I hear this film overuses the shaky camera "effect." Man I can't stand that direction style.

Typically in movies it is only busted out during fight scenes where it is an attempt to mask terrible choreography. I hear they even do it during dialog scenes in this movie?

[Edited on March 26, 2012 at 1:11 PM. Reason : -]

3/26/2012 1:08:41 PM

^ this is true. It's my main complaint of the movie. I think it does it to hide violence and keep it "kid friendly"

3/26/2012 1:17:12 PM

I only noticed it at the beginning of the movie.

3/26/2012 1:40:36 PM

never read the books, came in here to post about the shaky camera effects

bout got motion sickness during the first half of the movie

didnt help being all off to the side though

3/26/2012 1:41:50 PM

how did you like the film as someone who has never read the books and had very little predisposition to the content before seeing it?

GF wants to go this week, had a few guys tell me it's pretty much a good sci-fi flick and there isn't much teen angst like Twilight/ Harry Potter

3/26/2012 1:46:15 PM

^^Were you in the IMAX?

3/26/2012 1:47:51 PM

Quote :

"how did you like the film as someone who has never read the books and had very little predisposition to the content before seeing it?"

was good.

3/26/2012 1:49:56 PM

i had a post towards the bottom of page 5 that summed things up, but it got wiped out by dudes thinking i was talking about the actress herself, and not the character

i wouldn't call it a good sci-fi flick, but it's decent. you'll be a-ok to go with your GF to see it

3/26/2012 1:51:02 PM

it was a decent flick.

nothing mind blowing, but nothing to scoff at at all.

if the girl want's to take you to see it, go see it. you won't be bored out of your gourd or anything.

3/26/2012 1:53:18 PM

Quote :

"how did you like the film as someone who has never read the books and had very little predisposition to the content before seeing it?"

Better than expected. Definitely some cheesy teen-movie moments and some of the acting was sub-par (see: Peeta), but there was enough right about it to keep it an entertaining, decent movie. Jennifer Lawrence did a good job with the type of character that can often come off forced or cheesy on screen which helped a lot.

[Edited on March 26, 2012 at 1:55 PM. Reason : ]

3/26/2012 1:54:26 PM

i, for one, was like "holy shit it is lenny kravitz"

then later "damn lenny kravitz did a pretty damn good job"

and was even more impressed poking around on imdb finding that it was his second credited film appearance.

[Edited on March 26, 2012 at 1:56 PM. Reason : ]

3/26/2012 1:56:11 PM

Quote :

"how did you like the film as someone who has never read the books and had very little predisposition to the content before seeing it?"

As per my comments on the other page...
It was good up until the actual games, at which point the movie completely ignores any sort of social interaction between the people and everything is just laid out in front of you as opposed to developed. Supposedly the books develop this area, but without that knowledge it seemed like a whole lot was missing and underdeveloped to me.

Still a decent movie that was worth the matinee price for me, though. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't seen what Battle Royale developed in a similar scenario.

3/26/2012 1:58:03 PM

lol i didn't know lenny kravitz was in the movie prior to going in. during the pre-trailer commercial stuff, one of his new songs comes on and i say to my wife, "do you ever feel like lenny kravitz should just stop? like what's his purpose these days?" then

Quote :

"i, for one, was like "holy shit it is lenny kravitz" then later "damn lenny kravitz did a pretty damn good job""

happened and i leaned over to my wife and whispered, "i take back every bad thing i said about lenny kravitz"

3/26/2012 2:07:40 PM

Quote :

"I probably would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't seen what Battle Royale developed in a similar scenario."

I really didn't think they were similar films at all. Battle Royale was basically an exploitation flick with some slight dystopian elements that reveled in the gore and violence of the kids killing each other. The Hunger Games had a much broader focus and better developed characters.

3/26/2012 2:13:18 PM

I read this book after I read a Japanese book of similar a premise (Battle Royal). I thought the book was ok, but a good quick read that didn't need much thinking. I probably would have liked it more if I was totally ruined by how awesome Battle Royal was.

I hate to compare the book to the movie because they are always too different, so I'll just comment on the movie as if I haven't read the book.

Overall the movie was meh. Not bad, not great, kept my interest most of the time. My biggest complaint was there was zero character development. The viewer had no attachment to any character other than Katniss. If they weren't going to do any character development they should have really shortened the time in the capital before the Games. The way the movie was presented, it dragged. It would have been 10 times better if it was an hour and 45 mins instead of nearly two and a half. If a movie is two and a half hours I want to be emotionally attached to some of the characters and that never happened. The girl that played Katniss did a great job, as did the little girl that played Rue. The relationship between them was the only good character development in the movie.

