The False Peace of Dystopias: THE HUNGER GAMES (2012)

WORK HARDER
Maybe I could, bug I haven't so far. I needed to have rewatched this movie, and watched one other movie to finish the list over the weekend, but I didn't, instead I chose to play video games all day, not even video games that helped me with My Arcade either. So whatever, anyway, here it is, dystopia #4, the Hunger Games.

TITLE: The Hunger Games


SUMMARY:

Katniss Everdeen voluntarily takes her younger sister's place in the Hunger Games, a televised competition in which two teenagers from each of the twelve Districts of Panem are chosen at random to fight to the death.

PERSONAL CRITIQUE:

This is, despite my prejudice against teen novels, a pretty good movie, good enough to attach me to the series and make me want to watch the rest. It's a little late, I'll grant you, but not as late as some of my others. We've got characters that are pretty well developed, in a setting that definitely has a plot boiling in it, although in the first movie we don't get exposed to all of that. It does exactly what the first movie in a series ought to do, introduce us to characters, and set the setting. 

We are introduced to our heroine Katniss Everdeen, who will evolve into memetic perfection with the one scene that makes this character:

She sacrifices herself to save her little sister from the horror of this dystopian world, the titular competition that rules the peace of the world, the Hunger Games, 24 children enter, one (or two) child leaves, and that is what the remainder of the movie centers around, her and her potential boyfriend entering the Hunger Games and surviving. No, no spoiler alert there, because there are four movies, and she is on the cover of the last one at the very least, so you know she survives. 

Good, well-fleshed-out setting, decent characters, and Haymitch, as portrayed by Woody Harrelson. I love this character, their alcoholic mentor who somehow survived the Hunger Games previously. He's fantastic and basically made the movies for me. That and the violence. The violence makes it even more bearable. 

RATING:

Nine out of Ten child tributes would give this movie Three mockingjay pins out of Five.

I said I enjoyed the movie enough to watch the sequels, but that doesn't actually take much. Sure it was a good, popular movie, but it's far from the best. Enjoy it if you watch it, if you don't, you can just watch any other teen novel movie recently made.