Movie Review: The Hunger Games

Hey everyone!

I'm finally done with my exams!!! Yay! *party party* So to celebrate, I finally went to see the Hunger Games movie. If you follow my Twitter, you may have known that I read the entire trilogy over winter break. I never had a chance to blog post about my thoughts on the books though. ^_^" When I saw all the ads for this movie, I just had to see it. Visually, it was totally living up to my expectations, so I was excited to watch this movie.

I should have known from the first 30 seconds that they chopped off a lot of stuff. A LOT. The movie begins with text explaining the "Reaping", which is when each of the 12 districts of Panem (country that this movie is situated in) have to give up one girl and one boy as tribute that are between the ages of 12 and 18. Now hold the bus. Because I've read the book, I know exactly what's going on. To those who have not read the book, they are just thrown in to an important scene with zero background info on the characters, their relationships, and the initial setting that all this is taking place in. Honestly, when they made this movie, they literally gave you the bare bones to be able to tell the story. They even changed how Katniss gets the Mockingjay pin. In the book, she gets it from the District 12's mayor's daughter, but in the movie, she randomly sees a stack of them while exchanging some goods for buttons. They removed a key element that is actually pretty important later on in the trilogy, but I guess they didn't want to spend any time with that  part of the story. 

The good point about this movie is how well they do the costumes and make-up. Everything looks great. Effie Trinket was put together so well in her 5+ outfits. The flamboyancy of the people in the Capitol was spot on with all the colours and the extravagance of their make-up and outfits. Excellent job. Also, Peeta camouflaging job was out of this world. Super realistic. The scenery and the visuals were amazing as well. They definitely captured the essence of the Capitol and District 12 very well. 

The bad points about this movie is that they didn't do this book any justice. Translation from book to movie actually didn't work well at all. You get the bare bones and what they were trying to go for, but they really lacked on everything. From knowing the character's names, to their background, to their relationship with other characters, everything was a mystery, but you can kind of guess it out by the tension. Even the development of the characters fell flat on its face. There were also parts that were unnecessarily slow and drawn out like when Katniss' sister being called out and it takes like a whole minute until Katniss volunteers. I felt it was way more immediate than that, especially from what was shown in the trailers. I know they want to bring out the tension, but it made it look like Katniss was in a daze or something when they called out her little sister's name.

Another bad point was the camera work. Half of the time, the camera is way too close to the actor's face that their face literally fills up the entire screen. One quarter of the time, the camera was going crazy-up-down-left-right-side-to-side-unable-to-see-anything-that-is-being-shot-I-am-so-dizzy. The other quarter of the time was just the right distance away from the actors to actually see what was going on (thank goodness). I felt the crazy camera work was good for when everyone is trying to get stuff at the Cornucopia and gives you the sense of the violence and things getting out of hand very quickly, but don't do it all the time when they are in danger. We won't be able to absorb how dangerous the situation is if we can't see it. >.<

An interesting point about this movie is that there is actually very little dialogue or more like too little for what is required to tell this story. Most of the time, Katniss is just looking, staring, etc. I felt that it was positive in the sense that it allows the audience to deduce how she is feeling, but it was negative in the sense that there is a lot of dialogue that should have been said, but wasn't. The part where Peeta throws Katniss bread in the rain: they flashbacked that part maybe 3 times in the movie, and it is explained a bit, but not enough to really show how important that moment was in both of their lives. Even her relationship with Gale is not clear. You'd think they were going out (no kisses to prove that though), but they were never able to explain that it was never thought that way, but you could tell that Gale had a little something for Katniss (even though they took out the line that would have really hit the nail on the head when Gale was suppose to say "Don't forget I..."). 

I give this movie a 3 out of 5. It passes because of how well they portray and visualize everything from the book, but they left out a lot of the foundation to properly understand the story and its characters. If you want to see this movie, read the book beforehand so that you don't get lost or bring a friend that has read the book to explain you the missing bits. I will most likely watch the other 2 movies, but I hope they work on better adapting the books to the big screen.