The Hunger Games Mania
An EBC Comprehensive Review- Book, Movie, iOS Companion App, iOS Game
An EBC Comprehensive Review- Book, Movie, iOS Companion App, iOS Game
YA literature, the turbulent market into which I hope to enter my writing, nowadays seems dominated by trends- by which I mean particular book series that rise, get copied to death by no-talent hacks, and then end, after which a new dynasty rises. First it was Harry Potter (loved all the books and movies!), then came Twilight (haven't read the books and don't want to, thought the first movie was OK, loathed movies two and three, and don't want to see movies four and five), and now both have mostly conceded the throne of tween entertainment to The Hunger Games.
Although I had heard all sorts of commentary ranging from praise to derision for supposed ripoffs of Battle Royale (which I haven't read but my younger sister liked despite the buckets of gore), I have up until this point far reserved any judgment on The Hunger Games, going by the principle that you don't comment on what you don't see. My sister read the book and liked it and saw the movie when it was in theaters and liked it as well. Then we got my grandmother a copy for her Nook Simple Touch and she liked it, leading me to think, huh, maybe this might be really good!
And finally, the DVD, Blu-Ray, and iTunes and UltraViolet digital copy release of the movie was just three days ago. So yesterday I read my sister's copy of the book in one sitting, which took me around eight hours (from 12 PM-8 PM), got and played The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire, and got The Hunger Games Official Companion App from Metamenus to use while the movie was playing. We then got the 2-Disc Blu-Ray + Digital Copy and 3-Disc DVD + Digital Copy, after which my sister chose the Blu-Ray and we watched the movie from 10-12 PM. I then watched the digital copy on my iPad 3 with my girlfriend today when I visited her, and we didn't watch any of the special features on either version or the iTunes Extras (I'll still show them in a DVD vs. Blu-Ray comparison at the end).
[hide=Plot Summary (Spoiler Free)]
The story of the book and movie, for those of you who don't know, is that a nation called Panem, consisting of a wealthy and highly advanced Capitol surrounded by twelve districts, has risen from the ruins of post-apocalyptic North America. In response to a failed rebellion, the Capitol has decreed that each district must send one boy and one girl to fight to the death in a reality TV show called the Hunger Games until only one winner is crowned. Our Strong, Self-Reliant, Kick-Ass Heroine (tm), Katniss Everdeen, lives and illegally hunts in the woods for food in District 12, and volunteers in her younger sister Prim's place when she is chosen from a lottery of thousands of 12-18 year olds along with an acquaintance from her district, a boy named Peeta Mallark. Katniss is then taken to the Capitol to be treated like a celebrity and fight the 22 other tributes, leaving behind Prim and their timid, widowed mother.[/hide]
[hide=Book Review]
I like the detailed and original universe and story of The Hunger Games a lot (sure, she takes inspiration from other sources, but a.) every author in the history of fiction has done that, b.) she didn't know about Battle Royale, and c.) even Battle Royale had its sources.) This seems to be why people like it more often than not when I ask.
Every element and event that is introduced is described vividly and works on its own to support the plot, which is very well-crafted and paced (for the most part), and really sucks you in. The problem is that this is all told through Katniss's point of view. Take it from me, first person perspective is hard to write because the audience's knowledge has to be limited to what the protagonist knows and we have to get inside the character's head, and present tense is even harder to write because past tense is how we normally tell stories, real or fictional. That, however, does not excuse horrible use of first person present in YA.
Because Collins feels the need to describe every single fucking thing, there are sometimes several pages of description or exposition in places where it is not need that is then unnecessarily shoved into Katniss's mouth. This means important events that are supposed to be fraught with emotion get short shrift. And Katniss's voice is declaratory sentences with short words almost every time. It's fine to use that in the beginning, when she's showing how much of a strong, self-reliant womyn she is. But she uses that voice even when she should be broken up at someone's death, for instance. Emotional events need emotional language, especially in first person perspective, to subtly influence how the reader feels too, and not doing so defeats whatever emotion the author is tugging at. And even strong people can break down!
Collins has a very violent and dark premise, but while dark events do of course happen throughout the course of the story, in order to not have her book burned at libraries everywhere, Collins has to wimp out of showing Katniss directly killing anyone or letting her see really violent killing so that the audience's Child Innocence (tm) is preserved, and thus the consequences of killing are toyed with but never really explored. This means, along with the flat language, that Katniss never really develops from her experiences throughout the book, and the book doesn't really develop either.
