Tandem Movie Review: The Hunger Games

Jo: In another case of "Reading is hard, guys...", Chandler has again opted out of reading a mega-bestselling young adult series. I, on the other hand, have added the mockingjay to the list of literary tattoos I plan on getting one day.

(For the curious, also on the list are the Deathly Hallows symbol, an "umbrella tree" from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and two stars- the one on the right a little fancier, it being the "second star to the right." If you don't get the reference you don't deserve to know.)

Yes, I'm a Hunger Games fan. And for the first time in a long time-- come to think of it, maybe ever-- I wasn't disappointed by a book-to-movie adaptation. Which isn't to say there weren't things I didn't like about it, but overall I did enjoy it. Chandler not so much.

Chandler: I’m never on the up and up when it comes to books turned movies. I knew nothing about Harry Potter until the third book was out. It took me a while before I discovered that Twilight was both a book and movie series. Naturally, I was surprised when I learned that the hype surrounding The Hunger Games was because it was a wildly popular book series. From now on, I’m just going to assume that every movie that comes out is a book adaptation so I seem “hip” and “with it”.

If you read my Harry Potter review (This-Post-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named), then you’ll know that, because I didn’t read the book, my review of the movie will be based solely on the quality of the movie rather than what I should know from the book. You didn’t know that? Well, you should have read my Harry Potter review.

I had the plot of The Hunger Games explained to me as “a bunch of kids go to a secluded area and fight each other to the death,” I was overwhelmingly unimpressed. This was the exact plot of the novel/manga/movie Battle Royale, the novel having been released in 2000. And Battle Royale isn’t some obscure story only popular in Japan; Battle Royale has a pretty strong following in the States and I’m surprised very few people have made the connection. Essentially, to me, The Hunger Games was the plot of Battle Royale with a bit of Twilight sprinkled in to appeal to adolescent girls between the ages of 12 and 18. I’ll admit that I had no intention of seeing this movie, but I was relieved when I found out that it wasn’t exactly what I had imagined. Still, however, the movie was certainly not for me.

The Hunger Games shares the same problem with the Godzilla movies. Stay with me here. The problem being that the main draw of the movie is right in the movie’s title so viewers aren’t so much as watching the movie as they are just waiting for this titular event to occur. The difference between the two movies (other than the obvious) is at least in the Godzilla movies, Godzilla makes a brief appearance early on in the movie to whet the audience’s appetite for what’s to come later. The Hunger Games was just one long, drawn out build up to the actual Games that, after a certain point, I didn’t even care what the characters were doing or saying, I just wanted them to start killing each other. I think having the movie in media res format-- that is, start the movie with the Hunger Games already in progress, then go back and show the events leading up to that point-- would have been a more engaging and exciting way of telling the story.

I understand that there is a certain amount of backstory and character development that must be done before we get to the action. However, in The Hunger Games, the backstory and character development becomes so heavy handed that it skews the pacing of the entire movie (i.e. it slows down a lot). I could peg each character’s defining trait as soon as they came onscreen (that’s good) but there were so many superfluous scenes devoted to further expound these already established traits that it became almost insulting to the viewer (that’s bad).

Amongst these scenes were two flashbacks that show up and then are never explained. The first shows Katniss watching Peeta throw burnt bread to some pigs in the rain, then more burnt bread to Katniss, and is beaten by his mother for doing so. This particular flashback appears almost every time Katniss and Peeta are together, but its significance is never made clear, only revealing that they have some shared history. The other, trippy flashback comes out of nowhere late in the film and, much like the first flashback, alludes to very little. Because of the dreamlike way it’s shot and the fact that only appears once so late in the film, this flashback is jarring and left me confused. However, because it revealed so little, I didn’t even give it a second thought.

Jo: I really didn't like how much I have had to explain to Chandler since we saw it because, like he always says, a movie should be a stand-alone unit and you shouldn't have had to read the books to understand. So there's a few things I'm kind bothered they left out, like the significance of the Mockingjay pin, the severity of Peeta's (Josh Hutcherson) illness in the cave, how important the loaf of bread that Peeta gave Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) was, and the importance of food in general because all of those things are referenced and are important to the plot. And those are only a few of the things Chandler asked me, we couldn't remember them all.

The two most egregious misses, I thought, were the pin and the significance of food. The food especially, in the book, is used to constantly illustrate how desperate the outer districts are and how decadent the Capitol and wealthy districts are, and how it's such a great incentive to win for the outer district tributes because a win promises extra food for their district for the following year. And I was seriously looking forward to seeing Katniss really tear into a meal-- probably the best meal of her very hungry life-- and offending Capitol appointed tribute escort Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks).

