HUNGER GAMES

So much of this movie confused me, and not in the usual fashion that I enjoy.  Since this is the first installment of a massively popular book series, I assume that a kind of checklist system was used in adapting the script, making sure that as many familiar faces and concepts from the book as possible were included, hoping that even a fleeting glance will be enough to satisfy super-fans in the audience who can wipe sweat from their brows and breath a sigh of relief when their favorite X Y or Z makes a perfunctory appearance.  It was a slog.

Teenagers from 12 impoverished districts are pitted against each other in a battle to the death at the whim of a draconian Sutherland-led central government in a vague dystopia.  So much of the buildup to the actual games is baffling.  There is much talk of the combatants winning important sponsorships before the games, and the word 'sponsors' is bandied about readily and seriously.  What are these companies?  What do they make?  Who did they pick?  When do they pick?  What do they do when they pick?  Uhhh....  Sponsors!  The government has all the trappings of a typical (failed) command economy, with each district assigned a single resource (fish, coal, etc) to gather for the benefit of the central capitol.

Coal and fish, huh?  Somehow the decadent inhabitants of the capitol turn all that into Mag-Lev trains, genetically modified super monsters, and garish colorful fashions.  I guess the world is supposed to be both ahead of and behind our times.  But it just seems strange to have a coal mining family ripped straight from the late 19th or early 20th century sitting around their shabby cabin watching an HD projector of a murderiffic reality show.  Same thing with the genetically altered wasps called 'tracker jackers' that cause hallucinations and death.  Our heroine seems fairly nonplussed considering she was hunting deer with a bow and arrow earlier.

The importance of characters is also lost on me.  Katniss's closest relationship seems to be with her stylist (played by Lenny Kravitz) but I couldn't even figure out why she had one.  He designs her a dress (a fire dress no less!) for an opening ceremony, but then just keeps hanging around.  He's even the last person she gets to consult with before she gets launched via tube in the murder arena.  You think she might want some last minute pointers from her coach (Woody Harrelson, a drunken previous champion) but Kravitz's soulful eyes and canned wisdom are the last thing she gets to take with her.

Jennifer Lawrence is a talented actress (although here she's doing a pale variation of her Oscar Nominated role in Winter's Bone) and a whole slew of character actors give weird (Stanley Tucci as Flickerman, the host of the games) or sedate (Wes Bentley is out-acted by his phenomenal facial hair as murder-arena designer Seneca Crane) performances to keep things interesting but most of the other teen and child actors are of TV movie quality.

This movie was way too long and made no sense and was hard to look at.  Consider it a distaff counterpart to the Transformers movie series.

Speaking of a slog: trimming that beard every day

~ Woody Harrelson's character is named Haymitch but I thought people were just saying 'Hey, Mitch!'

~ Some of the twists and turns make little to no sense.  Katniss gets chase up a tree by evil kids.  They try climbing too but the branch breaks.  So they shoot two arrows but miss.  Plan 3?  Go to sleep.  They all bed down for the night, assuming Katniss will starve or slip and fall.  But instead she dumps a hive of mutated psychotropic wasps on them.  So there.

~ People make the Scout salute in this film and I'm not sure why.

~ The cinematography bounces between incomprehensible shakiness and actual compositions.

~ They should have spent more money on Woody Harrelson's wig unless maybe it's supposed to be that shitty on purpose because of futuristic fashion trends.

~ The byline of this story bares resemblance to the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale which is probably why that film finally received a proper home media release coincidentally corresponding with the release of this film.

~ Director Gary Ross made Pleasantville which was kinda goofy but in retrospect a much more inventive and promising film than this one.

~ Co-writer Billy Ray made the film Shattered Glass which is a criminally underrated movie.

~ This has bothered me since I first heard about the series: why are they called the Hunger Games?  I mean in universe.  Wouldn't the evil, totalitarian government want to deny that people were starving?  I imagine the headlines in Pyongyang or Havana have read "Nobody starved to death again" for years.

~ Don't get me started on the cake frosting.

~ The fashions of the elite are downright bizarre.  Elizabeth Banks plays Kabuki Bonahm-Carter

~ What else is baffling: the oppressed citizens starting a rebellion that lasts one scene.

~ Spoiler.  At the end, the boy and the girl think they have won, but then the voice in the sky tells them they haven't and one of them must kill the other.  So they decide, in an act of rebellion, that they will both commit suicide simultaneously with poison purple wiggum berries.  But when the voice in the sky sees that they are serious and becomes concerned about the reaction to this bummer outcome, he jumps back on the loud speaker and says 'oh ok never mind you guys both win'.  These events take like 20 seconds.  Considering how long we spent on bullshit like fashion shows and sponsor pageants, it feels extra silly to rush all this right at the end.