Films adapted from books all manage to disappoint on some level. This film adaptation follows this rule. It has also inadvertently managed to create a massive level of hype that is sincerely baffling. I wonder why this million dollar worldwide box office success didn't apply to far superior, and incredibly similar in premise, Battle Royale. A couple reasons are obvious, it's Japanese, people hate to read subtitles in films or concentrate, and of course there is the teen market that The Hunger Games were catered towards, Battle Royale would probably be a bit too scary for them, on many levels, then there is one thing that The Hunger Games had very little of which Battle Royale seemed to be swimming in, and no it's not blood, it's a dose of reality.
Oh I know. Both are set in a dystopian world where the government's only option is to make an example of the disobedient masses by dragging their children to a remote location and forcing them to murder each other in cold blood. Stephen King can tell you that's not original. But what The Hunger Games presents, all the while making box office millions, a clinical money making machine which is intent on being inoffensive, yet terrifying, heart rending and a thrilling all in one go, it fails on all accounts.
I managed to read an awkward article about a mum who took her kids to see and it horrified when she finally realised what it was about. You know after blindly walking into the cinema with a frankly idiotic eleven year old who was scared by Doctor Who of all things. She was incredibly offended by the fact that such a film was so popular and no one else was upset about it. So the film itself, by trying to be inoffensive manages to offends those who were unaware of the very obvious core to the tale, children killing one another. This is severely hampered by the fact that throughout the film it never once explicitly brands the event as murder, or a massacre, no one says they just killed someone, no mentions their fear of being a murderer, even the word death seems to have been avoided. I recall only once in the film where a character mentions a certain scene would result in a 'bloodbath' but, well that particular scene was so massively lacking in blood it was hilarious. The whole film seems to be missing spurting jugulars. Is it juvenile or simply far to obvious to point out this fact? Did the whole world but me think, 'Well duh, they aren't going to explicitly say 'death' or 'murder' in a film based around it, are you stupid?' So essentially people all across the world are going to see a film, most likely with full knowledge that is about children murdering one another, they'll all be talking about it, and yet the film itself never says it, it just shows you, and for the most part fails to do that with any confidence or drama. It skirts around the core aspects of it's premise by avoiding looking at the killing, or presenting any blood or explicit stabbing, or even mentioning the words themselves.
Before seeing the films, I had read the books, I knew exactly what to expect and a part of me wishes I hadn't because even though I may have been slightly inebriated during my cinema trip, I definitely picked up on some glaring omissions from the film. Fair to say that the film puts a lot of faith in the fact that people have a vague idea of what's going on otherwise it wouldn't move at some a break-neck pace surely? What is most notably missing? The dialogue. Conversations are not prolonged in this film are clipped to the point that it's simply just short verbal exchanges which are supposed to depict a whole wealth of emotions from a very stoic heroine. The short conversations between characters gave little opportunity for growth or connections as they were merely pushing the story along and following their script.
I'll grant the books do very little to flesh out her relationship with Gale until the final installment, but her time with him is so brief, her time at home in District 12 seems fleeting, her relationship with her mother is touched upon and so on... But it's at times like this I yearn for the maudlin voice overs from Kristen Stewart, at least to give us some kind of look inside Katniss's head. She is just a mask of steely will for the most part. The film lacks any heart when it comes to Katniss, and although I despise films which rely on a voice-over to get us inside the character's heads, in this case it was desperately needed, Katniss doesn't talk to other people about her feelings or past, but she really needed to explain herself a little bit more to the audience. Specifically with regards to that burgeoning love triangle, her feelings towards Cinna (Lenny Kravitz), her sentiments towards the actual Games, her brief relationship with the tragic Rue. If anything to tie the sequences together in which we are supposed to feel something, her goodbye to Cinna was abrupt, her moment in the cave with Peeta was plain awkward, and her reaction to Rue's demise was forced. We didn't get feel anything between the characters as everything was so swiftly done, and for a film which lasted just under two and a half hours, for me to feel very little sympathy or care for the main character of such an interesting premise is shocking.
So the film fails to get me to care about the characters, instead of giving me an insight into their thoughts and feelings it gives me the worst shaky-cam memory of a key moment in the relationship of Peeta and Katniss which is barely explained. The way it was done was irritating more than anything, it could have been done with much more care and attention instead of snapshots of an event which was barely touched upon in the stupid scene in the cave where that kiss occurred, the one that I would say had absolutely zero passion whatsoever. So, essentially we have very little emotions, well in my honest opinion, perhaps people saw more, or I wasn't looking hard enough.
