The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Thoughts on the original: link

So after this film, I was making jokes that book series that become huge hits because of female-dominated fandoms are all terrible. Yes, including Harry Potter. They were jokes, but…I must say I find it hard to provide much evidence to the contrary.

It may be no surprise, but I disliked Catching Fire. I actually had hoped that things would be more interesting in this film based on the possibilities of a wider story in the first, but…well, all that was promised there is still yet to come.

What I can’t fault are the blockbuster production values. The futuristic sets are superb, the direction, framing and editing work, the camerawork is no longer extremely annoying like in the first film and the performances are actually great, including the newly-introduced cast members. But again, it’s the writing I really have problems with.

I have huge problems with the fact that the film doesn’t work as a standalone story or as part of the overarching narrative. Alone, it’s deeply unsatisfying because it’s another total cop-out – Katniss and Peeta think they’re out of danger, but Katniss’s growing status as a symbol of defiance and revolution in a totalitarian society that, let’s face it, ought to be having a whole lot more uprisings than it does means that rather than simply being tortured into absolute subservience like a proper dictatorship would do, she’s put in for another Hunger Games against previous winners. Though this is built up to over an incredibly long time, it is for one thing completely stupid, as in reality everyone would have just died within a day with no survivors (much like the last games when they unleashed the CG dogs), but for another just like the first film raises lots of interesting moral questions about what will happen when the competition is whittled right down and Katniss has to start contemplating executing her allies, but then completely cops out and none of the promised tension ever reaches fruition, making the whole thing seem pointless. From the mastermind’s point of view, the whole exercise was stupid because Katniss was very likely to die many times over, and god knows what their original evacuation plan was because Katniss made hers up alone.

And worse, overall the film was just completely pointless. As I said, it basically ended at the point I thought it was start. The Capital really just let Katniss and Peeta go home unsupervised for months? And when they did, they didn’t slip away? The reasons Katniss has for not going, generally to do with her family and wanting to struggle from within rather than running, are reasonable, but only from a writing point of view to postpone action. And what is her action postponed for? This half-baked rehash of the first book that doesn’t even get anywhere. It would have been extremely easy for Collins to write a single scene that goes from Katniss and Gale contemplating leaving District 12 to the scene at the very end of this film, with none of what came in between. Thus, the film’s contents were superfluous and must be worthwhile alone – which they clearly weren’t.

It’s true that there are worst books out there. But after the first film, I said I was sad that this was being made rather than more His Dark Materials. Well, add Narnia to that. And colour me very disappointed that we get films of tripe like Eragon, Percy Jackson and Stormbreaker while superb YA books like Mortal Engines, The Wind Singer, Larklight and The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray never seem to get past preproduction.