And don't hate me for saying this but I do wish Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth (Gale) and had been just a shade thinner. NOT as an aesthetic thing, but as a starving-to-death thing-- like Tom Hanks in Cast Away. In the beginning of the book, before Gale breaks out the roll he got, their breakfast was going to be sharing a lump of cheese.

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Chandler: With so much build leading up to the Hunger Games, the Games itself was a bit of a let down. Out of 24 competitors, we don’t even see half of them. The characters in the Friday the 13th movies survive longer than majority of the kids in the Hunger Games. Plus, we actually get to see them die. I was expecting an all out battle royale, what I got was a lot of bloodless violence and off screen deaths. On top of that, these off screen deaths made it hard to keep track of how many tributes were still alive. I did, however, like the fact that when the characters had a chance to kill, they took it. Except for one instance that irked me where a girl from one district (Clove, Isabelle Fuhrman) literally had a knife to Katniss’s throat, then decided to describe how she was going to make her suffer before killing her. Katniss, being the main character that she is, is saved last minute by one of the only black people in the movie. Now, if everyone was only trying to kill Katniss, the pre-murder taunting would have made sense. However, in a situation where everyone is equally trying to kill everyone, the gloating would have to take a back seat to neck slicing.

("Frozone: So now I'm in deep trouble. I mean, one more jolt of this death ray and I'm an epitaph. Somehow I manage to find cover and what does Baron von Ruthless do?
Mr. Incredible: [laughing] He starts monologuing.
Frozone: He starts monologuing! He starts, like, this prepared speech about how *feeble* I am compared to him, how *inevitable* my defeat is, how *the world* *will soon* *be his*, yadda yadda yadda.
Mr. Incredible: Yammering.
Frozone: Yammering! I mean, the guy has me on a platter and he won't shut up!"

-The Incredibles)

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Jo: The film also glossed over the characters' personal relationships, with the exception of Katniss and her sister, Primrose (Willow Shields). Through The Hunger Games, the novel, the driving force is the relationship between Peeta and Katniss and their fight for not just survival, but mutual survival. With the truncated relationships it was hard to see why Katniss would risk her life for Peeta (who didn't seem nearly as close to death as he probably should have), and why Katniss reacted so strongly to Rue's (Amandla Stenberg) death. Which isn't to say that the movie blew Rue's death, it didn't, I tried to wipe away my tears sneakily so Chandler wouldn't notice. (Turns out he did. I wish he wouldn't stare at me so much...)

Katniss and Cinna's relationship was barely there as well. When Cinna (Lenny Kravitz) says he likes Katniss there was really no reason for him to do so, they'd barely spoken. If they had showed them interacting more during Katniss' preparations it would have made more sense why she would be comforted by his presence at the tribute interview.

I'm hoping that the lack of attention paid to the relationships is going to be remedied in the next three movies-- which would make sense, I suppose, as they need to come up with 3 more movies worth of material.

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Chandler: Another bit that threw me for a loop was when the Game’s overseers all of a sudden spawned gorilla/bat-faced dog monsters out of nowhere. I could accept the fact that they controlled the world the Games took place in. They established that early on when they started a forest fire, forcing Katniss to fight rather than hiding in the tree tops. What I couldn’t accept were gorilla/bat-faced dog monsters literally appearing from God-knows-where actively trying to kill Katniss and Peeta. That took what I thought were fixed rules and completely changed them. If they could spawn gorilla/bat-faced dog monsters anywhere on the playing field, the possibilities of what else they could make appear would be endless.

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Jo: Visually, Panem looked exactly like I thought it would. The dreariness of The Seam, the opulence of the Capitol, I thought it was perfect. The arena I imagined was open-air, but I can see why they would go with a Truman Show-type set-up, so no biggie. The costuming was pitch-perfect from the Depression era styling of the Reaping to the tribute interview flame dress to the frilly, innocent, poofy, yellow dress at the victor's interview.

I do take issue with Peeta's casting, though. Josh Hutcherson has very little charm (Julianne Moore's hair had more charm and brought on more emotion than he ever did in The Kids Are Alright), which is only made more obvious by his subscription to the Kristen Stewart school of acting: open mouthed and staring blankly. Feel the anguish.

