America's Answer to Battle Royale

The Hunger Games

by Suzanne Collins 
p. 2008

I will admit I never heard of The Hunger Games until I heard they were making it into a movie. I’m going to pin this one on the fact that it was not exactly aimed at my demographic, not to mention I was too preoccupied with slogging through Game of Thrones to notice any other books. Having every intention to read the book before catching the movie, I read this one on a flight in order to prepare myself and I’m glad I did because I found it superior to the movie for a number of reasons.

First, the book: Hunger Games is a very quick read. For most readers it will take a single afternoon. Being a slow reader, I took a bit longer, but at no point did it feel tedious or tiresome to me. The action is well balanced throughout and by the time the story comes to an end, I find myself eager to finish off the series to see where this concept goes. It seems silly to suggest this given the immense sudden popularity of the series, but for those who are not familiar with the storyline, Hunger Games is a futuristic, post-apocalyptic story of North America divided into 12 districts, collectively called Panem and ruled by the Capitol. As punishment for rebelling long ago, the Capitol forces two members of each district (a boy and a girl) to compete in the annual Hunger Games, a brutal, arena-bound fight to the death where only one victor emerges to bring glory back to their district. Children between 12 and 18 are the competitors and their names go in the pot every year, increasing exponentially the older they get, among other factors. Our heroine, Katniss Everdeen, of District 12, has her name in the running 20 times on her 16^th year, but shockingly it’s her 12-year-old baby sister, Prim, who lucks out when her name is chosen. Katniss selflessly volunteers in her place and enters the competition, despite it being virtually a death sentence, as her district, among the poorest of the twelve, hasn’t produced a victor in decades.

As far as relatable characters go, protagonist Katniss is somewhat cold, but it’s well established that she has to be in order to survive and keep her family alive. People in her situation cannot afford to be nice. I can’t say I relate to her enough, but I understand her at the very least. She is overprotective of her sensitive younger sister and unforgiving to her sensitive mother ever since their father’s death and mother’s subsequent breakdown that almost destroyed the family. Katniss’ best friend (and probably more) Gale is a cool character, but he isn’t given much to do in book one, which centers primarily on the Games, which Gale is not a part of. His character is progressed solely through Katniss’ eyes and even through her delusions it is obvious he cares for her as more than a friend.

Katniss’ partner (as far as he can be called such in a fight to the death) from District 12, Peeta Mellark, is a somewhat sensitive but strong baker’s son with whom Katniss shares a connection from the past, a connection that Katniss regrets because it compels her to feel like she owes Peeta something and Katniss loathes owing anyone anything (quite the charmer, that one). I rather liked Peeta, but I feel sorry for him because his obligatory relationship with Katniss (forced on by circumstances surrounding the Games) felt painfully one-sided and Peeta feels doomed to be friend-zoned. I hope he gets someone who likes him for more reasons than just obligation in the future books.

Guiding the pair through the politics surrounding the game is District 12’s only living victor, Haymitch, a drunk who takes some verbal beating from the kids to finally shape up and become a true mentor, as well as pseudo-publicist, Effie Trinket, and stylists Cinna and Portia. There is a strong dissociation in the buildup to the Games because of the fakeness and politics surrounding them. To Katniss, and the readers, it’s inconceivable that a bunch of children could be sent off to fight for the death, but to some of the districts and especially to the Capitol, fighting in the Games is an honor, so a lot of the public attitude towards them is positive, almost deferential. It doesn’t come across as the death sentence and giant human rights violation it so clearly is. If I had one problem with the plot of these books it is that it just strikes me as highly unlikely that self-respecting parents would ever allow something like this to happen, no matter how many years in the future we travel, how oppressive our government is, or how far our nation has fallen. I understand the Capitol smacked down and obliterated the last district (the fabled District 13 that I do not believe is truly gone) that rose up, but I just can’t quite buy that adults would stand by and allow this to happen. The only reason I let it go is because I know this is a novel targeting young adults, and young adults would rather read about kids their age than adults, even if it is more conceivable that Hunger Games competitors would be 16 and up. A Hunger Games with adult competitors is an entirely different kind of book than Collins wrote, and most definitely darker. 

