hunger games

movies:  So I got around to seeing Hunger Games over the past weekend.  I figure that if for no better reason than the total insanity surrounding the books and movie something should be said.  There are of course, better reasons.  Hunger Games, the movie and the trilogy of books, have turned into one of the most popular series in recent memory and may end up being on of the most popular ever.  The books have sold millions and the first movie in the installment has certainly proven its worth by topping the box office numbers for its first two weeks in theaters.
It is the story of young woman, Katniss Everdeen, who comes from a poor mining district in the dystopian nation that covers North America called Panem.  Every year a boy and girl (eighteen or under in age) are chosen to participate in The Hunger Games.  An event in which each boy and girl from the twelve districts, totally twenty four contestants, fights in a Battle Royale(1) style fight to the death with only one survivor.  This event is televised for all of the twelve districts to watch for both their entertainment and horror.  Along the way the participants through their charisma during the event or the interviews they do before it can earn sponsors that can send them supplies during the Games.  It is clearly a sensational and damning view of reality tv and the corporations that pay for commercials to keep these shows going.  Katniss ends up a participant after offering herself to the games to keep her younger sister from the danger it presents.
Jennifer Lawrence plays the lead role of Katniss.  I must say that having seen her in two previous movies, Winters Bone and X-Men First Class, I think she is a star that will continue to burn bright into the future based on those two performances.  This movie did nothing to deter that belief.  She was believable and interesting and in the action sequences out in the wilderness where she was fighting for her life compelling.  Any flaw of hers could be credited to the writing.  While I ended up rooting for Katniss because of the action and intensity, I wondered through most of the scenes leading up to the actual Hunger Games why she was the one I was rooting for.  Not that I wanted to root for someone else.  I just wasn't totally sure, besides making the sacrifice to save her sister, what made her so special, a point made by some of the other characters helping to prepare her for the Games.  Despite this, Jennifer Lawrence did deliver another great performance.  She just at times wasn't given much to work with.
The one thing I keep hearing, as someone who never read the books, was that the movie managed to include most of what was in the books.  Having seen it, I certainly believe that with the two and half hour running time.  I wonder if at times this didn't work to the movies detriment.  I spent a significant portion of the first half of the movie unsure of the relationships being built.  Mostly because they weren't.  The character of Cinna, for instance, played by Lenny Kravitz, was very impressed by Katniss and wanted her to win.  But based on the limited amount of interaction they have in the movie, it is hard to say why.  I once heard it said that when you are writing with a limited amount of time that you have to focus on what matters the most.  I think that in certain instances, particularly like the one cited above (and others mostly in the first third of the movie), that the movie was more concerned with covering as much of the book as possible rather than focusing its energy on what really mattered.  Thus giving the viewer an emotional bond to the characters that isn't built until more than half way through the movie.
The movie itself was ultimately good but not great.  Entertaining but not fully realized.  The idea behind it was interesting, that of reality tv being used to captivate a nation to the detriment and death of its youth. This idea however was not hammered home in a way that it will have impacted its audience in any meaningful and lasing way.  Lawrence's performance as Katniss was excellent as long as she was given enough to do.  However, the action in the Games themselves was truly exciting and compelling.  We officially now have a new movie star in Lawrence and an entertaining as hell movie in Hunger Games.  I suppose that's enough.  especially considering the audience its geared towards.  I should not resent this movie essentially for being Aliens when it is not supposed to be Dark City or Gattica.  It is what it is.  And what that is is good.  Aliens was still a great movie.
(1) Battle Royale is a Japanese book and movie about a group of school aged kids taken to an island to fight to the death in an exercise in blood and gore rarely seen.