Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark won the 74th Annual Hunger Games, won an arena style battle to the death designed by a fascist government to keep all of its citizens in place by constantly reminding them how helpless they are. However, they did so in a defiant manner which drew the ire of President Snow, Chief Fascist and part time Santa Claus. There's no way he's going to let two uppity teenagers upset his balance of power, so get ready for an overly elaborate plan that could have easily been solved by JUST KILLING THEM.
Because really, when you think about
it, none of this makes any sense. Snow outright says he doesn't want
to kill Katniss because it'll just make her a martyr and inspire many
others to take her place, but this is neglecting one key detail. The
only districts that seem to have a problem with the Capitol are the
outlying ones, the ones filled with dirt poor workers who suffer the
most under Panem's jackbooted heels. HOW are they going to revolt?
They have no real technology and no real way to get to the Capitol
short of WALKING THERE, so there is no way to overthrow Snow that
way.
Sure, they could just stop working and
producing the supplies the Capitol needs, but they have small numbers
and would be no match if Snow send his army of hovercraft and
Stormtroopers over there to resolve the stoppage. And on THAT topic,
what does a technologically advanced paradise like the Capitol need
COAL for anyway? That physical holographic technology of theirs run
off coal? In summary, Snow is a fucking idiot and is just begging to
be the cause of his own undoing, giving Katniss every weapon she
needs to do so.
Right. So the Hunger Games
kicked all kinds of ass, assuring a sequel to adapt the next book
would get greenlit faster than you could say CHA-CHING! Director
Gary Ross couldn't return due to commitments he had to other films,
so Francis Lawrence was chosen to take his place. Lawrence is
another in a long line of music video and commercial directors that
turned to film, scoring hits with I Am Legend and Water For
Elephants. The script was handled by acclaimed writer Simon
Beaufoy, who is best known for his award winning screenplays for
the Full Monty and Slumdog Millionaire. Beaufoy left the
film mid-production and even more acclaimed writer Michael Arndt was
brought in to do rewrites. Arndt only won Oscars for his first two
screenplays, Little Miss Sunshine and Toy Story 3, so
it's safe to say the script was in GOOD HANDS.
Something very interesting and sad I
found while doing my research on this movie is that it was the first
film since 1973's the Exorcist to lead the yearly domestic box
office while featuring a female lead. 1973? REALLY, America? That
actually gives me an idea for an article where I'll go through the
films of the past 42 years and see where box office hits featuring
female leads landed on the charts, so expect that one soon...ish.
That sounds like a lot of work. Especially when I have a movie about
Katniss to review first! Get ready to see how to do a sequel
PROPERLY as you settle in for A Ghoul Versus The Hunger Games:
Catching Fire!
We open with Katniss and the Lord of
the Hunks hunting for turkeys in the woods of District 12. Katniss
is about to fire on one when it turns into Marvel, the boy she shot
in the last movie. She begins to freak out, as she is obviously not
over the hell she endured in last year's arena as any NORMAL PERSON
wouldn't be. As I mentioned in my last review, this was my favourite
aspect of the trilogy: its realistic approach to a person's mental
state in the face of horrific events. Gale talks her down and they
return to the village, as Katniss has to get ready to leave in a
couple of hours for a Capitol-mandated “victory tour” of all the
districts on the eve of this year's Hunger Games.
Gale says he won't be accompanying her
to the train station, as it's obvious he's still upset about her on
screen romance with Peeta. Katniss assures him it was all an act she
put on to survive, Gale throwing caution to the wind and kissing her.
Looking most confused, she returns to her new home in the Victors'
Village, the section of the district assigned for past winners of the
Games. On the way she passes Prim's cat Buttercup, who has magically
transformed into a yellow tabby cat now. This was apparently done at the bequest of Suzanne Collins herself, who was bugged by them pointlessly putting a cat of the wrong colour in the role. She goes to Haymitch's house, who has fallen back
off the wagon because the new screenwriters realized his character
DOES work better as an alcoholic.
Peeta is also there, making for a very
awkward encounter with Katniss as at some point between the end of
the last movie and now she came clean about her loving him being a
lie. Gee, if only the movie had ended with him discovering that like
he was SUPPOSED to. After telling Haymitch to get ready for the
tour, she heads home only to find she has an unwelcome guest:
President Snow. She tries to engage him in pleasantries, but he
declares things will go so much smoother if they agree not to lie to
each other. In the book, this leads to one of my favourite scenes in
the entire trilogy, something I PRAY the fourth movie keeps in.
Katniss agrees to this, so he lays down the 411.