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Chandler:What sets The Hunger Games apart from most teen dramas (notably Twilight) is that it has a strong, independent female lead that isn’t shoehorned into a trivial love story. She does get thrown together with Peeta, but only to boost her likability with her sponsors, thereby increasing her chance of survival. This might have been the only aspect of the movie that I thought was really well done.

The Hunger Games fell flat with me. It wasn’t outright a bad movie, just not for me. It was one long build up that culminated to absolutely nothing. It seemed like they focused so much on the lead up to the Games that the ending just seems tacked on. On top of that, it gave no indication that the story will be continuing. I wasn’t aware that The Hunger Games was a trilogy until after the credits had rolled which is ironic, with so many movies nowadays ending with a sequel hook. Now I’m torn: the OCD part of me wants to see the next two movies out of necessity for completion, but the movie snob in me is telling me to stay away. I guess I’ll just have someone tell me what happens.

Jo: That's what he thinks. He's coming with me whether he likes it or not.

For me, the movie had all of the excitement of the book. While watching I couldn't help but think "It's almost perfect." Maybe that's because I got the references-- I was watching it more as a companion to the novel. I felt the tension boiling just below the surface for the people of Panem, and the oblivious decadence of the Capitol. I can't wait to see the next movies when that precarious situation explodes, but I worry that the un-initiated will feel the way Chandler does because the filmmakers decided to cut important story elements and extend or add unnecessary scenes to take up time.

Overall, though, I really did enjoy it. I literally laughed and cried.

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Jo: 3.5 arrows out of 5

Chandler is too stubborn to give a rating. His argument is "I don't even like Ebert. Plus, I said the movie wasn't bad, just not for me." I propose you leave a note in the comments about how awesome ratings are and how Chandler should do them.

This-Post-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named

The world that author J. K. Rowling has created with the Harry Potter series is one filled with fantasy, drama, and amazement. The books have sold over 450 million copies world-wide making it the best selling book series in history. And it's no mystery why. Each book introduces new characters, creatures, and twists that would make M. Night Shyamalan's head spin.

At least, that's what I'm assuming.

See, I've never actually read all of the books. I remember words like "Harry Potter," "Hermione," and "muggle" being thrown around in sixth grade homeroom constantly before finally caving in and picking up my copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, not having the faintest clue as to what I was getting myself into. Halfway through Prisoner of Azkaban I thought, "wait a minute, what the hell is going on?" and promptly stopped there (ironic, since Prisoner is probably my favorite in the movie series). I had realized that the only reason I made it through two and a half books was because everyone else was reading the books and I wanted to fit in (remember kids: peer pressure is wrong).

Don't get me wrong, though. I don't hate the Harry Potter franchise. In fact, I find it very interesting extremely well written. The problem is that you either love the franchise or couldn't care less. The sheer number of characters, plots, sub-plots, and seemingly unimportant objects that are introduced every book becomes overwhelming to keep track of to anyone less than a die-hard fan.

I've always been on the fence about returning to the series and this year, after playing through Lego Harry Potter without the slightest clue as to what was going on, I made a vow to finally find out why Snape killed Dumbledore (do I really have to put SPOILER ALERT?) and what exactly a "horcrux" is.

But not through reading the books. Reading is hard, you guys.

No, I'm going to watch the all movies within a close enough time frame to each other so that I actually remember the multitude of characters, plot twists, and seemingly unimportant objects that show up in the first act that become extremely important during the last.

Done and done. That was the least anticlimactic way to say that I have now watched the movies.

Now that I've watched them, I'm going to give my thoughts and reactions on the movie series as a whole. I already said that I'm not reading the books, so if at any point you think to yourself something along the lines of, "But in the book..." I'm going to have to ask you to stop right there. A good movie is a good movie and should be able to achieve that on its own; you shouldn't have to go back to the source material to fill in plot holes or else it wouldn't be a good movie. Now that we've gotten that disclaimer out of the way, let's start my unbiased review of the Harry Potter movies.

Let me start by getting this out of the way: the child actors are all terrible with Daniel Radcliffe being the worst offender. He had to have been cast based on looks and nothing else. He acts the way I imagine a robot would trying to emulate emotion: smile when happy, grimace when mad, mouth slightly agape when surprised, yell when sad. In the first movie, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson aren't any better by comparison but by the last, Radcliffe's performance make Grint and Watson look like a couple of Marlon Brandos. That is to say, Radcliffe is the only actor who's acting doesn't improve throughout the ten years these movies have been released. The worst part is that he's the titular character, so his astonishingly sub-par performance gets the most screen time across the eight movies.

