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.