Hunger Games: Book vs. Movie -- Discuss -- MERGED thread

[Imogen Rose]

I am really looking forward to it. The trailer looks great!

[Carl Ashmore]

I certainly hope so - judging by the trailer it seems to be pretty close to the book :-)

[acellis]

Movies very seldom live up to the book.

One example wghere it did is the book I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson, made into the movie, The Last Man on Earth, staring Vincent Price. Check them both out!

[tahliaN]

I actually think it will be better, at least for me, because It will be over in 2 hrs instead of having sleepless nights until I've finished reading it.

[Kathelm]

This is absolutely the danger that this movie faces. The beauty of Susan Collins's work, according to Time Magazine, was that it could be "all things to all people." If they make it so that it's only a love triangle for teenage girls (which the trilogy eventually devolves into), they will have abandoned much of the story's potential.

That's exactly my fear.  I was once summarizing the plot to my brother-in-law, focusing on the political situation, only for my preteen niece to say I was missing the point.  ::sigh::  I would argue that the sequels are more of a treatise on post traumatic stress disorder than a love story, but like Time Magazine says...

Anyway, I'm skeptical, but the trailer gave me some hope that at least someone involved is taking it seriously.  They might not ruin it.

[Patrick Skelton]

Here's to hoping!

[purplepen79]

I would argue that the sequels are more of a treatise on post traumatic stress disorder than a love story, but like Time Magazine says...

Great point about the sequels being a treatise on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder -- in the Hunger Games discussion on here a few weeks ago, a couple of us danced around that theme in our comments.  I know there's a lot of debate about the ending of Book 3, and I can see both sides of the argument; however, whatever else the ending of Mockingjay is, to me the final chapter is breathtaking in its portrayal of how longterm PTSD feels and how brave Katniss is to continue her life and marry and have children, even though she has little hope that the future will be any better than the past.  After all she's suffered, it would be so much easier for her at that point to curl up in a corner somewhere and refuse to go on, but she doesn't.  She decides to live, and to someone in her situation, that has to be the scariest thing she can do.  I like that Collins doesn't sugarcoat it and shows how difficult it is for Katniss to recover, even though she has Peeta and later their children to help keep her sane.   There is no magic wand (or person or happy ending) that can cure PTSD--only a daily struggle to reclaim the life that was stolen by trauma.  I just hope the movies don't let that theme slip by into some Hollywood glitz happy ending fest.  I have hope after seeing the previews, but I guess we'll see when the movie comes out . . .

[swlothian]

I haven't read these books yet.
What do you suggest?
Read the book or see the movie?

[martaszemik]

Without a question, read the book first. You'll enjoy the experience much better.

[Masha du Toit]

Judging from the previews, it appears that the moviemakers did a good job with both the casting and the set design (at least the visual effect of the preview matched or enriched what I imagined when I read the books).  Of course, visual effect can be far different from overall effect for me.  For instance, I loved the visual effect of Avatar but didn't care for the script.  Still enjoyed the movie though for its visual cornucopia, especially the dragon sequences.  I felt like I was really flying on a dragon, watching it.  After seeing Avatar, I desperately wished someone would make Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight into a movie.  Going back to Hunger Games, the parts in the arena were filmed near where I live in western NC, so that's an added incentive for me to want to see it.  Was Suzanne Collins involved with the movie at all? 

Completely off topic.  Purplepen, the artwork on your book covers is gorgeous. Reminds me of Chagal. 

[purplepen79]

Completely off topic.  Purplepen, the artwork on your book covers is gorgeous. Reminds me of Chagal. 

Thanks! 

[AHeath578]

Not sure if there is a topic running on this already but I found this thread through the search function so here's hoping I'm not causing two overlapping threads lol.

Went to see the movie this weekend! I was horribly disappointed.  Perhaps its because I just read the book one week before the movie came out but the number of things they changed (for NO reason UGH) was astonishing. Casting was alright, though I feel like maybe Jennifer Lawrence wasn't actually a great choice since they describe Katniss as being olive skinned and brown eyed and, yknow, small. In the book she describes her fears of death because she's waaay smaller than everyone except Rue. But otherwise casting was good.

Just... the differences! Gah!! I understand changing things for the big screen when it comes to time limitations but, really, they added in conversations that NEVER happened so I feel like they could have taken all that fluff out and kept to the story way better.

