Spoilers...
I was disappointed with “Hunger Games” (2008) by Suzanne
Collins because I’d heard it was a great novel. It was entertaining and
exciting at some points, but that was it. I felt like it was all surface with
no deeper meaning. I don’t think it ever managed to transcend what it was, just
a YA novel.
Characters
Katniss- Clueless about her looks and the effect she has on
boys and men. Doesn’t understand social situations other people’s motivations.
Thinks people in the Hob are nice to her because of her dad instead of
realizing her own worth.
Peeta- He’s the “perfect” romance novel guy: Sensitive yet
strong, loving, but brave and manly.
Gale- Only in the book at the beginning, but he is a
presence throughout the novel. It is hard to know whether or not there is
something there romantically between him and Katniss. Gale would have been the
perfect excuse for Peeta and Kat to not have a relationship, but instead he’s a
weird obstacle in a novel where Kat and Peeta’s relationship is the central
theme of the novel.
Ending
The last 3rd of the book needed to be rewritten.
I was with it until after Tresh lets Kat go. After that there was never anything
that was as exciting as that confrontation at the Cornucopia. Instead it was
anti-climaxtic since Thresh’s death, which I felt should have been significant,
happened off-screen and the details were never revealed.
The bad guys on a whole were not developed. They were all
just district numbers. So you felt nothing when they died and really had little
reason to fear them. Tresh seemed to be the main villain. He stayed in this one
area and feed himself and grew stronger. And yet no details about what he eat
or where he stayed emerged. I think the ending should have been a confrontation
with him on his own turf and Peeta and Kat only win by working together.
I loved the part with the poisonous berries. When Kat kept
some of the berries in here pack I knew they would be important later, but I
never suspected they might end up using them themselves. But the story should
have ended with them about to eat. It would have been a great cliffhanger!
Instead we have a slow ending where after the games Kat is
worried about saying a wrong thing and being arrested, but the reader in
thinking, “how many more pages of this are there?” It was like a 30 page
epilogue in which you never really gain any new information or have any major
character developments. Yes, Kat doesn’t know if she likes Peeta because she
doesn’t know what she has with Gale. We already knew that!
Kat may or may not have grown as a character. Certainly what
she went through should have changed her, but it isn’t really clear how her
experiences changed her. I don’t think the author ever really challenged her
enough. I mean obviously she was put through an adventure, but at no point did
I feel like she experienced anything that changed her. For instance, for the 2
times she had to actually kill people she never gives it any thought. Killing
seems to be no big deal. She should have had some self-reflection. She should
have felt guilty about the killings. She is supposed to be a human being and
not a sociopath, right? I figured the only way she would win the games was to
realize that even if she didn’t like killing that it was something she was good
at, but the simplicity of the story didn’t seem to have any room for any kind
of self-reflection.
Other Books in the Series
I wondered what the sequels were about. I saw three
possibilities.
1)
Kat somehow ends up back in the arena the following year (My
thought was Gale’s name gets drawn and she volunteers again hoping the district
team rule will be applied again).
2)
Kat has to work behind the scenes during a Hunger Game because
she is a girl’s sponsor.
3)
Kat somehow becomes involved in a military conflict against
the Capital.
I looked up the next two books and it seems like 1 and 3 to
some degree are going tot happen in the next books.
Miscellaneous
Peeta knowing how to make himself camouflaged because he
knew all about making icing for cakes is like saying he’s an electrician
because he made the candles for the cakes.
Hunger Games is fantasy rather than science fiction because
no attempt is made to make the world-building in the story make any sense. In
this universe California and the areas west of the Rockies are the overlords of
the rest of the area that was America because they had nuclear weapons and the
rest of the country didn’t. Why didn’t the rest of the country have nuclear
weapons?
It doesn’t make any sense that the servant girl made
it all the way to Kat’s territory, the furthest territory from the Capital. Did
she walk that whole way? And what are
the chances that Kat would be given her as a servant? And what purpose did it
serve other than to make the story that much more implausible?
The Movie
The movie version of Hunger Games seemed to put the novel on
fast forward. The movie was 2 and ½ hours long, but in order to fit everything
in the book in that time frame it had to move quickly. This is especially
evident at the end of the movie. One of my complaints about the novel was that
the ending dragged; well the movie turned that 30-page epilogue into about 5
minutes of screen time. But while the pacing improved that problem it made
other problems even worse. For instance, I said that I wished Tresh had had a
bigger role in the novel. In the movie he was onscreen for about 30 seconds.
Jennifer Lawrence made a pretty good Katniss, but she seemed
too normal. When I read the book I pictured Kat as really socially awkward
(like a few steps away from Lisbeth in “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”).
Peeta also seemed really normal looking; I pictured him as a big bruiser of a
guy. The book makes a big point of the fact that since he was a baker’s son he
never missed a meal and he’s supposed to be able to throw 100 pound bags of
grain. Josh Hutcherson, the guy that plays him looks like he weighs close to
100 pounds. In fact the only casting I liked was Woody Harrelson as Haymitch;
he was excellent.
The other major difference in the movie is that there are constantly
cuts to the control room of the game and also sometimes you see reaction shots
in the Capital and various districts including an all out riot in District 11
when Rue dies. When I read the book I thought the complete isolation from the
outside was a weakness of the novel, but after seeing the movie I think it is
one of the novel’s strengths. It was better to wonder what was happening then
to see weird scenes of Donald Sutherland (as the President) gardening and
making vague threats. But I suppose it is the movie’s way of setting up the
story for the sequel.
The impossibility of Collin’s universe is only more evident
when it starts to be explained. The movie suggests that the game environment is
a computer simulation. Dogs are created from nothingness, Tree are created and
set on fire instantly. So if nothing is real how are the tributes not all
starving to death? How can you gain nutrition from computer-generated wildlife?
And wouldn’t those berries at the end of the movie not really be poisonous, the
game master could have instantly made them blueberries if he wanted to, right? In the novel as far as the reader knew the trees and everything in the arena were real. Did they uproot trees and move them there or build an arena around a forest? I have no idea. but I do know, that the dogs were cyborgs of some sort. That's what made them terrifying to Kat, that they were partially made from parts of her fallen friends and enemies.
And I have to mention my least favorite scene in the
entire movie. When Kat gets to the Capital and she goes to the room they’ve
given her and she is suddenly wearing this bright yellow nightshirt and the
shirt perfectly matches the curtains and various yellow accents in the room. It
looked ridiculous!
