Just a few thoughts on The Hunger Games

I read Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games and the other two novels in the trilogy about a year ago, just about the same time the movie began to be publicized. I will admit, I read the first book in one sitting. The characters drew me in, the story line was intriguing, and I knew it would provide quite a bit of discussion material from the opening chapter. The violence in these pages, however, was horrifying to me and the thought of seeing the movie was not one I entertained for long. My initial feeling was that books allowed the reader to enter into the world of Panem on the level of the Tributes. Even the Capitol folk have traits that emerge in little conversations, thoughts and observations by Katniss, and Collins' own descriptions. The big screen version, however, would necessarily be void of some of these written helps. The very fact that the book consists of televised games, games we as viewers would soon be watching on a big screen, seemed to put the viewer right in the place of a Capitol viewer, watching the story for the entertainment alone, just waiting for the next "exciting" death.

That was my initial thought.

My plan not to see the movie was foiled by my middle school youth group's planned outing to the drive-in theater, which happened to be on the calendar before we realized The Hunger Games was opening that night. Well, you try to convince a bunch of teenagers to see The Lorax when all their friends are buying up tickets weeks ahead of time for year's number one (projected) film! So after thinking it through, we decided the kids would see it anyway, so why not take the opportunity to talk about some of the moral layers in the stories and try to watch the film reflectively?

So on opening night I found myself seated under the stars in a lawn chair with a sandwich and a youth group seeing the movie I had sworn I would not go anywhere near. (On a side note, we really need to bring the drive-in back to popularity. It's a great way to watch a movie.)

If you do not want to know anything about the content of the movie, please stop reading here.

Basically, after seeing the film, I wish I hadn't. The movie was, for all intents and purposes, very well-done. The directors stayed fairly faithful to the novel. Can't quite figure out why dialogue at points was word for word, but the cat was black and white. ??? The characters were beautiful. The scenery was beautiful. The soundtrack was beautiful. But in the end, it was still a movie that made children killing children into entertainment, and I could not like it. Suzanne Collins constructed her stories in such a way that the reader is hard pressed to cheer for any tribute in the games. Even the final arrow that effectively makes Peeta and Katniss victors is shot with hurt, pity, and despair. The crowd at the film let out a collective whoop when the same event occurred on the screen, and I realized that instead of watching the movie with an eye to the futility of violence and the potential for love of neighbor, everyone was simply cheering on the "hero" of the film. So what Collins so beautifully lays out for her readers is all but ignored when actual faces take on the identities of these characters.

I really found myself with very little emotional investment in the screen version. There was little character development, especially when it came to background. We really have no idea why we are supposed to care about the people of district 12 at all. The death of Rue, possibly the most poignant moment in the book, did not bring me even close to tears, leading me to the realization that the characters, with the exception of Katniss, were not developed enough to make the viewer care about them. Thus, when Katniss broke down after Rue's murder, my heart felt it much more acutely. Cinna, by far my favorite character in the books, was convincingly played by Lenny Kravitz but not given the screen time necessary to let him into the heart as a brilliant and passionate ally. And the Prep team might as well have been ignored all together. There was no time to let Katniss come to any sort of understanding of the Capitol world she was suddenly thrust into, leaving the viewer wondering who or what she was fighting - for or against.

In a world where the week's news was filled with the deaths of innocent people, I believe books like The Hunger Games have a place. They call us to look within ourselves, to recognize the violence that exists in all of us. There is a rather striking point in Mockingjay where the tributes are talking about how easily they all killed when it came down to it, and the realization makes them really think about the whole system and their role in it. Are they any different than anyone else inside or outside the arena?  These are the questions worth asking. We read these books, we identify with the characters, we look within and say, "How am I a Capitol viewer today, indulging my every desire?" or "How am I Katniss, competing out of love for my family but willing to compromise to save my own skin?" Movies can do the same thing, but it's incredibly rare.
This one just didn't.