Differences I found:
-The opening scene with Prim screaming and then Katniss singing to her. Felt like an excuse to have her sing.
-The entire conversation with Gale at the beginning of the movie, minus the part where he says they could run away.
-They ONLY showed the hovercraft at the reaping (which didn't happen during the book) and never during the actual Games.
-Took out Haymitch being at the reaping but decided to put in a conversation on the train with Peeta where he asks Katniss if she's met him before.
-Katniss getting her pin from the lady in the Hub (can't think of her name, just Greasy lol) instead of the mayor's daughter... And then having to secretly hide it the entire time! Really, that seemed unnecessary to me. I don't see why there was even any reason to add it in that she was sneaking it when they could have just let her have it and never mentioned it.
-There was not a single scene of them shoveling food into their mouths, which I was wholeheartedly looking forward to lol.
-Cinna freely talking about how distasteful he finds the Hunger Games, even though in the book they made it perfectly clear they were being watched day and night and he would keep his mouth shut but everyone could tell what he thought.
-The Game Makers watching their training?! Did not happen. No. The Game Makers did not see them until they were being scored.
-OMG the whole scene with Peeta throwing the weight because the others were 'looking at him like a piece of food'. Nooo. That was 3 minutes wasted on a scene that did NOT happen and would not have happened because they were given, and they followed, instructions to specifically not show off their skills.
-Them showing Rue's skill during training.
-The scores. Seriously. In the book it talks about how only the tributes from districts 1 and 2 ever got above an 8 and everyone else averaged around 4. But, for some reason, in the movie, everyone got 7-10. I felt like that seriously took away from how amazing Katniss's 11 was.
-Her outfit during the interview was supposed to shimmer and look like fire, not actually be on fire like her opening ceremony costume.
-Her backpack was supposed to be NEON orange. Nuff said.
-She found water immediately in the movie. I guess dehydration isn't scary enough for film.
-Peeta never killed anyone. He was supposed to be the one who killed (well, finished off anyway) the girl by the fire.
-I feel like they could have kept the scene with Rue appearing during the night and her eyes reflecting, instead of having her in the tree going 'Pssst' in the morning. That scene felt like it was written for the big screen!
-Rue telling Katniss Peeta was by the river.
-They took out Rue's explanation of why she loves music, which made her funeral scene feel a little awkward...
-I felt like they made Katniss very generous with her kisses and cuddles. Like, zero hesitation full-on-love kissing. Not accurate at all.
-They kept the soup gift but skipped over the sleeping medicine and just had Peeta sleeping on his own.
-Thrush was supposed to be killed by Cato, not a mutation.
-OH MY GOD the wolf mutations. Why did they think it was okay to take wolves that had the features of all the fallen tributes and make them all into generic, tail-less, short haired dogs?
-The entire conversation between Katniss and President Snow. Never happened.
-They took out the entire conversation between Katniss and Peeta about how she didn't know how she felt about him and how it had all been a show. Which... was kinda the finale of the book. Instead they seemed to make it so that Katniss was pretending and Peeta was oblivious, even when they got back to District 12.

I know there were more, after the movie I spent well over 2 hours ranting and raging to my husband lol.

And, of course, they had to add in a couple minutes of Katniss staring at Gale.
And thus we have Twilight, er, I mean The Hunger Games. 

Anyone notice any other differences?

I'm so sad, I didn't get to see the green goo coming out of Glimmer. I was looking forward to that part most. 

I'm kinda shocked though. I went with my book club and none of them could stop talking about how accurate and to-the-book the movie was!! I was outraged. $20 on tickets, $20 on movie snacks, and $20 on lunch after. I felt like the money for my house's gas bill had been stolen.

Bah.    /rant.

[Jan Strnad]

I enjoyed it, though knowing how the first episode comes out (and the second and third) did spoil the suspense for me. I wondered if it would make sense if I hadn't already read the books.

AHeath578, "true to the books" is a subjective concept. I thought the movie was very true to the book in all essential ways. Knowing how horribly stories can be twisted and contorted almost beyond recognition in the transition from book to film, I thought that the changes in The Hunger Games were minimal.

If you want to see a real book-to-film travesty, check out The Lovely Bones or A Sound of Thunder. If you dare.

[Lursa (aka 9MMare)]

Did the move cover all 3 books or just the first? Just the first one, right?

Gotta start the next YA movie dynasty.....

[Darrell Pitt]

Just the first one.

I'm really surprised. I've never heard so much nasty media stuff as quickly about a film as I have this one. I'm not sure what's inspired it. Maybe it's because the books are so popular or perhaps the subject matter is so serious.

I'm talking about the stuff about the actors not looking starving and they should be darker skinned/olive complexion.