I won’t go into too much detail about the Games themselves, but they were exciting enough, with some interesting twists and turns leading up to the end. I was actually pretty surprised that all the other kids outside of District 12 died. I figured some sort of uprising was coming and that the rules would be upturned, but I kind of thought more kids would survive the fallout than just Katniss and Peeta. Sort of disappointing, because I liked Rue and Thresh and Foxface, but I suppose without Rue’s death, the emotional impact would have been lessened. They got fairly brutal for a young adult novel, but I still would have enjoyed these as a kid because I generally liked dark tales.

I don’t really want to spend too much time discussing the love triangle either, because that was tedious, but necessary, I guess. The intimacy between Katniss and Peeta was awkward to the point where I almost had to skip over it, but I understand why it was there. Collins wanted to get across the “Big Brother” aspect of the Capitol’s hold over Panem’s citizens. Many of Katniss’ actions are guided by how the public will perceive them, because someone is always watching. Even before the Games, Katniss’ everyday life is influenced by who might be watching and judging her actions. She is a very guarded character all around. Poor Peeta is left in the dark about her true feelings and because I have a soft spot for nice guys, I feel really bad for him as a consequence.

The movie did an okay job at translating the story to screen, but it should have been much better. Their chief problem is that Katniss is a character who internalizes everything. This isn’t a problem in the book because it’s told in first person, but in the movie Katniss comes across a lot colder simply because you can’t know what she’s thinking or what her facial expressions mean unless you’ve read the books and know what you’re looking for. The movie should have done a better job of translating Katniss’ dilemma to screen and it just failed to do so.

One thing that the movie adapted well is the background explanation for the Games and Panem. Since it couldn’t just exposition dump on viewers without coming off as tedious or convenient, the movie gave us a wider view of the Capitol and the gamemaker. Some people resented so much screen time being wasted on characters that essentially had no impact in the book, but that’s just the thing: they did have an impact; we just didn’t see it. Lending screen time to these tertiary characters was a clever way of explaining the world our heroes live in without just telling us. And let’s face it: if they didn’t cut away to scenes outside of the arena every now and then, it would be two hours of Katniss running around looking distressed as she tried to stay out of sight, and that was bound to get old.

Showing us more of Panem was about the only clever thing the Hunger Games movie did, however. Lots of crucial characterization was skimmed over, seemingly important scenes and characters left out, and the whole thing came off rather whitewashed, as if trying to appeal to families and younger audiences. Come on, filmmakers, this is a movie about kids brutally murdering each other for sport while everyone is forced to watch; why bother skipping on the gore? I figured they would pan away to avoid showing some of the deaths, but  they utterly copped out on the brutality of the trackerjacker death/hallucination scene (in exactly the way I predicted, i.e. showing Katniss running around while everything was blurry), cut out the connection between the kids and the muttations entirely, and waved a hand at Peeta’s brutal wounds, which furthered both his and Katniss’ characters in the book. The demographic this series is aimed at can handle heavier stuff. If they can’t, then they shouldn’t be watching. It just lessens the emotional impact of a story when you let Hollywood censor it.

But the worst misstep the movie made is perhaps the most innocuous. In the book, at one of Katniss’ low points, she is sent a simple gift of bread by District 11. At this point in the story, Katniss has learned to find her own sustenance and does not need the bread, but it is a touching gift all the same because it’s an unprecedented token of thanks tacitly understood by both parties. It gives Katniss the motivation to keep going and some closure regarding Rue’s death, not to mention a deep insight into the minds of the rest of Panem outside of the games. It’s perhaps one of the most poignant parts of the book, so it came as a surprise when movie-District 11’s response was to start a riot (made all the more offensive since the movie decided that District 11 was apparently the black district). It’s disheartening that a movie felt compelled to choose the violent and sort of racist reaction over the simple, sincere one. This is about the point in the movie that I lost all hope for it being a decent adaptation, but that hope was on its deathbed already.

The Hunger Games was a decent movie to someone who hasn’t read the book, but not a good start to the summer movie season (that glory should proudly go to The Avengers) much less to the inevitable movie trilogy this will spawn. I still look forward to reading the other two installments of Collins’ book, but I don’t, as yet, look forward to seeing any more of the awkwardness that is this movie. People who have read the entire trilogy can proceed to laugh at me for saying this, but I hope we don’t have to sit through two more installments of the tedious Peeta-Katniss-Gale love triangle. All these damn preteen books these days have them, often at the expense of personal character development. Kids can be invested in a story without projecting themselves into love triangles with beautiful people that everyone pretends are average-looking. It’s not making self-esteem issues any better; it’s just distracting from the better story.