Saw The Hunger Games yesterday
Mar. 24th, 2012 07:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulyIt wasn't a half-bad movie, though it was awfully long.
Because I've read the books, a lot of what I'm going to say has to do with the differences between the books and the movie. After thinking it over, I think for the most part the reason behind most of the differences is because, watching the movie, there is no voiceover. The books, as you know, are filled with Katniss making cynically snarky little commentary on every aspect of her life.
This serves two purposes. First of all, her attitude helps lighten the fact that it's all a bunch of child-killing (even if most of those kids are annoying teenagers) and secondly, it provides lots and lots of nifty exposition in easy-to-manage chunks! (Of course, some people can't stand all the whining, which is a perfectly valid viewpoint. Me, I think as a teenage girl in a dystopia she's entitled to a little whining, but I can understand if you don't want to read it.)
Dropping it isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that there are a lot of scenes in the book that simply won't make sense because we don't have the context. And if the context can't be provided in another way, it makes sense to drop those scenes altogether. The rest of the cut scenes probably had more to do with the movie's length than anything else. As it is, it was a very long movie.
There are a lot of different lists of changes between book and movie online. The most comprehensive is probably the one at the wiki, but they don't give any commentary and, frankly, even by the standards of group projects it's pretty badly designed. The book and movie lists aren't aligned neatly, so that by a few entries down they don't match up at ALL; they are, as noted, in no particular order, so it's hard to find out if a particular change is mentioned; and as a result of the first two reasons several scenes are mentioned twice. Sheesh.
But anyway, my entry is probably a little redundant, but that's all right because I want to type it anyway. I'll only focus on what caught my attention, instead of trying to be totally comprehensive.
1. We don't get much of Katniss' backstory, nor much idea of how life goes in the districts. We don't hear Rue talk about life back home (nor hear Katniss comment about how she thought life was bad in HER district, but at least nobody was shooting children there!), we don't know what the deal is with the whole Peeta-throwing-bread scene (that's really not made as clear as it should've been, and she flashes back to it several times), we don't know about the starvation that made Katniss go out hunting, nor about how she became friends with Gale that way, nor about how her father taught her survival skills, nor about how there's a divide between the blond town people and the black-haired Seam people.
All this would've taken time to set up, and as it is it takes a long time to get to the games part of the movie. Some of these changes I would rather have kept anyway. I would've preferred a little more about the bread scene, and I felt that Rue needed more scenes than she got.
2. We don't know about the Capitol-encouraged distrust and divide between the folks from the town and from the Seam at all, and scenes that have anything to do with this are cut. Madge as a character is entirely cut, so the pin is given first to Prim from Katniss, with a meaning attached to it, and then back to Katniss from Prim. It's also snuck into the arena, nobody mentions tokens or anything like that. The Reaping doesn't have anybody arguing with Katniss about waiting until it's time for volunteers, and therefore the Mayor doesn't have to show any sympathy and go "Oh, no, in this case...." and all. That scene humanizes the Mayor and, by extension, every relatively privileged member of the town. Without the mutual distrust, we don't need it.
3. Nobody explains the origin of the mockingjay. They could be an actual species for all we know! It would've been the matter of two minutes for Katniss to tell her sister, while giving her the pin in that scene change, why mockingjays are special. That should have stayed in the movie because it really helps explain why it becomes a powerful symbol. A trap for the districts being used against the Capitol, and then surviving and thriving after being left out to die? That should've been in the movie.
4. We don't get the fancy meals they eat, nor commentary on table manners. Effie manages to come out as far less casually rude and offensive as she was in the book. This is probably for the best. We also don't get as much commentary on the costuming process, and in the movie it's Peeta's idea to hold hands and there's no comment about how terrified they were of burning up. We're not told or shown that the other tributes don't hold hands and why that makes a difference. That strikes me as a bigger change than it seems, but I'm not sure I can work out why.
5. All the best lines in the movie go to Haymitch and Effie. In the book, Katniss gets the best lines, but that's because we're inside her head. No voiceover means no snarky commentary. Not much to be said about this.
6. The Avox storyline is cut completely. I'm okay with this, it would've taken up a lot of time and not really added much to the movie. It can go in the second one.
7. Instead of sending Katniss bread after she grieves for Rue, District 11 riots.
On the one hand, I totally see why this happened. Even had they sent her a note in the bread reading "For Rue - District 11", the full impact of a DIFFERENT district sending her a gift would've been lost, and nowhere did they stop to explain that gifts cost more money the further in the games you are. Plus, they didn't really explain why trying to bury Rue was such a meaningful act, that normally you abandon a body and the Capitol removes it once you're out of range. So sending her a bit of bread would not have made the impact that rioting did.