There was never a sense of despair, every time something bad happened to an important character it was immediately fixed by the "sponsors". They also did a poor job showing that Katniss was just doing the "relationship" with Peeta to survive, and Peeta thought it was real.

All the action scenes were muted and dull, add in a shaky camera and they were damn near unwatchable. You could tell that this movie was made specifically for the tween Twillight and Harry Potter fans. Mutant dogs!?! Really!?! Right then the movie was dead to me (as was the book).

I give it a 60 out of 100. If you liked this book please go read Battle Royal (or Lord of the Flies) and you will see the proper way to do this story. Once again, take my opinions with a grain of salt because of my previous reading of Lord of the Flies and Battle Royal.

3/26/2012 2:14:39 PM

Quote :

"I give it a 60 out of 100"

my what an independent rating scale you have

3/26/2012 2:17:33 PM

^^ you should read the books; i think you'll have a much different opinion on the story and events after reading. the movie can not go in depth into Katniss' personality and her psyche like the books can. the struggles she deals with between herself and between Gale and Peeta, life back home, her mother and sister, all really shapes who she is in the arena and who she becomes.

[Edited on March 26, 2012 at 2:22 PM. Reason : ^^]

3/26/2012 2:22:51 PM

Quote :

"I really didn't think they were similar films at all. Battle Royale was basically an exploitation flick with some slight dystopian elements that reveled in the gore and violence of the kids killing each other. The Hunger Games had a much broader focus and better developed characters."

I was really trying my best to not compare these entities as a whole to one another. As overall works, yes, they are different; however, the meat of both is a bunch of kids tossed into a only-one-will-survive scenario, so the comparisons for this part of the movie is inevitable. And "developed characters"? That's the whole issue. The "Hunger Games" movie had none during the games. No real despair. No real tough choices. Remember that my comments were in response to someone asking for an opinion about the movie independent of the book.

They might have all just been holding hands singing kumbaya with the overseers pushing a button to make "stuff" occur. I only mentioned Battle Royale because I would have expected similar scenarios to develop.

[Edited on March 26, 2012 at 2:31 PM. Reason : ]

3/26/2012 2:30:20 PM

I do agree they really missed the boat with character development and possible scenarios during the games. That was what I was looking forward to the most and they essentially ignored it. This is of course just talking about the movie again.

3/26/2012 2:33:09 PM

I did catch myself at the end with the mutant dogs thinking "man that's kinda unethical the way they're manipulating a game with life and death consequences for a political agenda..."

then i had the realization that i'm distracted by whether or not it was ethical to create mutant dogs in a made for television "game" that puts children up against each other for satisfying public bloodlust.

lol'd to myself.


also, it seemed that the games in the movie only lasted like, three days tops. the whole "60% of you will die from the elements" or whatever it was seemed pretty thin. after talking to the gf who read the books, i'm not sure that's really how it went down.

[Edited on March 26, 2012 at 2:40 PM. Reason : e]

3/26/2012 2:39:54 PM

No, the real games were weeks long. I think they spent 5 days under the waterfall alone in the book.

3/26/2012 2:46:45 PM

the duration of the games in the movie was portrayed as being very short: a matter of only a few days versus a few weeks within the book. like ^ said, the time Peeta and Katniss spent in the cave was almost a week entirely (in the book). that was due to Peeta's injury as well as to weather elements controlled by the game-maker for a couple reasons, one of which being they were trying to "direct and promote" the Peeta and Katniss love story for the sake of the games popularity and ratings.

[Edited on March 26, 2012 at 3:02 PM. Reason : .]

3/26/2012 3:01:14 PM

Anybody here pissed off that some of the characters were black?

http://jezebel.com/5896408/racist-hunger-games-fans-dont-care-how-much-money-the-movie-made

3/26/2012 3:18:07 PM

I mean they did say dark skin in the book but did anyone else notice all the black people were in district 11 (agricultural district)? I'm surprised no one's called out the movie for that.

3/26/2012 3:26:13 PM

^I think the book gets away with it, because Katniss is shocked by it as well.

[Edited on March 26, 2012 at 3:32 PM. Reason : And you can't fault the movie for following the book's lead.]

3/26/2012 3:28:58 PM

^^ so the agricultural district should've been who then? mexicans?

