Peacekeeper guards, sticks in my mind just as clearly as the Curly Hill scene from Nightmare Before Christmas or the first shot of an eye opening on Lost. It's just that good.

That's not to say the movie is visually perfect, however. A bunch of the actual special effects leave something to be desired. There's a lot of work with fire in this movie, and it's pretty hit or miss. This can partly be chalked up to the descriptions in the book that, though they could not really be omitted from the movie for continuity's sake, don't really translate well from the descriptive to the visual. The movie succeeds in its realism, but its not-so-much realism (such as a dress that is wreathed in flames) looks almost comically out of place. Katniss's costumes (in both of their appearances supposed to be awe-inspiring and geniusly designed) are about as breathtaking as Papa Smurf.

'Sup.

Those isolated moments aside, the rest of the film shines and would be among the best I'd seen all year if it hadn't been for awards season (it doesn't exactly stand up to The Artist, but it isn't exactly meant to). I'd give it 3.5 out of 4, and seeing as in two days it made more money for its creating studio than any other film it had made, we can probably expect to see the final two installments in the series hitting theaters in the near future.

P.S. - My mother's friend brought up an interesting point about how unwatchable and unenjoyable the film is not just because it is violent because it is violent towards children. Although I didn't feel this way personally, I can see it being a problem. For me the violence served a purpose and was never glorified or excessively cruel. Never did a death seem trivial, and never was there too much gore to appreciate the harshness of the attacks.

I recently read a review here that disagrees with a lot that I've said, saying that the movie does not delve into its theme enough and does not inspire enough disturbance. The claim goes something like "more violence would have made this a truly great movie because I would have been extremely uncomfortable watching it instead of entertained". I entirely disagree, and I think that anything more would have been excessive. But I feel like that's kind of like saying asking a hit-and-run driver to run back over his victim because you enjoyed the first hit too much and you think the second time will make you really feel the right emotions.

Don't just keep driving, he's probably still alive in there.

Anyway, I disagree with him, and with the other side of the issue, but if you agree with either of them you are either a) slightly creepy and should get that looked at or b) probably not morally bankrupt like the rest of us. Either way, this movie might not be for you.

Edit: oopsie, missing paragraph in the middle replaced. Not sure how that happened. Stupid blogger (he said to pretend that it wasn't his own fault).

First Day of Hungry Gaming

As a self-proclaimed pop culture buff, any time a new franchise starts it's almost obligatory for me to give it a try. Things have reasons for becoming phenomenons, even if they are vapid, soulless adaptations of vapid, soulless writing (that was not a shot at Twilight, Edward, please don't bite me). Even the aforementioned series deserved a chance; I read the first book, attempted to begin the second, vomited, watched the first to movies, never stopped vomiting, and now I can mock them while being reassured to the fact that I know the source material. Name your franchise and I've at least sampled it. I'm obsessed with some (here's looking at you, Firefly, mon amour) and some I refuse to watch anymore because there's only so many brawling robots that one can take without wanting to see some actual acting ability.

That was all mostly just to establish my credibility. Even though I might look like a mild mannered 19-year-old college student with no actual use to the world, I'm actually a mild mannered 19-year-old college student who will appreciate your semi-obscure pop culture references and can give you his opinion on most movies, TV shows, comic books, comic book movies, comic book TV shows, books, movies based on books, TV shows based on books (why does the Vampire Diaries exist?) and any other permutations of hybrid culture that you'd like to hear.

But with great power must come great responsibility. There's a difference between knowing and revering the source material and using the source material as a broadsword to slice through the souls of the undeserving masses that have seen the movie and assume that it was so much better than the book could ever be.

"Frodo's a whiny douche, you say? FEEL THE WRATH OF MY SWORD."

Allow me to point out something that I feel should be painfully obvious to people: a book and a movie are not the same thing. When was the last time you went to watch a book or read a movie. Can you imagine how painfully boring those two activities would be? "Hey guys, let's go to the library so we can do some book-watching! I hear there's a new one on the top shelf that's a perfect example of how books gather dust! Let's go watch!" It'd be like if a movie was only as interesting as its subtitles or if everyone judged the books they read by their covers and nothing else.

You won't read him because he has a sad cover. He's sad because you won't read him. It's a vicious cycle.

