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| Too much bad CG, not enough Temple of the Dog |
The movie itself is just okay in my opinion because I have absurdly high standards for this particular genre. Everyone has heard by now how liberally it borrows from pretty much every sci-fi movie/book ever made, but particularly from "Battle Royale," "Death Race 2000" and "The Running Man." Not that those 3 movies were the first stories to ever feature death matches between humans for society's entertainment, but it's worth noting when a huge cultural phenomenon has obvious predecessors. "Battle Royale" is actually a pretty awful flick and anyone who gets stoked to watch it because they heard it was like "The Hunger Games" will be pretty bummed out. "Death Race 2000" and "The Running Man," however, I cannot recommend highly enough. Classic stuff.
From a nerdy visual standpoint, I pretty much hated the way "The Hunger Games" was filmed. It embraced all the horrible trends of modern film making: rapid, ADHD-riddled editing, over-the-top shaky camerawork and SyFy channel movie-of-the-week caliber CG. When you're setting the scene of District 12 as looking like an Eastern Kentucky poor coal mining town, you really, REALLY don't need to edit it like a fucking Aphex Twin music video, okay? Let me soak in the visuals instead of making HUNGER GAMES: CRANK STYLE. Not to diss the "Crank" movies, as there is a time and place for such manic style, but dystopian sci-fi is not such a place. It basically made a movie with an estimated 100 million dollar budget look unfinished at times; like you're watching a rough cut. It's one visual saving grace is that the outdoor shots were filmed in North Carolina instead of overused British Columbia like most other Lions Gate productions. So the forests look more like "Last of the Mohicans" than "Twilight." Solid choice on that.
An instant red flag for me was when I noticed in an early, very positive review that this movie was 140 minutes long. Are you friggin' kidding me? You can speed read through the first book in less time than that if you're so inclined. This isn't "The Godfather", this is a young adult fiction adaptation. And yet many folks have remarked that it felt rushed, even at nearly 2 and a half hours long. The movie, as with the book, has 3 distinct sections: District 12, The Capitol/prepping for the games and then the games. My god, did that middle part drag. Should have been 10 minutes of screen time tops. Setting up Katniss' relationships in District 12 got shortchanged badly and even the games felt kind of rushed. They especially rushed the Katniss and Rue friendship, which I felt was the emotional highpoint of the book. So, the movie suffers greatly from being too enslaved to the source material when it could have cut out a ton of smaller things and really knocked it out of the park for the big moments instead of pulling punches.
Jennifer Lawrence deserves every single bit of praise she's getting for her role. Her performance in "Winter's Bone" was clearly not a fluke. She's the real deal. Due to the rapid pacing and editing, she had to do a lot of subtle quick non-verbal reaction shots and just kind of generally emote in order to make a lot of scenes work and for the most part she succeeds. In fact, the movie basically lives or dies by her performance in my opinion. Had they chosen a less experienced or talented lead, disaster may have ensued. But J-Law killed it and thus saved/created a successful franchise, so I guess blame her for kicking ass if y'all hate it.
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