Hunger Games opens strong - really strong - but reviews are mixed
Hunger Games, the eagerly-anticipated film adaptation of Suzanne Collins' 2008 best-selling novel, has set global box-office records, taking in $155 million in its first weekend as a theatrical release, according to figures published on the web site Collider.com.
Directed and co-scripted (with Collins and Billy Ray) by Gary Ross, who co-wrote 1988's Big and had previously helmed Pleasantville and Seabiscuit, The Hunger Games is the first installment in a trilogy of dystopian science fiction stories set in a North America where, after several disastrous events, the existing democratic nation states of the United States, Canada and Mexico have ceased to exist and have been replaced by the totalitarian country known as Panem.
As in the best-selling Young Adults novel published by Scholastic - the U.S. publisher of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series - The Hunger Games presents us with a vision of an America gone seriously wrong.
Panem is ruled by the tyrannical "President" Snow (Donald Sutherland) from the very privileged enclave known as the Capitol. Located in the Rocky Mountains in a region once shared by the U.S. and Canada, the Capitol is populated by the ruling class of Panem - the wealthy One Per Centers who care only for money, fine clothes, and being entertained.
The Capitol, we are told, reigns unchallenged in Panem; the last time anyone tried to rebel against its tyrannical rule 70 years before, the dictatorship totally crushed one of the then-existent 13 districts and blotted it out of the map. The surviving 12 Districts, cowed by the Capitol forces' overwhelming victory, toe the line dictated by the President.
One of the ways in which the districts have to survive is by rendering "tribute." Not in the traditional forms of the past such as gold or precious gems, but by providing two adolescent citizens - one boy, one girl - to participate in a to-the-death contest known as The Hunger Games.
In dirt-poor but coal-rich District 12, young Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) becomes one of the two Tributes when she decides to take the place of her younger sister Prim (Willow Shields) after the current lottery has been carried out. Though only 16, Katniss is no slouch with a bow and arrow; she is a fantastic archer who helps keep her family alive by illegally hunting game animals in the forests of District 12.
Katniss is paired with Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), a baker's son who is hunky but not as martially skilled as his female counterpart. They're both attractive teens who - if they survive the deadly games - might have a possible romance in the future.
Not, of course, that their future existence is assured, especially if the Hunger Games' designer Seneca (Wes Bentley) and the ruling class of the Capitol have anything to say about it. Katniss and Peeta must face off with 22 teens from the other 11 Districts in a televised reality show which mixes elements of Survivor with others borrowed from Fredric Brown's 1944 short story "Arena" and The Long Walk, a Stephen King novel written under his "Richard Bachmann" pseudonym.
Given the success of Collins' three novels (the other two being Catching Fire and Mockingjay) and the phenomenal box office runs of other Young Adult franchises such as Twilight and the Harry Potter stories, Hunger Games' initial returns indicate that the movie will be a huge hit for its studio Lionsgate, which invested $100 million dollars to make it and is well on track to making it all back plus earning huge profits.
The critical response so far has been a mix of admiration for Jennifer Lawrence's performance as Katniss and co-writer/director Ross' attempts to keep The Hunger Games as faithful to Collins' concepts as possible under the limitations of the film medium. In his review, Roger Ebert, for instance, points out that the film is "an effective entertainment, and Jennifer Lawrence is strong and convincing in the central role. But the film leapfrogs obvious questions in its path, and avoids the opportunities sci-fi provides for social criticism; compare its world with the dystopias in Gattaca or The Truman Show.
On a similar vein, Rene Rodriguez of The Miami Herald raps The Hunger Games for its "play-it-safe" vibe in his critique. Although Rodriguez thought the first half of the film is good, he points out that "[t]he film’s biggest flaw is the complete absence of vision or imagination – anything that would justify the movie’s existence as something other than a way to cash in on the novel. The Harry Potter pictures brought visual wonder to J.K. Rowling’s intricate fantasy world. The Twilight series has been a smash because of the chemistry between its lead actors. The Hunger Games, though, offers nothing."
As is often the case, the book's fans will flock to see The Hunger Games regardless of what professional movie reviewers may say.