[jackz4000]

I haven't read the book or seen the movie, but will get around to both. Not very interested from the sound of it. But a friend who loved the book saw it with her BF last week and she was really disappointed with the movie and the BF was meh. Then again she's 28 and maybe the movie is designed for a younger aged viewer?

[D. Nathan Hilliard]

The problem is twofold.

First of all you have to compress the story into a two hour format. You can't do that without making alterations. You have to make allowances for the fact that a filmmaker has a harder time showing what's going through a characters head than a writer, especially without bogging the film down in exposition. He also doesn't want to waste too much time in side stories or characters that he will have to explain so minor characters that aren't directly essential to the plot or story tend to be in danger of being cut.

Add that to the fact that the fans of a popular book are going to see any deviation from that book as a "flaw" and the director has his work cut out for him.

For instance I hear that a supporting character early in The Hunger Games is missing from the film. I can actually understand why because her purpose in the book was really to demonstrate the unfairness of the situation due to simple things like who you were born to, and that could effectively be done without her in the film.

Also, sometimes things that work in books don't always work well on the big screen. I think the best example of this would be Stephen King's "The Shining." The hedge animals were a creepy factor in the book, but Kubrick realized they would come across very poorly on film and changed them to the hedge maze. King was incensed, but his later attempt to make a version more true to the book proved Kubrick right on that score.

[bordercollielady]

I saw the film last weekend and while I enjoyed it - I enjoyed the book more.  I won't restate it - but I thought they sugar coated the ending some..  per what AHeath wrote.    Also - the cinematography was choppy  (shaky-cam)... I think they used it  so that the violence was not as explicit - to get their PG rating -  Think "Blair Witch Project"... but it was giving me a headache..  But the acting was wonderful and aside from the ending - I think it followed the book really close.. Looking forward to the sequels.

[Joseph_Evans]

If you have read the first book and seen the film which do you think is better? Or are they just as good as each other? I'm going to see it on Tuesday and very much looking forward to it!

[purplesmurf]

Book all the way!

[bordercollielady]

The book without a doubt...you can read my assessment of the movie in an earlier thread!

[Kathelm]

I saw it over the weekend.  The action scenes were bad, but other than that, I thought it was a pretty good adaptation.  The cast was great, and they were willing to go beyond Katniss' POV (which was one of my complaints about the series, more so in the sequels).  It was missing a lot of the depth, though.

Other than the action, I didn't have any major complaints.

[Jan Strnad]

You have two major differences between a movie screenplay and a novel:

1. Length. A novel is longer. Screenplays are typically 90-120 pages. If you go by the rule of thumb that 1 page = 1 minute, the Hunger Games screenplay would be about 145-150 pages long MAX. (Maybe someone who's read/seen it could tell us.) That's far shorter than the novel, and the screenplay format is nowhere nearly as dense as a book, with extra line spaces and heavily indented dialogue, etc.

So, a lot gets thrown out in the movie. Extraneous characters go away. Some characters are combined. The mayor's daughter gets cut, so where does the mockingjay pin come from? From another character whose scene is brief but needed. Etc.

2. Depth. Movies are very, very good at showing us the surface of things. District 12 was depicted visually with an attention to detail that wasn't in the books. But, books can go inside characters' heads and show the meaning of things, and that's where the depth comes from.

I think this is where most movies disappoint when compared with the books.

But overall, I thought that the Hunger Games movie was quite good and that they're well on their way to a successful franchise!

[Stan R Mitchell]

My wife and I watched the Hunger Games this past weekend and I thought it absolutely rocked. I think it even held its own with the book, which also rocked.

So often movies fall short of the book, but I think this one held its own, if not slightly surpassed its print sibling.

And it seems my assessment follows the rest of the public. The movie blew out the box office, grabbing the third biggest opening weekend of all time. It also earned better-than-solid ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.

The movie is nothing short of incredible, in my opinion.

This incredible success by Suzanne Collins should go miles toward motivating thousands of starving writers around the globe and should buoy the spirits of book publishers throughout the country. Success — and I mean insane, incredible, impossible success — can be closer than you ever think.

[lea_owens]

I think the movie was a good interpretation of the book. I was glad I read the book first, though, so that I had a good understanding of what was going on. My 19 year old son had not read the book but he really enjoyed the movie. My 21 year old daughter had read the book and I think she enjoyed the movie more than my son because she was able to have some great discussions with friends about the differences, what was left out, what was added (or just brought forward from the second book).