The film version of The Hunger Games is a fine example of the contemporary Hollywood franchise picture. It features a cast full of next-big-thing breakout actors supported by old-pro ringers having a blast with funny wigs. It conjures up an intriguing new fantasy world without overdosing on world-building (like John Carter) or mythology (like Green Lantern.) More importantly, it manages to capture the propulsive energy of Suzanne Collins’ novel. Adapting a great book into a good movie is not an easy task, and the makers of Hunger Games deserve credit just for the bad decisions they didn’t make. (They didn’t Twilight the movie into a romantic “triangle;” they didn’t turn Peeta into someone who could even remotely be construed as a badass; the kids still kill each other.) But there is one important aspect of the original novel that is almost entirely absent from the movie: The darkly funny way in which Collins directly accuses the audience. As in, us. Weirdly, by turning the book into such a fan-baiting crowdpleaser, the movie version of Hunger Games seems to oddly miss the point of its own source material. READ FULL STORY »