However, it absolutely is going to change the tone of District 11 in the second book. I'm not really sure if the change is good or bad.
8. The strategy behind rankings is never explained, so Katniss' high ranking is seen and presented as only a good thing. Nobody mentions that they might have been trying to screw her over for her little stunt by making her the target of every other person in the arena.
9. Foxface kinda got screwed. Not in the sense that she died, of course. I mean, she died in the book, and like always, I magically transported her in my mind to the place where ALL dead characters go and live out their lives in happiness if I happened to like them. (No really. That's how I avoid crying over books, I send dead characters to another planet, nice and safe. Of course, they can't go back home because that'd ruin the story, but what can you do?)
No, I mean that without Katniss' commentary she's not a person, she's just a plot device. In the book, I kinda liked her. Sure, Katniss was right never to ally with her - she'd have been stabbed in the back as soon as she turned it. But I always got the feeling that in a different situation, they could've gotten along nicely. Foxface seemed to have a sensible and pragmatic attitude towards survival, and she could've won that thing.
But in the movie, despite her scenes all being faithfully shown, she's kinda... useless. She shows Katniss that the food is boobytrapped, but the way it was set up made that very obvious to the viewer in a way it wasn't in the book. She hid in the cornucopia (although they apparently had the bags sitting there all night instead of appearing in the morning, making this make a LOT less sense) but without Katniss going "HELL! How smart was that? *I* should've done that!" the reaction from the people next to me was "What was that? Huh?" instead of "Wow, that's who she should be watching out for." She stole the berries and died, giving Katniss her bright idea, but it was almost the first we knew how clever she was in the movie, where in the book it was a given.
It's not really a big thing, I mean, the girl never shows up again in Katniss' thoughts, it's not like she regrets her inevitable death, but... I just felt that if they weren't going to use her as more than a plot device, they could've rewritten the whole thing to cut her out entirely. Plus they would've made the movie a little shorter.
10. Cato doesn't have that invincibility armor and he dies a lot faster. It's more of a psychological mercy kill, then, instead of a physical one. Katniss isn't saving him from several more hours of dying, she's saving him from a few more minutes of dying under the realization that his life's work was useless and pointless from the start. But it would've been hard to manage that without a voiceover, so again... yeah.
There also were some additions to the movie, and on the whole I liked them.
First, Rue got an extra few seconds of scene time when she stole a knife and hid in the ceiling with it. She started a fight, and the only people to see her were Katniss and Thresh. This gave an easier-to-film way to show her climbing skills than having her swinging around in treetops, and it helped show why she glommed onto Katniss so strongly. Katniss was the only person who saw her who didn't already know her.
Secondly, because we weren't trapped in first person narration, we got to see a lot of scenes of the capitol, of District 12 (and one of 11, the riot), of Haymitch getting sponsors, of the commentary of the Hunger Games on TV, of President Snow and so on.
Not only did this help manage some of the exposition lost when we lost Katniss' thoughts (that's how they explain about tracker jackers, though they do NOT explain why tracker jackers exist (to punish the Districts), just what they do) but it also helps show some of the decadence of the capitol, the depth of Gale's reactions, the scariness of Snow, and the awesomeness of Seneca Crane's beard.
On the whole, I think the movie wasn't that bad. I do prefer the book, but I usually prefer the book, so that's no surprise.
A few more, non-spoilery thoughts about watching the movie in a theater:
1. There was an ad for IE prior to the movie. God, Microsoft must find that humiliating to have to advertise their product!
2. I was stuck sitting in a group of gigglers who apparently have no patience for love triangles. Fair enough, but giggling every time there was a Gale reaction shot was a bit much.
3. I was also sitting directly in front of some commenters. Now, I'm all for snarky commentary during a movie, but it has to be interesting. If all you're doing is saying things like "Oh no. Oh no. Oh no" you can do us a favor and shut up, shut up, shut up. And as for the person who decided Rue's death was THE time to start rummaging through her popcorn bag? I don't even know what to SAY to that.
4. Apparently they're coming out with Titanic in 3D in April, presumably to coincide with the anniversary of the crash. Do we really need this?
