The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Dustin: 3.5 of 5 stars Nick: 3.5 of 5 stars Average: 3.5 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is the second installment in the Hunger Games trilogy. It picks up one year after Katniss Everdeen has survived her ordeal in the last-man-standing battle royale of the first movie. Her willingness to sacrifice herself rather than give in to the rules of the game have given people hope that frightens President Snow. She has become too iconic for her own good, and must be eliminated.

What did you think of Catching Fire?

Nick:  Vast improvement over the original, and maybe the first movie that I enjoyed more than the book. The film gives a greater depth to the world outside the actual events of the Hunger Games, which is more terrifying to me than the games themselves. The Hunger Game in this film is more enjoyable as you don’t have a director who uses his technology to sap every motion out of every scene when the plot itself is daunting enough. When the character that reminds Katniss of her sister dies in the first film there’s this over-long scene of her freaking out while the score is blaring and the diegetic sound is muted. There are many instances of over-dramatic techniques applied by Gary Ross (The Hunger Games), a director I love compared to Francis Lawrence (Catching Fire), a director I abhor as he made my least favorite book adaptation of all time with I Am Legend.

Dustin: I liked the world of the movies as well. Both movies did a good job setting up the dystopian near future of America. This movie went more into that than the first did, and I really liked this movie up until the Hunger Games part, where they might as well have said, “Here we go again!” The tone leading up to the games this time around is a bit more depressing, but I didn’t like the “Been there, seen that,” feeling I got during the games. (Exacerbated by the feeling that I was seeing it for the third time, having seen Battle Royale long before.)

Nick: Battle Royale is a movie that’s so enjoyable it annoyed me when these books first came into the limelight. Suzanne Collins said she had never heard of the graphic novels nor the movie before she had crafted her stories.

Dustin: I find that very hard to believe. Just writing in the genre, she should have come across it. But the fact that they both take place in a dystopian near-future, feature kids participating in a televised fight to the death with rules to the game, plot points, overall structure and ending, I feel like The Hunger Games was blatantly plagiarized.

In Battle Royale there was a rule where certain sectors would become inhospitable at a certain hour. That rule was missing from the first movie, but comes in here. And by the time she wrote the second book, she should have been aware of Battle Royale, even if she supposedly hadn’t heard of it when she wrote the first one.

Nick: One thing about the series that is bothersome is the love triangle. In general, I’m not a fan, but depending on the story it can be utilized to great strengths. While in a story such as the Hunger Games it seems so trivial compared to what they face from the outside world. When so much screen time is taken to set up the romantic entanglements it takes me out of the story the creators are trying to craft.

Dustin: I agree the love triangle was an unnecessary element. So much is going on, it’s not needed. And it kind of gave me a Twilight vibe. Two hunky guys competing for the female protagonist, while coming off as puritanical and platonic.

Nick: It’s also so obvious in the sense that when Katniss volunteers and then Peeta is called why didn’t Gale just volunteer in his stead. It would make more sense if the man was chosen first, but that’s not the case, and the way Gale is crafted he could have volunteered, so in my eyes it’s his own fault when Katniss goes for Peeta. Totes Team Peeta! Just kidding, they should all die.

Dustin: This movie, up until the Hunger Games started back up, was a very good sequel and continuation of the first movie. A lot of little touches were appreciated. For example, in the first movie, Peeta tosses a loaf of bread to Katniss when she’s stuck out in the rain for some reason. The scene was shown several times to establish their relationship. At the beginning of this movie, Peeta is cutting bread and offers some to Katniss, but she refuses, which has a foreshadowing feel to it, but is subtle.

Nick: Is it foreshadowing or a reference to how she now has so much money and food that she doesn’t need handouts anymore? By the way, they never mention in either movie the winning district gets food if their Champion wins, which is why its called the “Hunger Games.”  

Dustin: There was a line in the first movie where Katniss tells her sister, “Don’t accept their food.” I thought maybe the more food rations you get, the more times your name is entered into the Hunger Games drawing and the better your chances of getting picked. But that was something I connected in my head. The movie shouldn’t make its audience work like that. I have a feeling the filmmakers took for granted how popular the books were and assumed the audience already understood certain things.

Nick: You thought the dystopia was well crafted in the original and yet you have this complaint. In the original, all the characters in the dystopia weren’t well explained beyond Seneca Crane. Effie Trinket and President Snow (Chancellor, Supreme Leader, Fuhrer) are much more fleshed out and given a chance to show their wonderful characters, as well as newcomers Jena Malone (Johanna), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Plutarch), Jeffrey Wright (Beetee) and Amanda Plummer (Wiress).

Dustin: I didn’t really question the Hunger Games title until you brought it up just now. I just thought I had it figured out and moved on with my life. I did think the dystopia was well done in both films. You had the clueless elites in the Capitol who binged and purged while people in the Districts were starving. They were wealthy enough to have the luxury of wasting their lives on celebrity worship. The commentators for the games were creepily similar to sports commentators before NFL games today, how they examine the minutiae of players’ performances, and it all looks so ridiculous juxtaposed to people slaving away in coal mines and eating squirrels and soggy bread.

Nick: But they never expand or grow. There are more people and more scenes explored in the Capitol in the new movie, and gives each character a voice. Even Stanley Tucci gets to have a negative reaction when the contestants all hold hands. That gives him more character because now we know he believes in the regime and is afraid of what Snow’s reaction to the gesture will be.

There were a few scenes of overdoing the drama. Like the very last shot when Katniss is told some dire news and she looks into the camera, or maybe one of the first scenes where she has an episode of PTSD when she kills an animal, even though she had been killing animals all day she freaked out because now it’s finally getting to her.

Dustin: I actually thought the PTSD was well done, having grown up with someone who had the occasional ‘Nam flashback, it rang true to me. I remember my dad opening a canister of Pillsbury biscuits, and when it popped, he threw the canister, jumped back five feet, screamed and covered his ears. It reminded him too much of a grenade.

There were some things set up in both movies that never payed off. What was with the cat hissing at Katniss in both movies? Probably something from the book that didn’t get fleshed out. Then in this movie, there was the creepy woman who had her teeth filed to sharp points, but she barely appeared after that. She was set up as a very scary villain, and then was quickly written off.

Nick: The woman with sharp teeth and the bald dude showed up at the end of the games and disappeared along with two of our heroes but will presumably be back for the last installment.

Dustin: While I thought The Hunger Games was uncomfortably similar to Battle Royale, and both, to a much lesser extent to The Most Dangerous Game, or John Leguizamo’s The Pest, the dystopian world and the character of Katniss as played by Jennifer Lawrence kept me engaged despite the plagiarized story.