Monday Morning Quarterback Part IV
By BOP Staff
March 28, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: Did you see The Hunger Games this weekend? What did you think of it?
Edwin Davies: I did, and I thought it was good but that it should have been better. Gary Ross is a much better director than anyone who has helmed any of the Twilight films, so he brought a basic competency to it that that franchise has largely lacked, and he did a really good job of setting up the world of Panem and getting right into it. The film moved at a very quick pace considering how much heavy lifting it has to do by setting up things that will be important in the later films, but I thought that it did so at the expense of the characters. Katniss, Peeta and Haymitch were all very well defined, but the other tributes were pretty faceless, and even Rue, who is a pretty crucial character in the film, seemed neglected, and her relationship with Katniss felt much less important than it needed to be.
I really did enjoy the film, and I thought that it carried across a lot of what I liked about the books, but I just kept thinking that if the film had been about ten to 20 minutes longer, it could have ironed out those problems and made it a lot more rewarding as a whole.
Jim Van Nest - We did the midnight Imax showing and we all liked it a lot. I'm not a huge fan of the hand-cam feel that the beginning of the film had. (I HATED it in Saving Private Ryan as well.) And I agree with Edwin that several of the characters were shortchanged in an effort to not make this a four hour Peter Jackson opus. With an extra half hour, though, you could have gotten to know Cinna, Prim, Rue and even Gale, Cato, Foxface and the other Tributes just a little better. They would have been "fuller" characters and everything would have had more depth to it.
That being said, when you love the subject matter, you can watch a film of any length. In the real world, though, you just can't make a film of this nature over three hours in length.
My one last beef (and it's similar to the hand-cam thing) is I can't stand the need to have such tight close-ups during fight scenes in today's films. Everything's so close and the cuts are like an MTV video editor's wet dream, it's sometimes hard to see what's actually happening. Especially when the fight we're watching is between one blonde kid wearing black and another blonde kid wearing black. Seriously, pull the camera back and let us just see the fight unfold.
All of this, though, is minor for me. I really liked it and I can't wait for Catching Fire.
Bruce Hall: I enjoyed The Hunger Games a lot. I am down with the idea that they largely sacrificed flavor for utility - call it the "Diet Coke Version" of the story. I'd even go so far as to say that nearly all the characters - including Katniss and Haymitch - were severely short changed in comparison to the depth that was present in the book. To some degree this is inevitable in book to movie conversions, but part of what made an otherwise ordinary story work so well was the degree to which the characters lived and breathed on the page.
For the most part, this crucial element was missing from the film. The movie was as robotically efficient and deliberately paced as the book - despite taking some lazy shortcuts with the overall backstory. But the biggest weakness, to me, was how pretty, shiny, expensive, yet lifeless it all felt. In the end, though, the least you can ask of the film version of a book is that it capture the spirit of the thing, and successfully communicate the basic point. In that regard I would say that The Hunger Games was a success. Fans will get what they want, non fans should at least get the point.
On the other hand, I think that the massive box office was more an outpouring of love for the books than for the film itself - if those books never existed, does this movie earn $150 million in three days on its own merit? The answer is not just no, it's HELL NO. Fortunately the books do exist, and the sequels still have a chance to make up some ground. This was a good movie, but it could have been a great one.
Max Braden: Just back from it this evening, I'll give it a B+. (My recent go-to A value for action/adventure is still the first Iron Man). Production-wise the sharpness of the cinematography felt a little unpolished, like it was shot on video, and there was too much quick cutting and camera movement, especially at the beginning of the movie. Sometimes silence helped the drama but I think the movie would have benefited from the heavier, pumping soundtrack style of TRON: Legacy. I think the "girl on fire" scene really fell flat, in that we saw more people talking about how impressive it looked than seeing for ourselves how impressive it was. The idea of tributes and Panem of course makes me think about imperial Rome, but what caught my eye in the movie was how much the clothing and fearful children in the reaping made me think of concentration camps. I hadn't imagined that when reading the book. Lawrence and Hutcherson were perfectly cast as Katniss and Peeta, and I think the movie actually did a better job with their characters and relationship. You get a sense of the history of Peeta's feelings, and Katniss's gradual appreciation for them, but you can see the setup for conflict coming in the future. As a deadliest-game arena movie with commentary about authoritarianism, I think you get a stronger sense of rebellious reaction to injustice from movies like Logan's Run, TRON, The Running Man, and even Death Race. But I can see The Hunger Games working more like a soap opera where the characters take longer to recognize that they have an opportunity to change things beyond their immediate boundaries, so the sequels might address that more.
