Hello all,
I’ve just finished five long days of working and I am worn out. Finding myself with lackluster movies playing in my near vicinity I decided to prepare in advance for one of the bigger planned releases coming out this year…...The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 2 (I may do Star Wars if I have the time my December is looking pretty busy at the moment.) Now in a very similar situation to my last series Mission Impossible I find myself having only watched the first one and not the others. Luckily this time all of them are available on Netflix so I’m going to try and watch them all from there (with a brief pause while I figure out what to do with review number 100.) So tonight I tackled the first in the Hunger Games series and were the odds in the movies favor? Let’s find out.
Plot Summary - In a dystopic like future, every year as part of a tribute,a young boy and a young girl are sent each from twelve districts to compete in the titular Hunger Games, where they all fight to the death until one remains the victor. In District Twelve, in preparation for the 74th Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) volunteers as tribute in order to save her sister from competing. When she is sent into the games, her goal is not to win, but to survive.
Pros - This was the movie that launched Jennifer Lawrence and you can clearly see her giving it her all and she does wonderfully with it. You can really Katniss evolving and adapting to the situations as they play out and she does a good job of capturing the range of emotions needed. The rest of the cast does pretty well too, making for a wide and interesting assortment of characters. There are also some rather emotional and intense scenes once the actual hunger games get going in the second half of the film.
Cons - The first half of this film makes me want to punch people. When they’re in the capital and so much exposition and build up just gets dragged out on and on for what feels like forever. I know they need to set the characters and the surroundings and follow the book somewhat, but they missed a great opportunity and what I feel would’ve been a much better way to tell the story.
They should've started at the beginning of the actual games, and then flashbacked to moments before the game that was relevant to whatever part of the story they were at at the time. Right at the beginning, have katniss standing there watching the countdown, and then cut back to the reaping ceremony and the process that lead to her volunteering for it, that way we could have learned what she was going through as she went through it, not just dump it all on top of us in the beginning and then expect us to keep track of it all as it plays out.
Yes I know they’re telling it in the order that it happened in the book, but movies don’t have to be limited by that if they don’t want to. This would’ve been a great way to get non book fans invested and I honestly think that’s what happened with this film is that they played it out in a way to best appeal to fans of the book, the same mistake that twilight kept doing over and over.
Rant over, I apologize. The way they portray the capital too is ridiculous. There’s subtlety, and then there’s screaming from the rooftops “hey guys look at these people what a bunch of assholes am I right?” After about twenty minutes we get the point, and again, you don’t need to drag it out. This causes everything else happening to fall flat because you’re not invested in what’s going as much cause you really don’t care what’s going on.
While I did like the second half better, again there were also a few moments there that felt dragged out and it causes a couple of moments to fall flat. It also feels incredibly rushed as it just jumps from key point to key point sometimes rather abruptly. This could’ve been fixed like I said from jumping from the currently happening games, to all the stuff that led to the games, that way you keep up the pace and you keep the audience invested by showing them something they’ve never seen before. Because everything feels so rushed the ending feels kind of forced so you’re again not as invested.
Final Score - 3/10
The cast is good and there are some great moments in the second half of the film but it’s a slog to get to it and when you do it just keeps stumbling.
The second up will probably be up by tomorrow, I’m feeling like I might not go out anywhere until monday. Also keep an eye out for the hundredth review, I’m sure it will surprise you.
Until then, I’ll see you guys at the movies.
No comments:
Post a Comment