Big Screen Breakdown: Catching Fire

The first Hunger Games movie was my favorite movie the year it came out (yes, I ranked it higher than The Avengers), so the bar was set pretty high for its sequel. Now, I have not read the book, so I don't know exactly how well The Hunger Games: The Sequel Hook compares to its source material. As a predecessor to another, very well-liked movie, though? I can judge the heck out of it.

• Man, where do these movies find such talented actors? Frankly, I don't think they'd be half as good with a less-talented cast. Jennifer Lawrence, Woody Harrelson, and now Philip Seymour Hoffman? Divine.
• Speaking of talented actors, was Josh Hutcherson this good in the last Hunger Games movie? I don't think he was, or maybe he just wasn't given enough to do, but I really liked him in Catching Fire. Like, a lot.
• Anyone else notice Jennifer Lawrence was wearing more makeup this time around? I guess that makes sense, what with her being a victor now or whatever.
• The Hunger Games have always been a metaphor for the schadenfreude inherent in mass media consumption, but they really drove that point home in this movie, with Jena Malone's brilliant portrayal of every foul-mouthed reality TV star, ever. Applause to you.
• You know, after the tributes all got doused with that flesh boiling poison gas, they cleaned up really well. Their skin looked so silky smooth, I think I might want to get some of that gas for my daily ablutions.
• Another thing I really liked was the portrayal of people who won the games through means other than brute strength. Adds a bit more variety to the cast to have some nerds in the pack.
• Is Lenny Kravitz dead? I hope not!
• So apparently the series isn't over yet? There's, like, another movie? Maybe two? Well, that's just GREAT! But couldn't we have at least gotten an ending to this movie first?
• Verdict: High recommended, unless the sequel sucks.

This Blog Post Contains Material Some Audiences May Find Objectionable

Okay, so I've been debating writing this post for several weeks now. In fact, I've drafted it, then deleted it, and then drafted it again.

Then someone went and picked on Charlie Brown, and that's a line in the sand you just don't cross.

So here we go.

I like to think I've made my opinion on censorship clear. I'm all for people exercising their own discretion in selecting what entertainment they choose to indulge in - heaven knows I do. But I take issue with people who call for societal censorship towards material that they find offensive - especially when they prove unable to understand what the material they are protesting actually stands for.

A friend of mine posted a link to a Mormon housewife blog decrying violence in the media. Now, this article really ticked me off; however (and this is the reason I've put off writing this post for so long), I ultimately decided that, even though the article is full of argumentative fallacies (see especially the debate the author had with her college friend in the middle), the bulk of my hard feelings were coming from the comments section - and even the most naive internet dweller learns pretty quickly to stay away from the comments section of any post if they want to continue having a good day.

In the Women in the Scriptures post, commenter after commenter condemns the violence in The Hunger Games - and, yeah, I feel pretty strongly about that story. Again, if someone doesn't want to watch the violence of The Hunger Games, I get that. I even understand someone finding a story full of so much violence to be morally offensive. But to condemn the story for glorifying violence - as so many people do - profoundly misinterprets the theme.

Yeah, the violence is jarring and disturbing. It's supposed to be. The Hunger Games is a criticism of the despicable behaviors audiences endorse in their entertainment choices and is meant to shock people out of their complacency. Just because the story depicts violent acts, doesn't mean that encourages them.

That brings me back to the Charlie Brown article above. The author calls "It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" outdated and irrelevant because of the lax attitude the story takes towards bullying. I think I could see the author's point... if I believed for one second that there's some little girl out there who really wants to be Lucy Van Pelt.

Yes, the Charlie Brown stories depict a lot of bullying and a lot of name-calling... BUT (and, in case you missed it, that's a big "BUT") the audience is invited to sympathize, not with the bullies, but with Charlie Brown. As a result, the audience doesn't walk away from a Charlie Brown story thinking that bullying is "cool" or whatever. They are invited to think about how a bullied person feels.

"That's a pretty sophisticated line of thinking," I hear you say. "Are you sure kids are going to pick up on that?" Well, maybe not, but I know I did. As a kid - eight years old - I loved Peanuts. Still do. I remember very distinctly, at eight years old, reading Peanuts and feeling outraged at the way Lucy treated Charlie Brown. To this day, she remains one of the five fictional characters I wish were real so I could punch them in the face.*

That... um... that little confession may counteract my entire argument.

I said it before, but I'm really devoted to making my point clear, so I'll say it again:

A depiction of violence is not an endorsement of violence.

The same goes for all the other "vices" that pop up in media. Characters using foul language may be using that language to underscore a point different that "profanity is cool." Sexuality is often portrayed in decidedly unsexy ways. You're more than welcome to skip out on that stuff, but it does no good to call for a society-wide ban on such material. Most audiences are intelligent enough to suss out the difference between what a story depicts and what it actually promotes.

And, seriously, if you're not smart enough to understand frickin' Charlie Brown, you probably don't have the right to an opinion anymore.

* - If you're curious, the other four are all Katy Perry.

Braddy Reads The Hunger Games

I took a trip up to my sister-in-law's cabin this weekend. Since all vacations require a good book to read, I decided to pack along Suzanne Collins's chart-topping book The Hunger Games. Maybe you've heard of it.

I think I may have needed to take a second book with me, because I breezed through The Hunger Games in about twenty-four hours. It's a pretty good read.

Like most YA writers (with maybe a few exceptions), I don't find myself impressed so much with the quality of Collins's writing as much as with the quality of the story. The Hunger Games is a brilliant story - tense and action-packed with a real sense of relevance.

One caveat - although Collins's writing isn't exactly world-shatteringly good, her descriptions of FOOD were, in my evaluation, excellent. I got hungry every time Katniss did, and, for a book called The HUNGER Games, that seemed a fitting response.

Now for the inevitable comparison to the movie - I'm honestly not sure which I liked more. Like most books adapted for movies, I found myself a little distressed at some of the material the filmmakers chose to leave out. I knew NOTHING about Avoxes (Avoci? How do you pluralize that?) from the movie, and I appreciated the additional fleshing out certain characters get. As a result of the added time the book spends on the characters, I found Effie Trinket FAR less annoying, and I really liked District 11's Thresh a lot more.

That said, I don't think the book is entirely superior to the movie. I was genuinely bugged (at least, until I got swept up in the story) by the first-person narration in the book. At first, I was simply bothered by the fact that I had no idea who Katniss would possibly be writing this story TOO. Was it her journal? Her "Katniss's Log," if you will?

Stardate 46209.13.

The perspective of the book, though, is a nit too nitty to really pick, except for one major difference between the film and the book: the clarity of the story. See, in The Hunger Games: The Novel, everything is spelled out, because we can read everything going on in her head. While that perspective does help flesh out the world in a lot of ways, I found I actually missed the ambiguity of the film, where Katniss's motivations were a little more obscured.

So it comes down to whether the audience wants a fully-realized world or a more ambiguous heroine. Ultimately, I prefer the latter, but I'd still whole-heartedly recommend The Hunger Games to fans of the movie.

Oh, and I found the book far less self-contained than the movie, with plot threads left dangling for the inevitable sequel. Heck, it even ends with the line "End of Book 1." I guess it's now inevitable that I'll be picking up Catching Fire at some point.

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.