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Re: Do we still do movie threads here? Hunger Games - Trailer + Casting
Saw it last night, have not read the book. Overall thought it was worth seeing, but pretty average and far short of its potential. Really liked most of the actors (Jennifer Lawrence was obv fantastic), although I thought Woody Harrelson came off as a bit of a clown at times. Also thought the game itself was very intense and am surprised people said they lost interest there.
Some problems I had with it (I guess spoilers are standard here?):
Spoiler:
-Shaky camera. Not terrible when ur doing the confusion of the start of the games, but really bad when its just some coal miners going home from work.
-Peeta could have been explained better. I had to sort of choose my own adventure to fill in his character arc from the start of the game to kat finding him playing rock. With all that time in the cave together, you'd think he could have mentioned what happened.
-Hated the way most of the other contestants were written. Everyone was either a good guy on team Kat, a flat bad guy from D 1-2 with no redeeming qualities at all, or a rando who was insta-killed. The exception to this could have been Thresh, but instead of having him encounter Kat again they take the easy way out and kill him with dogs.
-On that note, I thought it was a cop-out that Kat never has to deal with any randos. Basically she's a moral character, but thats only interesting if you put her in situations where she's faced with an ethical dilemma. Meeting up with thresh again, or having to fight the red-headed chick or the boy guarding the supplies would have put her in some tough, interesting positions. Instead, any time she's about to make a hard decision, something magical happens to take it out of her hands.
-Also hated the ending. The dogs are anti-climactic, but whatever. Cato's death speech, though, was really awkwardly written, poorly delivered, came from nowhere, and was entirely unneccessary.
Re: Do we still do movie threads here? Hunger Games - Trailer + Casting
Quote:
Originally Posted by lycosid
Saw it last night, have not read the book. Overall thought it was worth seeing, but pretty average and far short of its potential. Really liked most of the actors (Jennifer Lawrence was obv fantastic), although I thought Woody Harrelson came off as a bit of a clown at times. Also thought the game itself was very intense and am surprised people said they lost interest there.
Some problems I had with it (I guess spoilers are standard here?):
Spoiler:
-Shaky camera. Not terrible when ur doing the confusion of the start of the games, but really bad when its just some coal miners going home from work.
-Peeta could have been explained better. I had to sort of choose my own adventure to fill in his character arc from the start of the game to kat finding him playing rock. With all that time in the cave together, you'd think he could have mentioned what happened.
-Hated the way most of the other contestants were written. Everyone was either a good guy on team Kat, a flat bad guy from D 1-2 with no redeeming qualities at all, or a rando who was insta-killed. The exception to this could have been Thresh, but instead of having him encounter Kat again they take the easy way out and kill him with dogs.
-On that note, I thought it was a cop-out that Kat never has to deal with any randos. Basically she's a moral character, but thats only interesting if you put her in situations where she's faced with an ethical dilemma. Meeting up with thresh again, or having to fight the red-headed chick or the boy guarding the supplies would have put her in some tough, interesting positions. Instead, any time she's about to make a hard decision, something magical happens to take it out of her hands.
-Also hated the ending. The dogs are anti-climactic, but whatever. Cato's death speech, though, was really awkwardly written, poorly delivered, came from nowhere, and was entirely unneccessary.
book spoilers
Spoiler:
I think all they needed for the Peeta situation to be a little more obvious was to have a shot of him fighting with Cato to help Kat escape after she dropped the wasps on everyone. That's what happened in the book. That's how he got the leg wound. I don't know if they ever explained how he got such a bad wound and still managed to get away, but a reader could make the leap that he managed to get away because of the effects of the hallucinations that the tracker jacker venom causes (everyone involved got stung a few times).
I know the team Kat vs. not team Kat feels contrived, but I don't think Katniss would ever kill those other kids in cold blood so...{shrug} Let's imagine a situation where Kat and Rue are the only two left. Those two aren't going to kill each other. The game masters would have to throw something at them and risk killing them both, but that's the only way the game ends. They aren't going to kill each other. She and Peeta aren't going to kill each other (though Peeta might kill himself so that Kat could win). She's only going to kill people who are posing an immediate threat to herself or someone she cares about--and she's going to feel guilty about even that.
In the book, Cato killed Thresh. He chased him after Thresh killed Clove and they had a battle which the reader wasn't privy to.
Also in the book, Cato's present from the gamemakers was a suit of armor to deflect Kat's arrows which allowed the mutts to munch on him for quite a while before Katniss finally put him out of his misery with the last arrow she had left. Peeta was bleeding to death from his leg wound and if she missed, it was likely he might die before the dogs finished off Cato and ended the game.
There was a good scene in the book where the gamemakers are trying to save Peeta's life after the game is over and Katniss is screaming his name outside the window to the operating room. Both are wasted from lack of food and water plus exposure. The movie really dropped the ball on the horrors of arena life and the relationship the two winners developed. Being a show aimed a young people, the former is understandable, but the latter is kind of perplexing.
Re: Do we still do movie threads here? Hunger Games - Trailer + Casting
Quote:
Originally Posted by lycosid
Saw it last night, have not read the book. Overall thought it was worth seeing, but pretty average and far short of its potential.
^^
My thoughts exactly. I too have not read the books but decided to go see the film based on all the hype. The movie was decent but nothing epic or ground breaking in my opinion.
Re: Do we still do movie threads here? Hunger Games - Trailer + Casting
Having not read the book, I found the first half of the movie good, but the games themselves completely underwhelming. There were a couple of problems imo:
1. There was no sense of fear or terror at all in the games. There was no hunter or hunted mentality, just a bunch of kids who grouped together and walked around killing people.
