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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.

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