I'm just still trying to wrap my head around the concept of a society that would think the hunger games would be a good idea, or that they could last for so long.
Tom Houseman: Tom Houseman: I'm baffled by everyone who complains about the film not being bloody and violent enough. Did they see the kid get his neck snapped? Or the little girl with a spear for her chest? Am I the only one who caught that?
I could nitpick about the differences between the film and the book, from the small (Katniss is supposed to have hairy legs before she goes to the capitol) to the big (I would have loved to see the hounds with the dead tributes' faces) to the really big (where the heck was the lamb stew?!) but all of that really doesn't matter on more than a superficial level. So I will just say that the film was truly exceptional, and I will be shocked if I see ten films better than it this year. I would be willing to argue that the movie is actually better than the book, although I'm not entirely sure if that's true.
David Mumpower: I fall somewhere between Edwin and Tom. I am totally satisfied by The Hunger Games as a theatrical adaptation. I do not expect it to wind up in my top 10 for the year yet I very much enjoyed the time spent watching it. In fact, I had wanted to see a second time already. My perception is that director Gary Ross made many of the correct determinations with regards to which aspects of the book deserve to be in the movie. Yes, I would have liked to see more of Gale, Cinna and Rue. I understand that a tight 140 minute movie is a better decision than an overstuffed 180 minute movie. Such excess is a key reason why the Lord of the Rings trilogy never did much for me.
Instead of making such a mistake, The Hunger Games is offered as a bare bones largely first person perspective of Katniss, and one that overcomes the problem of the book, the limited knowledge of the protagonist. In the book, she behaves too much like a teen girl, which is great to other teen girls but impossibly self-indulgent to those of us who couldn't care less (roughly 98% of the population). Rather than ineffectively include monologue by having Katniss speak her thoughts, we are instead treated to the visual equivalent of exposition. Correctly, silence is utilized to reinforce how much her thoughts are oftentimes drowned out by surrounding events. This is particularly true when she is asked a question by Caesar Flickman but she doesn't hear it due to being amazed by the size of the onlooking crowd. Simply put, I am diametrically opposed to Max's statement that thumping tech music would have been the better decision. That would have been a mistake.
What works for me about The Hunger Games is that the event itself is the spectacle as well as the focus of the movie, which is as it should be. The other stuff that was only hinted at that will occur in the later novels should not have been jammed into the first film. In the Harry Potter parlance, the first Quidditch match was an imperative. Introducing Voldemort, on the other hand, would have been rushing the proceedings. There is impressive patience shown with The Hunger Games in this regard. Less is more and that philosophy permeates throughout the film. I am particularly pleased by the decision to blur the acts of brutality from the story. Americans have a reputation for glorifying violence yet The Hunger Games is respectful of the deaths of its characters. This is in stark contract to Battle Royale, a brilliant flick that is whacked beyond all description.
I do not view The Hunger Games as a best case scenario as, say, Iron Man or How to Train Your Dragon were. It is, however, one of the strongest book adaptations of the 2000s. I am thoroughly pleased with it and think it's an easy A.
Kim Hollis: I was surprised by how much I liked it. Having read the books, I would say that my expectations were quite high, and the film really came through for me in almost every way. I have a couple of very minor disappointments and nitpicks, but nothing even worth discussing, as far as I'm concerned. The film has an excellent pace, and moves along nicely even though it's somewhat long. I agree with David that silence is used extremely effectively, as is the score. I would not have enjoyed a pulsating rock soundtrack or a bunch of indie music so that it could be hip. Jennifer Lawrence is simply amazing, and while I had been skeptical about Josh Hutcherson in the role of Peeta, I really thought he was terrific. He was more or less exactly what I had envisioned for the character without realizing it. Other great performances are turned in by Woody Harrelson and Stanley Tucci. As far as the shaky cam goes, it didn't bother me at all, and that technique is generally very much an issue for me. I wonder if it might not have been a little better on IMAX screens (which is how I saw the film).