Hunger Games - The nitpicks
Mar. 28th, 2012 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)


1. They take out Katniss's narration and cut back a lot on the Katniss/Peeta survivaltimes. I thought there would be a bit of a swerve, with the audience thinking their relationship was real and then Katniss saying "Acting!", but then at the end it's more like
Katniss: I guess I don't love you or whatever.
Peeta: I guess I do or something.
Donald Sutherland: Sequel!
It's like, c'mon man, you know this is for teenage girls. You might as well end on a "Next time on Gossip Girl" note.
2. Shakycam. There are a few sequences where it worked. I didn't mind it so much in the beginning or during the Games' opening slaughterhouse moments, as it makes sense that the filmmakers are more focused on the characters' disorientation and the bloodiness of it all then cool fight scenes. But later on, they have scenes which are genuinely good vs. evil, where the audience is clearly supposed to root for Katniss to defeat the evil Careers, and the camera is still shaking around like it's horrifying that Katniss is giving the clearly evil psychopath a well-deserved comeuppance. If this is going to be g vs. e instead of kids killing kids, you might as well let me see it. I mean, they even give the head Career a Homer Simpson shifty-eyed close-up. The people will suspect the dog.
3. For a movie that takes an hour to get to the Hunger Games, they leave out some pretty important background. Not like Tolkien "oh yes, in the twenty-third year of the Brandygrass generation, Lord Martank and his knights of Ur-al-guon bravely fought the rogue Sir Loomylas." But stuff you need to know to get what's going on. Like how whoever wins the Hunger Games not only gets a personal reward, but their District gets rewarded, how the Districts are pitted against each other, etc.
4. I'm not sure why Lenny Kravitz is there? His role probably should've been combined to Haymitch, since it seems to go
Lenny Kravitz: So I guess making foreign kids fight to the death for our entertainment is wrong or something?
Katniss: OMG BFFS!
AND THEN WE NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN.
5. Okay, I love how with the tracker jackers and the jabberjays and the muttations, it seems like Suzanne Collins smoked weed with Jack Kirby once and decided, yes, that's how you name shit (no, fanboys, Peeta, Katniss, and Haymitch aren't names any dumber than Luke, Leia, or Han Solo. For fuck's sake, HAN SOLO. Think about it for one minute). But in the book, the muttations were the dead bodies of Katniss's fellow Tributes turned into giant killer dogs. The adaptation leaves that out and decides the important part is the giant killer dog bit. Don't get me wrong, I prefer my werewolves trying to eat people rather than falling in love with babies, but as long as we're taking out the unholy abomination of man and science stuff, why not make them just... dogs? You know, find an animal trainer, say "Hey, can you make twelve dogs pretend to want to eat Jennifer Lawrence?" and there you go. Or come up with some Borg/zombie thing where the Tributes have clearly been reanimated and sent out to fuck Katniss up. But just having giant CGI dogs in there is the worst of both worlds.
6. I can't believe they made Katniss white HA HA SYKE!