Based on a popular young adult book, and focusing on a plot that I should really enjoy, I’ve managed to avoid this for a long time. At least with Netflix streaming it, my effort to see it wasn’t too high.
I’m sorry. It’s not as bad as I expected, but I really don’t care for it.
While I haven’t read the book, I can tell that the movie is following it way too closely. It takes nearly a full hour before the core of the story starts. This isn’t a normally structured movie, and this kind of thing probably caused a certain dip for the box office. But who cares about that? Most of the movies I like have barely broken even!
What bothers me about this movie isn’t so much the pacing, but it’s a collection of other missteps that make the whole thing feel weaker than it should.
1. The world-building.
I absolutely hate the design of the “fancy” population in the Capitol. It’s overstated, and it doesn’t communicate opulence, at least not the way that I think the author thinks it does. It communicates bad taste, but the existence of the games already communicates that.
2. The philosophy behind the games.
This is a major failing in my mind. I wonder if the book would be more persuasive. In Battle Royale, the game is framed differently, and the organizers are far more brutal in their enforcement in of it. It has much more to do with the role that government plays in Japan. There’s a conversation in this movie that takes place between the director of the games and the president. The president waxes philosophical about the games, talking about the importance of giving the districts a glimmer of hope, but not too much. The director takes this in, surprised. This is ridiculous. In order to direct the games, he would need to have more of a working philosophy of what the games are about. This scene could have been re-written to stage it in a more believable way, with the president mostly liking to hear himself talk, and the director kowtowing to it.
3. The violence is toned down.
I can be forgiving of this. In some cases, it’s useful to tone down violence. At first, I thought that the violence in Avengers was toned down too much, but the more I saw it, I think they did about the right amount. More would have been a distraction. In this case, shying away from the violence distorts the point of the story. The games are supposed to be traumatic and violent, not just for the participants, but the spectators. By sanitizing them, it takes most of the power away from the idea.
4. It’s predictable.
Movies are generally predictable, that’s part of why we like them. But there’s a lesson to be learned from There’s Something About Mary - the audience should be forced to recalculate what they think will happen with every scene. From the very beginning, there are two ways the story could end - the heroine wins and her friend dies (possibly in the process of protecting her), or the heroine wins and keeps her friend alive. As the movie goes on, it’s clear that this thing is going for the happiest possible ending.
Which brings up one of the things that seriously bothered me during the movie.
5. The lead is kept alive without being overtly violent. This means that she gets to avoid making tough decisions, she remains unblemished. She directly kills one person during the games, and that’s specifically in an effort to protect a young player.
In the end, this is a modestly entertaining movie that takes a decent premise, but takes all of the material, ideas and development that might make it interesting or engaging, and eliminates them in favor of the most simplistic approach. I’m not mad at it, and I understand why it’s popular. It’s more palatable than Battle Royale, but that’s because it doesn’t dive into the same depths.
(Also, a minor gripe, but I noticed during a scene with the lead and the young girl, that they make reference to it being several days. But their skin is completely clean, their clothes are generally clean, and their teeth look perfectly clean. I don’t ask for perfect authenticity, but would it be too much to keep her hair a bit messy or make her sweaty or something?)
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