My main qualm with the entire series and my main argument as to why Battle Royale is infinitely better is simply the children's reaction to their situation. I'm fully aware that everyone in Panem is born to know that the games take place, that they have no choice to partake, but there is certainly a fear and a concern there, it's acknowledged to be a horrifying experience for children to go through. But this is where Battle Royale excels, because it explains why, these children will never live their lives to the full, they'll probably never have their first kiss, never have sex, never grow up and have a life with their children, their friends, this is made all the more poignant by the fact that it is a class of children from a specific school chosen to partake in the massacre. But it's clear that there are very real and horrible sensations these children go through all the while plotting to murder each other for the sake of their own survival. This is something The Hunger Games and it's entire series fails to address at any level satisfactorily, it looks at the political significance, and the media impact, but when it comes to core of how these children feel about having to kill each other it shys away. It just places it as an necessity an unquestionable and easily explained necessity. So we overall get no insight as to why these children are going along with it all, they blatantly are, they are scared sure, but that's all we get to see.
In order to ensure that the maximum audience would see this movie, the filmmakers had to ensure that it kept the violence toned down to the nth degree. As I mentioned the film skirts about the subject of actually branding The Hunger Games a massacre, or calling what the children are forced to do murder. But what makes the whole thing laughable is the lack of blood. Every review I've read has touched on this, the film uses jerky camera movements to avoid showing anything too brutal or scary taking place even though we all know what's happened, so when we see those bloodless bodies lying in the grass, we know they're dead, even though they've been stabbed in a blur of camera movements. I'll admit, my trip to the cinema has been preceded with several drinks, but I doubt I was the only one laughing at the stupidity of it all. No matter how old you are you know what blood looks like, and it doesn't matter if it looks like tomato ketchup, I've matured to a point where even the most disgusting horror films fail to phase me because I know instinctively, that a filmmaker has faked this, the person who was brutally disfigured is an actor walking around happy as Larry, because it was all prosthetic, very clever realistic prosthetic, but fake none the less. Children should at least be able to acknowledge this, or am I asking too much? Ok, I'll try this, when these 'Young Adults' read the book, they'll know in their head a person is killed by an arrow to the neck which they then stupidly yank out and choke on their own blood, gruesome, surely more-so in their mind's eye. When they watch the film expecting this to happen and it fails to do so, I'll bet they were sorely disappointed, I know I was.
Strangely enough one the most sinister yet powerful images from the books which failed to be presented in the films was the removal of the bodies. A hovercraft throws a spotlight over them and throws a net down which lifts them up into the sky and they are carried away. I probably haven't done the image very much justice but the massive machine hovering a corpse in the dead of night, the noise, the beam of the light, the wind whipping the surrounding area from the propeller as the mangled corpse of another fallen comrade is lifted into an unknown place and taken away, it just conjures a really good image in my head. Something quite chilling and significant to me, bloodless too, would have suited the film quite well I believe, but I suppose it didn't fit into the 'race-to-the-finish' style of the film.
A couple of good things I suppose, they are simply the casting and the fact that a film about such dark subject matter has captured the imagination of the viewing public. The latter speaks for itself but I have to commend the casting of the film. Inspired choices from Stanley Tucci and Toby Jones as the commentators providing some much needed clarity, to Donald Sutherland, the most imposing man playing the most imposing character, to the fantastic Woody Harrelson playing drunken old Haymitch, my only qualm being, lose the daft wig, just let Woody Harrelson be Woody Harrelson, it would have been more than enough.
Now Jennifer Lawrence, I expected so much from her, I'll admit her ability to convey emotions across her face in the blink of an eye is an enviable and impressive skill, but they didn't give her much to work with from the dialogue, I was expecting so much more, but I'm at blames to blame the actress for this as I do believe she worked extremely well with what she was given, although that godamn kiss was terrible.
I know I mentioned previously that I prefer films to let me work out what's going on instead of spelling it out to me with terrible voice-overs, or continuous exposition and dialogue stating the bleeding obvious, but something was seriously lacking in The Hunger Games. Thinking about it, it was probably the heart, or soul, or something equally ineffectual, something I've come to accept as missing in any box office sensation.
I was rooting for this, I was hoping something truly special and unfortunately that is not what The Hunger Games is. It's nothing special, it does what it can, it follows the source material almost too well, but fails to be what I wanted it to be. I left the cinema feeling nothing, I was numb and confused, but then again that might just have been the booze. And on that bombshell I think I'll just leave it here.