5. Also, do we really need a new Spiderman origin-story film? REALLY?
Because I've read the books, a lot of what I'm going to say has to do with the differences between the books and the movie. After thinking it over, I think for the most part the reason behind most of the differences is because, watching the movie, there is no voiceover. The books, as you know, are filled with Katniss making cynically snarky little commentary on every aspect of her life.
This serves two purposes. First of all, her attitude helps lighten the fact that it's all a bunch of child-killing (even if most of those kids are annoying teenagers) and secondly, it provides lots and lots of nifty exposition in easy-to-manage chunks! (Of course, some people can't stand all the whining, which is a perfectly valid viewpoint. Me, I think as a teenage girl in a dystopia she's entitled to a little whining, but I can understand if you don't want to read it.)
Dropping it isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that there are a lot of scenes in the book that simply won't make sense because we don't have the context. And if the context can't be provided in another way, it makes sense to drop those scenes altogether. The rest of the cut scenes probably had more to do with the movie's length than anything else. As it is, it was a very long movie.
There are a lot of different lists of changes between book and movie online. The most comprehensive is probably the one at the wiki, but they don't give any commentary and, frankly, even by the standards of group projects it's pretty badly designed. The book and movie lists aren't aligned neatly, so that by a few entries down they don't match up at ALL; they are, as noted, in no particular order, so it's hard to find out if a particular change is mentioned; and as a result of the first two reasons several scenes are mentioned twice. Sheesh.
But anyway, my entry is probably a little redundant, but that's all right because I want to type it anyway. I'll only focus on what caught my attention, instead of trying to be totally comprehensive.
1. We don't get much of Katniss' backstory, nor much idea of how life goes in the districts. We don't hear Rue talk about life back home (nor hear Katniss comment about how she thought life was bad in HER district, but at least nobody was shooting children there!), we don't know what the deal is with the whole Peeta-throwing-bread scene (that's really not made as clear as it should've been, and she flashes back to it several times), we don't know about the starvation that made Katniss go out hunting, nor about how she became friends with Gale that way, nor about how her father taught her survival skills, nor about how there's a divide between the blond town people and the black-haired Seam people.
All this would've taken time to set up, and as it is it takes a long time to get to the games part of the movie. Some of these changes I would rather have kept anyway. I would've preferred a little more about the bread scene, and I felt that Rue needed more scenes than she got.
2. We don't know about the Capitol-encouraged distrust and divide between the folks from the town and from the Seam at all, and scenes that have anything to do with this are cut. Madge as a character is entirely cut, so the pin is given first to Prim from Katniss, with a meaning attached to it, and then back to Katniss from Prim. It's also snuck into the arena, nobody mentions tokens or anything like that. The Reaping doesn't have anybody arguing with Katniss about waiting until it's time for volunteers, and therefore the Mayor doesn't have to show any sympathy and go "Oh, no, in this case...." and all. That scene humanizes the Mayor and, by extension, every relatively privileged member of the town. Without the mutual distrust, we don't need it.
3. Nobody explains the origin of the mockingjay. They could be an actual species for all we know! It would've been the matter of two minutes for Katniss to tell her sister, while giving her the pin in that scene change, why mockingjays are special. That should have stayed in the movie because it really helps explain why it becomes a powerful symbol. A trap for the districts being used against the Capitol, and then surviving and thriving after being left out to die? That should've been in the movie.
4. We don't get the fancy meals they eat, nor commentary on table manners. Effie manages to come out as far less casually rude and offensive as she was in the book. This is probably for the best. We also don't get as much commentary on the costuming process, and in the movie it's Peeta's idea to hold hands and there's no comment about how terrified they were of burning up. We're not told or shown that the other tributes don't hold hands and why that makes a difference. That strikes me as a bigger change than it seems, but I'm not sure I can work out why.
5. All the best lines in the movie go to Haymitch and Effie. In the book, Katniss gets the best lines, but that's because we're inside her head. No voiceover means no snarky commentary. Not much to be said about this.
6. The Avox storyline is cut completely. I'm okay with this, it would've taken up a lot of time and not really added much to the movie. It can go in the second one.
7. Instead of sending Katniss bread after she grieves for Rue, District 11 riots.
On the one hand, I totally see why this happened. Even had they sent her a note in the bread reading "For Rue - District 11", the full impact of a DIFFERENT district sending her a gift would've been lost, and nowhere did they stop to explain that gifts cost more money the further in the games you are. Plus, they didn't really explain why trying to bury Rue was such a meaningful act, that normally you abandon a body and the Capitol removes it once you're out of range. So sending her a bit of bread would not have made the impact that rioting did.