3/26/2012 3:31:26 PM

I'm not saying either way it's just an interesting choose to put all the African Americans in a post apocalyptic America in a district that specializes in agriculture. I guess I'm saying it's not very original.

3/26/2012 3:42:32 PM

Quote :

"I hear this film overuses the shaky camera "effect." Man I can't stand that direction style. Typically in movies it is only busted out during fight scenes where it is an attempt to mask terrible choreography. I hear they even do it during dialog scenes in this movie?"

i'll repost my comment from a few pages ago

Quote :

"the shaky cam was a little bit ridiculous in the beginning, i was literally getting a bit nauseous, but they cut it out for the most part once they left district 12, i'm assuming it was an intentional choice by the filmmakers to make the audience feel the heightened sense of fear/uneasiness on reaping day or some bullshit like that. i didn't really notice it, or at least wasn't bothered by it again until the fight on top of the cornucopia "

Quote :

"but did anyone else notice all the black people were in district 11 (agricultural district)? I'm surprised no one's called out the movie for that."

there were a few black people i noticed in district 12, as well as some non-black people in 11

3/26/2012 5:07:49 PM

SOME BULLSHIT [FILMMAKING TECHNIQUE] LIKE THAT

disclaimer: i haven't seen the movie yet

3/26/2012 5:11:06 PM

i seem to be the only person in america not bothered by shaky camera ... i didnt even notice it until i came home and people were pointing it out

3/26/2012 5:12:17 PM

anyone know of a link online to this yet?

i tried novamov and got nothing.

3/26/2012 5:14:41 PM

Quote :

"SOME BULLSHIT [FILMMAKING TECHNIQUE] LIKE THAT"

i do consider it some bullshit when a filmmaking technique literally makes me sick

3/26/2012 5:16:54 PM

i like handheld camerawork

3/26/2012 5:33:19 PM

Quote :

"i seem to be the only person in america not bothered by shaky camera ... i didnt even notice it until i came home and people were pointing it out"

Ditto. I didn't even think about it until someone pointed it out. It can't be that bad if I didn't even notice it. Not like Cloverfield bad.

3/26/2012 5:36:43 PM

shakycam bothered me a lot. especially since they were so closely zoomed in on everything at the beginning. really annoying & painful (to my eyes/head).

3/26/2012 5:51:20 PM

I think it has a lot to do with IMAX too. I got nauseous watching Harry Potter in IMAX when I had a non-center-of-theater seat. Haven't had that for any other time watching the movie, and that wasn't exactly a "shaky filming" movie either.

3/26/2012 6:50:13 PM

i've seen a bunch of movies in imax before & never experienced any nausea/eye pain/headaches before this one.

[Edited on March 26, 2012 at 7:08 PM. Reason : ]

3/26/2012 7:07:06 PM

play more video games = don't get motion sickness in movies.

3/26/2012 7:14:05 PM

I disliked shaky cam in this, but I think most of it had to do with my seats. we were second row on the end--bah!

3/26/2012 8:33:12 PM

Quote :

"They also did a poor job showing that Katniss was just doing the "relationship" with Peeta to survive, and Peeta thought it was real. "

I thought it was pretty obvious, and I did not read the books.

3/26/2012 9:06:22 PM

I enjoyed the movie. I agree with the complaints about character development, but then again we don't even meet half of the characters til the second half of the film. Except for the mutant dogs, which was out of left field, I didn't have trouble understanding the movie. The whole thing flew by for me.

I don't mind the shaky cam and it makes sense given they were usually running across uneven terrain.

3/26/2012 9:54:11 PM

I thought it was obvious in parts that she was faking her love for Peeta, but felt a little uncertain in others (which i thought was intentional on the part of the film makers). And it was very clear that Peeta thought it was all genuine.

Quote :

"how did you like the film as someone who has never read the books and had very little predisposition to the content before seeing it? GF wants to go this week, had a few guys tell me it's pretty much a good sci-fi flick and there isn't much teen angst like Twilight/ Harry Potter"

I haven't read the books and enjoyed it. I didn't think it was amazing by any means. Certain parts could have been much better. As someone pointed out, the games part seemed very "laid out" rather than developed, for a lack of a better way to put it.

It has some interesting under scores/social commentary that it doesn't quite beat you over the head with. The little bit of romance stuff is kind of meh in how it's done, but it's nothing like twilight.

I will say that it sort of felt like it was the beginning of something bigger (which obviously it is) rather than something that stands very well on it's own. Where as I think most of the Harry Potter movies (another big franchise based on a series of already published books) all stand pretty well on their own -- minus Deathly Hallows I & II.