It's basically a rehash of everything
Haymitch told Katniss at the end of the last movie, confirming that
her act of defiance with the berries has inspired talk of rebellion
in other districts. Katniss has a fantastic series of exchanges with
the President, as you can tell she is afraid of him but refuses to
give him the satisfaction of knowing that. Always keep your head
held high, that is the Katniss way. Snow threatens her with
destroying the entire district if she doesn't start playing ball,
which involves kissing the Capitol's ass while on her victory tour.
Donald Sutherland is magnificently threatening here, as he's taken
his increased relevance to the story and ran with it. He tells
Katniss she has to convince the districts the berry thing wasn't an
act of defiance, but rather just her being madly in love with Peeta.
On his way out, he shows Katniss a recording of Gale kissing her
because he's a dick like that.
Snow departs, Katniss' next visitors
consisting of Effie, Cinna, and assorted stylists. Here's a fun fact
I never realized until typing up by review of the first film: Effie
is never once named on screen. The cameras show up to give audiences
their reunion of Katniss and Peeta, which is very awkward as Katniss
is working her ass off to be happy and bubbly while Peeta is
basically channeling Bruce Willis getting interviewed by Chris Tucker
in the Fifth Element. They're rushed off to the hovertrain to
begin their tour, Peeta getting Katniss alone and saying he wants to
try being friends so things won't be so rough between them. It's a
much needed scene between the two, as we get to see them just be
themselves and talk with no life-or-death situation hanging over
their heads. Even though there IS, but Katniss chooses not to tell
Peeta about her little visit from Snow.
They arrive in District 11, which is
MUCH worse than life back home. District 11 is an agricultural
community full of armed Stormtroopers and barbed wire fences, where
the works toil in the fields all day. The majority of the population
appears to be black, which I'm sure pissed off a certain percentage
of the fandom to no end. #KeepHungerGamesWhite! Unless... Suzanne
Collins was going for, oh I don't know, some kind of social
commentary on fascism and racism in her novels. Hmm. They have to
give a speech to the gathered district honouring Rue and Thresh,
Effie giving them cards containing generic words. Peeta quickly
goes off script and delivers a moving tribute to the fallen
teenagers, Katniss joining in and doing the same.
This only serves to inspire the crowd,
an elderly man doing the three finger salute after she gets done
speaking. Stormtroopers rush into the audience and grab him,
shooting him pointblank in the back of the head. THAT escalated
quickly. Katniss and Peeta are dragged inside a building, where
Haymitch takes them upstairs to yell at them for their improvised
words. Katniss finally comes clean about Snow, Peeta outraged that
she didn't mention any of that earlier. Katniss tries to tell him
she was only trying to protect her family, prompting him to mention
that HE has family too. Remember this line class, there will be a
test later. Haymitch says the only way to get through this is by
acting as the Capitol's puppets, but the following montage of them
traveling district to district shows it's too late and the damage has
been done. The natives are getting restless, each stop getting more
and more violent. This is fine for the movie I suppose, but in the
books it never made much sense as they clearly said the closer
districts to the Capitol were very much behind the regency.
Katniss comes up with the idea of Peeta
proposing to her on Caesar's show, which naturally is followed up
with a reactionary shot of Gale. OH PLEASE, enough with the fake
love triangle. Gale is as vital to this story as Teresa was in the Maze Runner. Quick, name ONE THING she did the
entire movie! No? Don't feel bad, I couldn't either. Anyways, the
tour finally ends and they're in the Capitol, the guests of honour at
a lavish party being thrown by Snow. It is there Katniss meets the
new Head Gamemaker, Plutarch Heavensbee, who is replacing Seneca
Crane and his unfortunate facial hair. Plutarch is played by the
late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman, who unfortunately died of a drug
overdose in the middle of shooting the final two Mockingjay
movies. He was a wonderful actor who went way before his time, and
was a PERFECT choice to play Plutarch.
Plutarch asks Katniss to dance,
exchanging some brief words with her about the Games. This is one of
the major changes from the book, as there he showed her his watch
which had a holographic projection of the Mockingjay symbol on it.
He made a big deal of this, leaving Katniss puzzled as to why. Snow
enters the party and toasts the young lovers, although his speech is
clearly more veiled threats towards Katniss. In another “This
Scene Is Incomprehensible Unless You've Head The Books” moment,
Snow drinks a glass of champagne and backwashes a unhealthy amount of
blood into it. Does Snow have the world's most severe case of
gingivitis? No, in the books they explain how one of Snow's most
popular forms of assassinating his rivals is by poison, which he
himself drinks to avoid suspicion. He takes antidotes naturally, but
a lifetime of drinking poison has permanently fucked up his mouth and
it never stops bleeding. GUH-ross.