My first book, Save Me the Aisle Seat, is now available as a Kindle edition at Amazon's Kindle Store. http://www.amazon.com/SAVE-THE-AISLE-SEAT-ebook/dp/B007MV5DS4/ref=zg_bs_156292011_1
(c) 2012 by Alex Diaz-Granados. All Rights Reserved
Directed and co-scripted (with Collins and Billy Ray) by Gary Ross, who co-wrote 1988's Big and had previously helmed Pleasantville and Seabiscuit, The Hunger Games is the first installment in a trilogy of dystopian science fiction stories set in a North America where, after several disastrous events, the existing democratic nation states of the United States, Canada and Mexico have ceased to exist and have been replaced by the totalitarian country known as Panem.
As in the best-selling Young Adults novel published by Scholastic - the U.S. publisher of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series - The Hunger Games presents us with a vision of an America gone seriously wrong.
Panem is ruled by the tyrannical "President" Snow (Donald Sutherland) from the very privileged enclave known as the Capitol. Located in the Rocky Mountains in a region once shared by the U.S. and Canada, the Capitol is populated by the ruling class of Panem - the wealthy One Per Centers who care only for money, fine clothes, and being entertained.
The Capitol, we are told, reigns unchallenged in Panem; the last time anyone tried to rebel against its tyrannical rule 70 years before, the dictatorship totally crushed one of the then-existent 13 districts and blotted it out of the map. The surviving 12 Districts, cowed by the Capitol forces' overwhelming victory, toe the line dictated by the President.
One of the ways in which the districts have to survive is by rendering "tribute." Not in the traditional forms of the past such as gold or precious gems, but by providing two adolescent citizens - one boy, one girl - to participate in a to-the-death contest known as The Hunger Games.
In dirt-poor but coal-rich District 12, young Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) becomes one of the two Tributes when she decides to take the place of her younger sister Prim (Willow Shields) after the current lottery has been carried out. Though only 16, Katniss is no slouch with a bow and arrow; she is a fantastic archer who helps keep her family alive by illegally hunting game animals in the forests of District 12.
Katniss is paired with Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), a baker's son who is hunky but not as martially skilled as his female counterpart. They're both attractive teens who - if they survive the deadly games - might have a possible romance in the future.
Not, of course, that their future existence is assured, especially if the Hunger Games' designer Seneca (Wes Bentley) and the ruling class of the Capitol have anything to say about it. Katniss and Peeta must face off with 22 teens from the other 11 Districts in a televised reality show which mixes elements of Survivor with others borrowed from Fredric Brown's 1944 short story "Arena" and The Long Walk, a Stephen King novel written under his "Richard Bachmann" pseudonym.
Given the success of Collins' three novels (the other two being Catching Fire and Mockingjay) and the phenomenal box office runs of other Young Adult franchises such as Twilight and the Harry Potter stories, Hunger Games' initial returns indicate that the movie will be a huge hit for its studio Lionsgate, which invested $100 million dollars to make it and is well on track to making it all back plus earning huge profits.
The critical response so far has been a mix of admiration for Jennifer Lawrence's performance as Katniss and co-writer/director Ross' attempts to keep The Hunger Games as faithful to Collins' concepts as possible under the limitations of the film medium. In his review, Roger Ebert, for instance, points out that the film is "an effective entertainment, and Jennifer Lawrence is strong and convincing in the central role. But the film leapfrogs obvious questions in its path, and avoids the opportunities sci-fi provides for social criticism; compare its world with the dystopias in Gattaca or The Truman Show.
On a similar vein, Rene Rodriguez of The Miami Herald raps The Hunger Games for its "play-it-safe" vibe in his critique. Although Rodriguez thought the first half of the film is good, he points out that "[t]he film’s biggest flaw is the complete absence of vision or imagination – anything that would justify the movie’s existence as something other than a way to cash in on the novel. The Harry Potter pictures brought visual wonder to J.K. Rowling’s intricate fantasy world. The Twilight series has been a smash because of the chemistry between its lead actors. The Hunger Games, though, offers nothing."
As is often the case, the book's fans will flock to see The Hunger Games regardless of what professional movie reviewers may say.
My first book, Save Me the Aisle Seat, is now available as a Kindle edition at Amazon's Kindle Store. http://www.amazon.com/SAVE-THE-AISLE-SEAT-ebook/dp/B007MV5DS4/ref=zg_bs_156292011_1
(c) 2012 by Alex Diaz-Granados. All Rights Reserved
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