However, the adult cast is fantastic. Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Gary Oldman, and Ralph Fiennes are only some of the stellar actors boosting the movies' watchability. There's no other way I can say it: they're all just so damn good. It's obvious that they're all classically trained theatre actors and boy does it show, especially in scenes when several of the adult cast are interacting with each other. However, as much as I like Alan Rickman as an actor, I can't say that I'm completely in love with his portrayal of Snape. His manner of speech comes off unintentionally hilarious rather than "reluctant, stone-faced professor with a heart of gold".


The Harry Potter movies were the first to make me admire both the scenery and special effects in a film. All the set pieces, make-up effects, and CGI are gorgeous. The scene that really blew me away when I first saw Sorcerer's Stone was the Quidditch match.

Can I just take a moment and ask just what are the rules of Quidditch? It seems to be "throw the ball through the hoop and also don't die." From what I can see, there's no out-of-bounds or, more importantly, any penalties for actively trying to murder your opponents. Also, take into account the fact that everyone, both playing and spectating the game, knows powerful magic? To top it all off, it's a school sport in which players can be as young as 11. This calls into question just how responsible the faculty at Hogwarts really is. And that's nothing compared to the walking liability case that is the Tri-Wizard Tournament, but we'll get there soon enough.

Goblet of Fire was when the series did an almost complete 180, going from a light-hearted children's film involving magic to Voldemort's return, Cedric dying, (c'mon, you've read the books) and shit getting real. Arguably, this is where the series begins, with Sorcerer's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, and Prisoner of Azkaban serving as one huge build up to this point. Despite this, I still can't get over how the wizarding world can host a tournament in which the first challenge is pitting teenagers against a dragon, again, with the only rule seemingly to be "don't die."

Actually, the wizarding world is blasé to the whole "the kid who survived an encounter with the dark lord is now attending the most prestigious wizarding school in the world where, coincidentally, strange and terrifying things are starting to happen." This is one of my biggest gripes with the series. Throughout the entire series, no one ever believes Harry when he says something bad will happen, despite everyone knowing him to be the chosen one. Hell, no one even believes the school's seer when it's her job to predict the future. When a student ends up possessed, petrified, or missing, there are no investigations, the school is never shut down, and the only action is to send the students to their rooms while the teachers wonder who could be behind such heinous acts. When the kid who survived an encounter with evil incarnate says that the bad guy is back, you had better damn well believe him.


The good thing about the Harry Potter universe is that any little inconsistency can be explained away with "it's magic" and get away with it. However, I did find two instances that left me scratching my head. Even though it's explained that Harry and Voldemort's wands connected because of very specific circumstances, they never explain why Dumbledore and Voldemort's wands connect other than because it looked awesome. Maybe because of Dumbledore being who he is coupled with his possession of the elder wand? Okay, fine, I guess we could chalk that one up to "it's magic." The other instance sadly falls into the "it explains it all in the book" category: after the climax of The Half-Blood Prince, Snape reveals that he is the Half-Blood Prince with no explanation as to why or what it means. The only reason they put that line into the movie was because they had to incorporate the title somehow so they don't leave viewers in the dark as to who the Half-Blood Prince is.


I said that the movies were amazing to look at before, but that gets turned up to 11 once David Yates gets behind the helm as director. The cinematography gets noticeably and drastically better with his Harry Potter directorial debut Order of the Phoenix. What stands out to me as the best scene in the entire series would be, hands down, the duel between Voldemort and Dumbledore. Everything comes together, from how it was shot, the set, the effects, the acting, and the use of music (there was none) to make not only a visually stunning scene, but an awesome scene overall. These techniques effectively come into play throughout the rest of the film series during key moments; for example, to create tension when Harry, Hermione, and Ron are in the woods in Deathly Hallows, the camera switches to handheld, giving it a slightly shaky feel and the music is completely dropped. The shaky camera give an air of instability and the lack of music makes you focus on the dialogue or ambiance. One superfluous camera trick I noticed Yates using a lot was where the camera would zoom in or out on a character through a transparent object, such as through a window or through the defensive spell around Hogwarts during the last battle in Deathly Hallows. It really didn't serve a purpose, it just looked cool.


I can understand now why the Harry Potter franchise has been so successful. The story is very well-written and the characters are fully fleshed out and developed. For someone who found it hard to keep track of the multitudes of characters with constantly changing alliances and mundane objects becoming extremely important well after you forgot about them (the Deluminator springs to mind), seeing the movies practically back to back finally made me appreciate and understand at least part of the Harry Potter fandom. Still not going to read the books, though.