There's an important distinction to be made between love of the book and love of the movie (or whatever the transition may be). Sure, the book was good and the movie was great or the book was great and the movie was good, or maybe they were both awful and you've just realized that you're Stephanie Meyer and you hate yourself, but the reason that you like one better is because they are fundamentally different things, and really only has a little bit to do with faithful to the source material or not.

Obviously I'm talking almost entirely about The Hunger Games now. If you somehow missed this particular pop culture phenomenon that is now the most successful opening weekend for a non-sequel, the biggest spring release, and after two days had already become the most successful movie for Lionsgate in the history of ever, The Hunger Games is a movie based on a book by Suzanne Collins that is currently making a run at the theaters right now. I'll probably do a full review of the movie later, but as of right now I'll leave it at I loved it and I highly recommend it to most people who love movies and hate feeling good about themselves.

"Children dying makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside!"

Here's my little anecdotal evidence that led me to write this article (there are some slight spoilers below, so beware):

As I was leaving the theater on Friday morning, thoroughly satisfied that I had seen all I the child killing and maiming action that I was due, there was one type of person that qualified as being annoying and deserving of a righteous broadswording, even more than the people who didn't like the movie when I did.

Peeta was too feeble. Not enough time was spent with Gale and Katniss together (Sidenote: anyone wearing a Team Gale or Team Peeta shirt will be broadsworded on sight). The ending was rushed. The Muttations didn't look human. Her dress was not nearly as fiery and magnificent as it should have been. Where was Madge? Darius? Why was there so much cutting away from the games to explain stuff when we already know it? Where did that riot scene come from, that wasn't in the books--oh dear god, shut up.

This happens legitimately every time a movie is adapted from the books. Remember Tom Bombadil? No? That's because he was dropped from The Fellowship of the Ring because a) he mattered zero to the plot and b) he was ridiculously bizarre. Nitpicking about every little thing that doesn't make the jump from the page to the screen is useless. Why? Because things that are on the page don't always make sense when they're on the screen. Have you even been reading this post? Imagine if Katniss had voice-overed the entire movie with her thoughts in an effort to be faithful to the book. I probably would have walked out of the theater after having to hear her whine about whether or not Peeta was truly on her side for the fifteenth time in two hours.

Every change from book to movie was, I thought, logical and served the purpose of what the movie was trying to say to the highest degree. Did Rue get less screen time than in the book? Sure. But the movie was two and a half hours long. You can't push it much farther than that without losing the attention of half of your audience. The pacing has to be precisely on target. That's not even to mention some of the problems that existed in the book; first person POV is always intensely unreliable, and Katniss often gave her input of the situation even when it was not honest even to herself. That can make for an annoying experience. The movie removed a lot of this flaw. Did it create other flaws in the process? Sure. No movie can be 100 percent perfect. There's no such thing as a movie on Rotten Tomatoes that 100 percent of the public (not the critics) liked, because, well, you can't please everyone. But The Hunger Games movie managed the impressive feat of shifting what worked in the book to something that works as a film, at least most of the time. You can't fault it for giving you something that you didn't expect. That's what we go to the movies for in the first place, isn't it? To be surprised?

Quick, name your favorite movie. It's probably Twilight, isn't it? Never mind. I guess that one can be surprising sometimes too.

HE'S STANDING RIGHT BEHIND YOU OH GOD.

My favorite movie is probably Children of Men by Alfonso Cuaron. The movie constantly defies expectations, killing off multiple characters early in the plot who seem like they should be more important than they are and producing shot after shot of unhappy, grim shots. Name any great movie and it doesn't stay on the path that you'd expect. Gandalf dies, the Wizard of Oz is a lying prick, Obadiah Stane is consorting with terrorists, the dog at the beginning of The Thing wants to eat your face. Anything we find enjoyable has to be different. So don't fault the movie for, y'know, actually being different in its efforts to entertain you. It's just doing its job.

That's not to say that there aren't of course, exceptions.

Nothing about this is acceptable.

But we can't judge a movie by its book's standard. If a movie isn't good, let it not be good. If a movie is great, it isn't just because of its source material. Get over yourselves, fangirls and fanboys. It doesn't matter who gave her the damn pin.