Braddy Survived The Hunger Games

It's been a slow year for movies so far. Scheduling constraints have prevented me from getting out to theaters nearly as much as I'd like. For all the hubbub and to-do surrounding Netflix and hi-tech home entertainment devices, there's still not much that can diminish the thrill of catching a new movie on the big screen. So I was pretty excited when a friend of mine suggested we go catch The Hunger Games movie last night.

I've been mostly unfamiliar with the story to this point - I've never read the book. Now that I've experienced the movie, I find that I have a LOT of strong opinions about it that I'd like to share. But, before I do, I feel I should answer the question that's on everyone's mind.

No, I haven't seen The Avengers yet.

Now, let's talk The Hunger Games. Sometimes, when I get into the nitty-gritty details while talking about a movie, I tend to get so hung up on the technical or thematic points I want to make that my opinion of the movie gets buried under a landslide of nits which I picked out of the production, so let me make one thing perfectly clear from the beginning: I REALLY liked this movie.

Like, a lot.

Admittedly, there's not much unique to the plot. Like just about every notable YA fiction novel from about ten years ago, the story takes place in some kind of post-apocalyptic dystopia. The ruling class distracts the populace from the miserable conditions in which they live by putting on an extravagant beauty pageant in which the contestants literally kill each other to curry public favor. So it's a little like the Republican presidential nomination.

The civilization is divided into twelve districts. Our protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, comes from the outlying twelfth district, which is full of coal miners and orphans. The government is seated in a decadent capitol, far removed from the violence of the Hunger Games and inhabited entirely by clones of Johnny Depp.

Jennifer Lawrence, who plays Katniss, is pretty darn good at what she does. You get a real sense that she doesn't approve of the Hunger Games, but she doesn't know what she can do to fight against the system. Her role in the story is complicated - she's obviously very capable, but ultimately she is victimized by the totalitarian regime that organizes the Hunger Games, just like everyone else.

While there certainly is a lot of high-action hooplah, The Hunger Games gets a lot of points for subtlety. The film raises a lot of interesting questions - sometimes disturbing ones - and very little is explicitly spelled out for the audience. We KNOW that Haymitch is an incorrigible drunk, but we're not TOLD that he suffers from PTSD due to the horrors he experienced in the Hunger Games. We KNOW that Katniss is trying to act sympathetic to earn support from potential sponsors, but we're never TOLD whether she is faking her affection for Peeta or not. We KNOW Rue is awesome, but we're never TOLD exactly how awesome she is. It's remarkably restrained for a Hollywood flick.

So, yeah, I haven't seen The Avengers yet. Right now, I'm not sure I need to. I've got dozens of comics that involve Captain America punching aliens at home, but I've never encountered something quite like The Hunger Games before (obvious literary parallels aside). When all's said and done, I'm glad I took a risk on something new to me rather than going with the familiar standard.