3/26/2012 9:54:20 PM

Didn't really like it, mainly due to the lack of character development.

Also, for a movie about killing, there's a real lack of killing.

3/26/2012 10:40:21 PM

I think the sacrificed character development because 1. a lot of the characters die, 2. they have two more movies to accomplish any development and 3. it was tough to illustrate a lot of the inner dialogue the author used to explain details and insight into other characters.

^ thats cause it was made into a movie for teens/families.

[Edited on March 26, 2012 at 10:54 PM. Reason : .]

3/26/2012 10:53:52 PM

Quote :

"It was good up until the actual games, at which point the movie completely ignores any sort of social interaction between the people and everything is just laid out in front of you as opposed to developed."

I felt the opposite (loved the games, hated the opening). Katniss' relationships with Gale, her mother, and her sister were so downplayed and rushed, as was her bonding with Peeta in the capital aside from the one conversation they had the night before the games started.

It makes sense to me to not build interactions during the games. The focus is on Katniss, so Katniss didn't want to bond with anyone she would have to kill/watch die. She let her guard down for Rue and suffered for it. But the reason why she was so drawn to Rue is because she reminded her of Prim. Since we never saw just how close Kat and Prim are supposed to be, it didn't come across as well.

3/26/2012 10:54:35 PM

Quote :

"I mean they did say dark skin in the book but did anyone else notice all the black people were in district 11 (agricultural district)? I'm surprised no one's called out the movie for that."

Yeah that's whats surprising to me too. Still sad that all these kids reactions to Rue being black.

3/26/2012 10:55:16 PM

What bugged me was the lack of hunger. They didn't seem to communicate the fact that people in the districts were starving to death and kids were taking tesserae so their families could stay alive.

Overall I thought it was just ok.

Maybe if the movie was first person and we could hear Katniss' thoughts then it'd be a better movie.

I'm glad to hear that those who havent read the books still liked the movie. I thought it was disjointed and a ton of stuff was under developed. That was the first time I've ever seen a movie after having read the book though.

Quote :

"I mean they did say dark skin in the book but did anyone else notice all the black people were in district 11 (agricultural district)? I'm surprised no one's called out the movie for that."

That's not surprising and I personally don't think it's racist. That's the way it is in America now and I don't think they'd shuffle people around for the sake of diversity in a post apocalyptic world.
All the people in D12 are white. All the people in coal mining areas of the US are white. Big deal.

[Edited on March 26, 2012 at 11:01 PM. Reason : ]

3/26/2012 10:56:42 PM

^You went this far in life without ever reading a book before seeing its associated movie?

3/26/2012 10:58:31 PM

Yes. The first books I've ever read on my own were the Lord of the Rings and that was in college after college.
I just never read when I was younger. Too much ADD.

Now I'm hooked. I read the hunger games trilogy within a few days. I'm on the last Twilight book and it's taken me a couple weeks to read them all (fast for me).
I'm a slow reader. Sad, isn't it?

[Edited on March 26, 2012 at 11:06 PM. Reason : ]

3/26/2012 11:02:54 PM

I personally liked the way they did the movie considering they had to make it appropriate for a PG-13 rating (because I highly doubt a young adult book would ever be allowed to be R since you know a lot of young teens are going to watch it).

I wasn't surprised they toned down the killing, and while I was looking forward to how they made the muttations look, I can honestly say I'm also not surprised those were toned down as well. I guess it would be a tad bit too gruesome to show the fucked up dogs made from dead tributes.

I went to see it with my fiance' (who hasn't read the books) and I think that was a good tester as to what had been explained enough and what hadn't. For example, at the end of the movie he asked me what the pin meant - I didn't even realize they hadn't explained it's meaning because I already had that knowledge, ya know? He also asked why all the people in the Capitol looked weird.


Anywho, I was pleased and felt like they did a good job cutting out what wasn't super necessary and even getting a little creative with it. I LOVED the added scene with Seneca Crane and the berries - that was straight up cold!



By the way, I don't think they portrayed the games in the movie as only being "a few days." Obviously it wasn't for the same amount of weeks as in the book, but when she asked Rue how long she had been out Rue told her 3 days or something like that. And I agree with what someone said earlier about character development - most of those people you will never see on there again, sooo not really sure why people would want to get attached.

[Edited on March 26, 2012 at 11:14 PM. Reason : PS, Marvel looks so naturally creepy]

3/26/2012 11:07:21 PM