It really saddens me that the elements of The Hunger Games are so good and make for such a good story, and yet the whole package doesn't quite come together. One of the greatest children's books of all time, Lord of the Flies, shows people tearing a kid apart with their fucking teeth. And it was taught to my English class in 9TH GRADE, when most of us were playing Call of Duty. I think kids in that age range can handle violence just fine. Oh well, but still, it is pretty good.
Book Rating: ***- Good for a couple of days of light family reading
[/hide][hide=Companion App Review]
Once the Blu-Ray finished loading after I grew about five inches of facial hair, I attempted to use the companion app to "flick to navigate through Blu-Ray menus, or drag-and-tap our natural replacement to five button compass" on my iPhone 4S. Problem was that even with our Internet-connected Blu-Ray player from Samsung all queued up and ready to go, the app still couldn't find it so that I could turn it into a remote. That's a level of fail equivalent to a five star chef not being able to make a grilled cheese sandwich on national television. I didn't review the other features because I promptly deleted it, but I'm sure they were all well very done with the level of "craftsmanship" that went into this app.
App Rating: 0- This will be a great app to prank your Hunger Games loving friend with![/hide]
[hide=Movie Review]
Meanwhile, we dusted off an actual working remote to play the movie. I haven't had much experience with Blu-Rays (since I'm a broke college student, I prefer Hulu, iTunes, and Netflix), but I'm glad that we returned the DVD to Target, which made us pay more for an extra disk full of special features that we didn't watch and that could have fit on disk two.
The 1080p widescreen image was mind-blowing on our Sharp 50" TV and the sound was terrific, even on our small speakers! And once we watched it, it was ridiculously easy to enter the Digital Copy redeem code in the iTunes iPad app (in Redeem under Music), the movie was downloaded in four hours, the Retina Display on the iPad 3 made it look even better than on the TV, and the Skullcandy headphones my girlfriend and I split had great sound. The other option for digital copies if you don't have iTunes on Mac, PC, or iOS, according to the website is UltraViolet and Vudu. I've tried them! Vudu was good on a friend's PS3, but stay as far away from UltraViolet as you can! If I tell you about why, this review would get massively derailed.
The movie's story is just as good as the book with minor lines of dialogue removed. But one of the advantages of movies over books (sometimes) is that the imagery doesn't have to be described by the author or imagined by the audience. The costume and set design in particular is amazing and really brings the world to life in a way that Collins never could. The acting, for the entire cast but particularly for the talented actress who plays Katniss, is great and brings out emotion and tension that the writing was missing in the book. And the necessary third person omniscient perspective means that the exposition is reduced, what exposition there is is described better by other characters, and there are added scenes with other characters that fit well with the story to
The movie still has some problems. Because Collins (who co-wrote the screenplay) and the studios know that, unless you're a raunchy comedy, an R rating from the almighty censors of the MPAA is the kiss of death for theater success, suffers from the wimp-out problem in order to get a PG-13. It does this by obscuring the most gruesome deaths with shaky cam, which I normally hate because it's not cinematic and is mostly used in found footage movies to lend an undeserved "documentary" halo to them. But that can't really be helped, and there are certainly plenty of tense deaths that are shown in full.
And the only other problem, which again can't be helped because of the source material but is better than the book, is that the point doesn't really congeal, and not just because of wimping out. The movie gets closer to the true potential of the ideas Collins harnessed than the book, but while it's great, it doesn't become a masterpiece. My issue in full with both the overall point of both the book and movie is that the twin themes of violence and constructed reality, while individually well done, all don't mesh together very well just like the individual plot and universe elements.
Collins says she took inspiration from the Greek myth of Theseus (offering the tributes up) and Roman gladiatorial games. However, Minos imposed this on the Athenians for murdering his son at the Pan-Athenian games according to the myth, and the reason that gladiatorial games were created in the first place were to show off Rome's martial culture and curry the public's favor; the explanation in both the Hunger Games book and movie for killing children each year in an expensive public spectacle as opposed to easier and less costly methods of oppression that they use already is not well explained, although the movie does a better attempt at it. And the reality TV show aspect doesn't really fit with the point either. Why doll up the tributes and treat them like royalty and make it feel like a competition, only to throw them against each other? I could only speculate, as there is again, barely any explanation.