However, it absolutely is going to change the tone of District 11 in the second book. I'm not really sure if the change is good or bad.
8. The strategy behind rankings is never explained, so Katniss' high ranking is seen and presented as only a good thing. Nobody mentions that they might have been trying to screw her over for her little stunt by making her the target of every other person in the arena.
9. Foxface kinda got screwed. Not in the sense that she died, of course. I mean, she died in the book, and like always, I magically transported her in my mind to the place where ALL dead characters go and live out their lives in happiness if I happened to like them. (No really. That's how I avoid crying over books, I send dead characters to another planet, nice and safe. Of course, they can't go back home because that'd ruin the story, but what can you do?)
No, I mean that without Katniss' commentary she's not a person, she's just a plot device. In the book, I kinda liked her. Sure, Katniss was right never to ally with her - she'd have been stabbed in the back as soon as she turned it. But I always got the feeling that in a different situation, they could've gotten along nicely. Foxface seemed to have a sensible and pragmatic attitude towards survival, and she could've won that thing.
But in the movie, despite her scenes all being faithfully shown, she's kinda... useless. She shows Katniss that the food is boobytrapped, but the way it was set up made that very obvious to the viewer in a way it wasn't in the book. She hid in the cornucopia (although they apparently had the bags sitting there all night instead of appearing in the morning, making this make a LOT less sense) but without Katniss going "HELL! How smart was that? *I* should've done that!" the reaction from the people next to me was "What was that? Huh?" instead of "Wow, that's who she should be watching out for." She stole the berries and died, giving Katniss her bright idea, but it was almost the first we knew how clever she was in the movie, where in the book it was a given.
It's not really a big thing, I mean, the girl never shows up again in Katniss' thoughts, it's not like she regrets her inevitable death, but... I just felt that if they weren't going to use her as more than a plot device, they could've rewritten the whole thing to cut her out entirely. Plus they would've made the movie a little shorter.
10. Cato doesn't have that invincibility armor and he dies a lot faster. It's more of a psychological mercy kill, then, instead of a physical one. Katniss isn't saving him from several more hours of dying, she's saving him from a few more minutes of dying under the realization that his life's work was useless and pointless from the start. But it would've been hard to manage that without a voiceover, so again... yeah.
There also were some additions to the movie, and on the whole I liked them.
First, Rue got an extra few seconds of scene time when she stole a knife and hid in the ceiling with it. She started a fight, and the only people to see her were Katniss and Thresh. This gave an easier-to-film way to show her climbing skills than having her swinging around in treetops, and it helped show why she glommed onto Katniss so strongly. Katniss was the only person who saw her who didn't already know her.
Secondly, because we weren't trapped in first person narration, we got to see a lot of scenes of the capitol, of District 12 (and one of 11, the riot), of Haymitch getting sponsors, of the commentary of the Hunger Games on TV, of President Snow and so on.
Not only did this help manage some of the exposition lost when we lost Katniss' thoughts (that's how they explain about tracker jackers, though they do NOT explain why tracker jackers exist (to punish the Districts), just what they do) but it also helps show some of the decadence of the capitol, the depth of Gale's reactions, the scariness of Snow, and the awesomeness of Seneca Crane's beard.
On the whole, I think the movie wasn't that bad. I do prefer the book, but I usually prefer the book, so that's no surprise.
A few more, non-spoilery thoughts about watching the movie in a theater:
1. There was an ad for IE prior to the movie. God, Microsoft must find that humiliating to have to advertise their product!
2. I was stuck sitting in a group of gigglers who apparently have no patience for love triangles. Fair enough, but giggling every time there was a Gale reaction shot was a bit much.
3. I was also sitting directly in front of some commenters. Now, I'm all for snarky commentary during a movie, but it has to be interesting. If all you're doing is saying things like "Oh no. Oh no. Oh no" you can do us a favor and shut up, shut up, shut up. And as for the person who decided Rue's death was THE time to start rummaging through her popcorn bag? I don't even know what to SAY to that.
4. Apparently they're coming out with Titanic in 3D in April, presumably to coincide with the anniversary of the crash. Do we really need this?
5. Also, do we really need a new Spiderman origin-story film? REALLY?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-03-26 09:57 am (UTC)2) I felt that their explanation of fox face's death was lacking - the book specifically explained the reasons behind why it was that she had made the mistakes she did in spite of her having been so clever, and the movie simply didn't.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-26 02:30 pm (UTC)The Latest Spectacle
Date: 2012-03-26 07:17 pm (UTC)