Hunger Games Movie Review

Keeping this terse because I am sleepy, and I don’t want to spoil things.

It’s not like the plot events were going to surprise me (though a few made me jump out of my seat.) That’s not the point. The point of reading the book and then seeing the movie is to see how it worked, how it felt, to see imaginings translated to the big screen.

It worked. Well cast, well designed. Decently curated. I know there were sections and elements missing, but they didn’t feel missing from the film. The look and feel of District 12 and the Capitol suited beautifully. I was particularly curious how the clothes and pageantry were going to look, and wasn’t disappointed. Some elements, on screen, were actually less scary than they’d been in the book.

What the heck were little kids doing in the audience! Not a movie, or a book, I think for 9-year-olds!

Seeing the movie at the Ziegfeld Theater, all baroque red and gold, was a particularly fun bit of cognitive dissonance. Coming out of the theater, my friends and I looked around in the lobby and felt pretty firmly situated in District 1.

Another theater bit that tickled me. As we left the showing, theater attendants were handing out bookmarks that advertised the Hunger Games series, particularly the next book, Catching Fire.

I’ll be curious to hear from people who haven’t read the book, how the movie works as a standalone.