These are pretty minor, however. Even if neither the book nor the movie does a particularly good job of exploring the issues they raise or going into the impact violence as much as they probably could have, they are both very entertaining and the movie is much more so, which my family and girlfriend both agreed on.
Movie Rating: ****- Terrific for repeat viewings, with some minor flaws[/hide]
[hide=Blu-Ray vs. DVD Comparison]
Blu-Ray vs. DVD Content
Disc 1- Feature Film
Disc 2- Game Maker: Suzanne Collins and The Hunger Games Phenomenon; The World is Watching: Making The Hunger Games; Letters from the Rose Garden; Controlling the Games; A Conversation With Gary Ross and Elvis Mitchell; Preparing for the Games: A Director's Process (Blu-Ray Exclusive); Propaganda Film; Marketing Archive
EXCLUSIVELY AT TARGET (DVD): Disc 3- Stories from the Tributes; Casting the Tributes; Tribute Video Diaries; Biographies; Photo Album
Blu-Ray vs. DVD Features
DVD- Widescreen, English 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, English 2.0 Dolby Digital Audio Optimized for Late-Night Listening, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital Audio, English & Spanish Subtitles, Digital Copy (Works with iTunes) & Ultraviolet
Blu-Ray- DVD Specs + 1080P High Definition, English SDH (Subtitles for the Deaf), Hunger Games Metamenus Smart Remote App Enabled, Enabled for BD Live
iTunes Extras- Create costumes and mockingjay calls, explore the arena and meet the tributes, two hours of special features, and much more
Verdict: Advantage Blu-Ray & Digital Copy[/hide]
[hide=Game Review]
The first true, official game based on The Hunger Games of any kind is The Hunger Games Adventures social game on Facebook. As a rule, I don't play Facebook games because they either are usually incredibly shallow time wasters or would annoy me with constant notifications. I have played and loved plenty of casual games, such as Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Ski Safari, and Temple Run, but even casual games should have something other than pointless grinding and virtual currency that you have to buy to get ahead in-game to...pointlessly grind some more. Like, I don't know, FUN!
The only other Hunger Games game I could find was a free game exclusively on the iOS App Store called The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire that I downloaded to my iPad. When I opened it, the first thing I noticed was the 8-bit art. I've played and liked 8-bit games before, but a lot of times, 8-bit "art" is used by crappy free games to lazily disguise their extremely low budget. What is there is actually OK, but there is not very much art or sound variety in the game or menus so it gets boring very quickly.
As for the actual gameplay, it's an endless runner in the style of Temple Run through the forest where Katniss hunts before the events of the book and movie. You have to run from giant wasps (to remain spoiler free, I can't reveal what they are exactly) that sometimes fly solo, sometimes fly in lines, sometimes fly up in groups and shoot purple goo at you in patterns, and sometimes surround themselves with impenetrable shells. You tap to shoot arrows at these wasps and score 160 points per kill, and also swipe up or down to go down to the forest floor or up to the tree line. If you get hit once, all enemies disappear for a few seconds and time slows down and the screen turns blue. If you get shortly thereafter, you lose.
I like the wrinkle on a tired genre of having to avoid and shoot enemies above and below you. However, the gameplay, while fun at first, gets pretty repetitive once all the enemies are introduced (at least so far- I've heard there's a final boss but I only scored a max of 20,000), and there is too much going on in both the edges and the center of the screen at once for your eyes to process it all. And there aren't any other variables like coins, powerups, upgrades, etc. that would add extra replay value.
Plus, there isn't a tutorial (or any options to, say, turn a tutorial on or off, turn off or decrease the sound, etc.; the only other menus are for Game Center leaderboards and for extras like links to the movie site and The Hunger Games Adventures). This meant that I was able to shoot arrows by blind tapping, but died several times before I could figure out what I was supposed to do to avoid enemies, and only discovered it by accident. To make sure it wasn't just me, I gave the game to my girlfriend, my sister, and some other friends who came over and didn't tell them how to play. When they died repeatedly, they got frustrated and quit.
The gameplay was addicting because of that "just one more quarter" mentality, and so it pains me to say this, but after I hit the wall, the lack of art and gameplay variety caused me to quit too. If you're not tired of Temple Run clones, though, I'd give this a shot.
Game Rating: **- Play a few times and then forget about it.[/hide]