2. The deaths were all anti-climatic and meaningless. To add, the movie did so little character development that I didn't feel bad or sad about anything. Even when Ru (sp?) died, it didn't seem like that big of a deal since you didn't know anything about her or why her death would cause a riot (I'm guessing the riot starter was her father?). It also wasn't really explained why the other black dude from her district saved Katniss' life and how he knew what Katniss did for Ru.
3. The wasp scene made no sense at all. Katniss gets stung twice and is out for "days", whereas the people she dropped the hive on were completely fine (other than the girl that got stung to death)???
4. The whole "sponsor" thing makes no sense and was not explained well at all. Apparently it's explained better in the books, but still the whole concept seems unnecessary and pointless to me.
5. The "last battle" was completely underwhelming. but I guess I shouldn't come to expect much based on the rest of the games.
I would give the movie a 6/10. forcing it to be a PG-13 rating did not help.
Re: Do we still do movie threads here? Hunger Games - Trailer + Casting
I thought of another thing that bothered me. The kids who trained for the games their whole life played the game so ****ing poorly. They form an alliance with Peeta to help find Katniss and then say they are going to kill him after they get her. But then they find her and have her isolated in the tree and don't take the opportunity to kill Peeta even while he sleeps near them. Also when they were all sleeping why didn't one of the well trained kids kill all the people sleeping and then just kill Katniss while she was in the tree. They just made a bunch of repeated tactical errors. I can buy some of the kids who weren't trained making ev- decisions but they go out of their way to say the kids from district 1 and 2 train their whole life for this.
Re: Do we still do movie threads here? Hunger Games - Trailer + Casting
i cried when rue died.
nice to see 'Soncy's secret scenes' carries over to The Hunger Games.
Spoiler:
Regarding Team Kat, tho, that was kind of my point. Obv shes not gonna fight rue or peeta, and obv she doesnt care about killing the evil dudes, but there were 17 other kids who werent born and bred killing machines, all trying to kill her, and she doesnt interact with any of them because the writers don't want to deal with how she would resolve that conflict. In a movie where her rejection of the game and refusal to give up her own humanity is a pretty big theme, it seems like a cop out to me.
Re: Do we still do movie threads here? Hunger Games - Trailer + Casting
Quote:
Originally Posted by lycosid
i cried when rue died.
nice to see 'Soncy's secret scenes' carries over to The Hunger Games.
Spoiler:
Regarding Team Kat, tho, that was kind of my point. Obv shes not gonna fight rue or peeta, and obv she doesnt care about killing the evil dudes, but there were 17 other kids who werent born and bred killing machines, all trying to kill her, and she doesnt interact with any of them because the writers don't want to deal with how she would resolve that conflict. In a movie where her rejection of the game and refusal to give up her own humanity is a pretty big theme, it seems like a cop out to me.
Spoiler:
there was a scene where she runs into the redheaded sneaky chick in the forest and they just kind of stare at each other and then run in separate directions
i was kind of disappointed in the fire suits they wore at the introduction ceremony. i thought they would be totally covered in fire, not just have some fire blowing off of their backs
Re: Do we still do movie threads here? Hunger Games - Trailer + Casting
I read the book last week and just saw the movie. Pretty good. Some parts of it were huge wins, like the editing and the art direction. Loved Elizabeth Banks. Inspired casting with her. And Woody H was awesome as always. D Sutherland was okay. Lenny was okay. Loved the beard on the gamemaker. I liked Katniss all right, although I did get a little tired of that same expression she wore through the whole thing. Don't much care for the guy who played Peeta, but he wasn't too annoying. Didn't like the casting for Gale or Cato. Way too "on the nose" with those choices.
My favorite part of the book was inexplicably not in the film:
Spoiler:
When they are down to the final 3 and they meet for the climax. Each has victory right in front of them if they could just stop for two seconds and draw their weapon...but the beasts are chasing them so they can't. All running from the same thing. Like they are all running from the capitol. It's such a great scene and yet they did it without Cato and had him already standing on the Cornucopia. Why?
In the film, but should have been in more of it:
Spoiler:
How easy and cool would it have been for them to show some death highlights from past hunger games? Kind of like how they show past buzzer beaters from March Madness. I know they showed part of one, but they should have run with that more. Those would have been exciting, action-packed scenes, instantly charged with emotion, with no need for any kind of setup. I thought they dropped the ball there.
But my favorite scene from the movie wasn't in the book:
Spoiler:
The writers redeemed themselves a little with the scene where the gamemaker walks into the room with the bowl of berries. That is what screenwriting is all about right there. No cheesy dialogue from Donald Sutherland, or an unnecessary scene showing the Gamemaker meeting his end...with one still shot of a bowl of fruit, the writers told us everything. Really cool.
Considering the audience it was meant for, I was very pleased at how it turned out.
P.S.
Spoiler:
The shot of DS walking up the stairs wasn't very cool or ominous or anything. You'd think they would have had something more meaningful for a final shot. Nitpicking...
Re: Do we still do movie threads here? Hunger Games - Trailer + Casting
i think its clear that she wasnt going to try to kill anyone unless she had to. foxface wasnt a threat to her
you could say its "lazy" writing to not have her come into random encounters but when her strategy is to basically avoid the game (which seems optimal for any of the non-careers) and let the rest kill each other off for as long as possible its the inevitable result
Two Plus Two
Re: Do we still do movie threads here? Hunger Games - Trailer + Casting
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