After watching The Hunger Games movie, I think it is safe to
say that the movie has lived up to all the hype. Overall, the movie was backed
by strong performances of Katniss and Peeta. Although there were some
discrepancies in the movie, I think that the movie was definitely well worth
the watch.
For the most part, the movie remained faithful to the book.
It included key scenes including the Reaping, training with other tributes, and
in the Games, the Cornucopia scenes, the tracker-jacker encounter, Rue’s death,
the cave scene with Peeta, and the finale of the Games with the mutations.
Although I felt that the movie was fast paced, it did successfully covered
these important scenes in brevity.
I also thought that the choice for the cast of the movie was
well picked. Jennifer Lawrence played a strong, steadfast, and reliable
Katniss. The movie portrayed her to be very protective over her younger sister,
Prim and along with helping Peeta when he was injured. Likewise, I thought that
Peeta was very likeable and convincing of his love for Katniss. His portrayal
in the movie was very representative of the book, particularly his monologue on
the roof with Katniss the night before the Games began. Also, I thought
Elizabeth Banks made a great choice for Effie. Her costume and demeanor were
exemplary of the Capitol.
However, one discrepancy that I found strange was that
during the end of the movie, Peeta was left almost unharmed. In the book,
although Peeta’s leg was much better after applying the magic cream sent from
the sponsors in the Capitol, his leg did not fully recover. In fact, he needed
a prosthetic in the end. Likewise, during the final scene in the Games, Katniss
is still bleeding from her ear. However, in the movie, both Peeta and Katniss
appear only to be a little disheveled. It seems that they are just wondering
around the woods. As a result, the movie lacks the sense of desperation for
survival and tension.
I also noticed that the movie added a scene that was not in
the book. In final scene of the Games, in the Cornucopia, Cato was wrestling
with Katniss and almost has her head dangling off the Cornucopia. Fortunately,
Peeta comes to her rescue. I found it particularly strange why this scene was added.
Rather, in the book, the muttations attacked Peeta’s leg and made him more
vulnerable than Katniss.
Since the movie is an adaptation of the book, the moviegoers
will instinctively compare the movie to the book, making it harder for Hunger
Games fans to be satisfied. However, overall with excellent casting choices and
its faithfulness to the book, though despite some discrepancies, I thought that
the movie is definitely worth watching .
I completely agree with you and all these points you described in this post. And I'm very glad you brought up the lack of survival needs/desperation differences between the book and the movie. I felt that the movie was truly lacking certain aspects such as the necessity to end the games quickly due to the injuries both Katniss and Peeta suffered and the need to get medical attention.
ReplyDeleteI also found one major continuity was in the book Katniss takes a long time searching for water, and almost succumbs to dehydration, but that was never a problem in the movie. Overall, the movie was great, but there wasn't a sense of desperation that was within the book.
I agree with your post. The movie followed the book really well, but I think the book was much better. The movie was overly dramatic sometimes (with the music and specific images, especially at the beginning), and I preferred hearing the story from Katniss's narrative. Also, I agree that deleting the scenes in which Katniss and Peeta showed desperation (i.e. with their injuries or when dehydration was an issue) made the difficulty of survival seem a little less pressing. Also, Peeta's feelings for Katniss were less developed and their whole "love" story (fake or real) seemed a little rushed. Overall, however, I enjoyed the film and thought it was a great adaptation of the novel.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with judging a book and movie against one another though is the fact that the movie is just a summary. It takes all of the most exciting and important parts and crams it into a 2 hours span that took someone 2 days to read. I hate the Harry Potter movies because I think there is SO much added/missing from them that ruins the books... but the more I think about it, especially in this case, the most unfair it is to compare. I really liked both the book and movie of the Hunger Games. I think for what they had to work with they did a very good job!
ReplyDeleteI'll admit I had my doubts about this movie at the beginning, but I found to enjoy it very much. I was generally really pleased with the cast, especially Jennifer Lawrence. Though there had been a lot of debate about her race in the book versus in the movie, I thought that the emotions she portrayed was much more real and important to her character than her physical attributes.
ReplyDeleteI think the whole issue with having books made into movies is that books allow the reader to interpret the story and the characters in any way. The movie is only one interpretation of that, so it would be impossible to please everyone. Yet despite this, I still though the movie did a fairly good job sticking to the plot.