Review of Hunger Games Movie

I thought that The Hunger Games movie was overall an “ok” film with just the right amount of special affects and action sequences to complement a decent story. The director and producers stuck very close to the book as far as the story goes. This explains why the movie runs for over two hours. Although the events were very accurate, there were certain things that were not explained properly in the movie whichmovie, which changed its interpretation.

One thing that bothered me was lack of explanation behind Katniss’s and Peeta’s relationship.

I was fortunate enough have analyzed the book so I, or course, knew that the relationship started off as fake in the beginning and kindled into actuality. As a person watching the movie, you would think that Katniss simply fell in love with Peeta as time passed. Within the movie, tThey also neglected to elaborate on the dog-creatures at the end of the story, which were genetically engineered from the dead tributes.

The lack of this detail prevented the audience from fully understanding the depravity of the Capital and their general disregard for the people of the districts. Also, Rue’s death was made to look like it was not the fault of Katniss, but another tribute. Again, I think this hurt the movie because it did not depict the type of sacrifices struggles one had to make endure in order to survive the Hunger Games. While the movie lacked some details, others were added in their place to perhaps aid in telling the story the way it was meant to be told.

One thing that was added was the behind the scenes meeting between the Game Keeper and the leader of the Capital. These meeting help to reveal the Capital’s hidden agenda with the Hunger Games, which otherwise would be unknown to a person watching the movie without having read the book. Also, they showed the districts rioting at the death of Rue. This is helps to illustrate the hatred and anger that the people of the districts have for the games and I suppose its easier to make that scene than it is to imply it through the houghts of Katniss and dialogue between the characters, like in the book. All in all, I think the movie stuck very close to the book and I found that to be very refreshing. Compared to most movie adaptations, such as the Harry Potter series, its sticks more closely to the story. In the Harry Potter movies, the studio took a fair amount of artistic license with the stories and changed many finite details.

This was likely done because of lack of funding and screen time. The Hunger Games did not have this problem probably because the story if more realistic than that of the magic conjuring, broomstick flying Harry Potter. There is little need for computer generated imagery (CGI) in this movie and the book is kept at a reasonable length so the movie did not have to compromise too much. This to me is the thing that it did best and I look forward to seeing the next one.