The tours ends and they return to the
district, Katniss catching surveillance footage of District 8 rioting
against the Capitol. When she gets home she seeks out Gale, telling
him about everything going on and her plan to run away. He declines,
because he is all about this rebellion movement. Stormtroopers roll
into the village led by the ruthless Commander Thread, who orders the
Hob burnt down just because life wasn't miserable enough around
there. Gale runs afoul of Thread and ends up getting whipped at the
new whipping center in the public square, Katniss and Haymitch
arriving to save him. They take him back to Katniss', where her
mother and Prim are suddenly highly trained medics? Oh right, they
cut that entire subplot out of the first movie so now it feels
HORRIBLY out of character. Especially Prim, who was this timid
little girl and is now talking like she's a doctor off of... uh,
whatever popular medical show is in vogue right now? Is St.
Elsewhere still on the air? How about E.R., featuring
that young George Clooney guy?
Snow and Plutarch watch the footage of
the District 12 victors standing up to the Stormtroopers, Snow
bitching that they all think they're invincible now and need to be
stopped. Plutarch disagrees though, because he's getting a light
bulb over his head. We jump ahead a bit to Snow giving a press
conference, where he discusses the upcoming 75th running
of the Hunger Games. Every 25 years they do something called a
Quarter Quell, which involves a tournament of extra special
significance. This year's is going to feature contestants consisting
of nothing but past victors, regardless of age. Katniss runs out
into the woods for a minor freakout, then, after composing herself,
goes to talk with Haymitch.
She tells him they HAVE to ensure Peeta
survives, Haymitch mockingly telling her that Peeta had already been
there an hour ago saying the same thing about her. He then drops one
of my favourite lines of the series, “You could live 100 lifetimes
and never deserve that boy.”. I've talked about how the removal of
Katniss' inner dialogue was the biggest flaw of the first movie
because it robbed us of her insights into everything, for this one I
would definitely say its biggest weakness is Peeta's limited
screen-time. We don't get the buildup for the character that he got
there, which has paved the way for endless “Katniss should have
chosen Gale over Peeta” jokes since Peeta hasn't made much of an
impact thus far.
Peeta flirted with being a messianic
figure in the books, he just exudes this poise and composure through
his words that made him one of my favourite fictional characters in
recent history. Pair him with how much I like Katniss, add a highly
compelling and well written story, and you can see why I love the
books so much. This dialogue with Haymitch is very effective, as it
helps to sell Peeta a lot more effectively than he has been so far.
The movie skips ahead to the Reaping, where even Effie herself is
less than pleased with the latest turn of events as she's come to
care for her tributes in her own fashion. Katniss and Haymitch are
picked, but Peeta quickly volunteers in his place. Haymitch,
honouring the pact he made with Katniss, tries to stop him but Peeta
ain't listening.
They're rushed to the train and taken
to the Capitol, Haymitch telling them the key to survival is finding
allies to team up with since a large portion of the contestants are
Career Tributes who have been friends for years. The movie has the
novel idea of actually naming some of the tributes this go around, so
let's see who we're going to be dealing with:
-Cashmere and Gloss, a supermodel
looking team of siblings from District 1 that won the games
back-to-back.
-Brutus and Enobaria, another Career
team from District 2. Enobaria is rather unique in the fact she had
all of her teeth filed into fangs for better throat ripping.
Styling!
-Wiress and Beetee, a pair of
hyper-intelligent tech geeks from District 3.
-Unnamed Guy and Unnamed Girl from
District 6. They're called the Morphlings due to their addiction to
said drug, which is a super-charged form of morphine.
-Finnick Odair and Mags from District
4. You KNOW Finnick is going to be important since he got a last
name, he's basically the superstar of Panem due to his rugged good
looks and political connections. Mags is an elderly woman who raised
Finnick, volunteering as tribute in place of Annie, the love of
Finnick's life. Although you wouldn't know that last bit that if you
didn't read the books, the movie just mentions Annie's name like we
TOTALLY know who she is.
And that's it for the field, even
though there's many more. I guess Haymitch was showing them the
deadliest threats, but then treated the Morphlings like a total joke
so I'm not really sure what the point was. The next scene has all of
the tributes getting ready for the parade, Finnick introducing
himself to Katniss is a rather oily manner. Finnick is played by
relative newcomer Sam Claflin, who has already landed choice roles in
the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie and Snow White
and the Huntsman. He also had a starring role in a little known
2014 horror film called the Quiet Ones that is near the top of
my queue because it sounds very interesting to me.
Click here for Part 2!
Click here for Part 2!
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