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I just finished the first book and was pleasantly surprised. To me the most striking thing about the book is how well it uses it's setting to demonstrate social pressures Everything feels like it's life or death when you're a teenager, and games themselves reflect the unstable social alliances of high school. A strong, independent girl starting to get physical with her boyfriend because she feels that it's expected, and recognizing that it's not necessary what she wants is a good thing for young readers to think about. Especially in stark contrast to the "messages" of twilight. I hope some of these ideas come through in the movie and not just the action-adventure framework of the story. edit: I don't really understand the harsh criticism of the writing. Sure, it's not elegant to a word, or even a sentence, but it is a well functioning narrative, with a breakneck pace. There are no lulls, every page something new is revealed either about our protagonist or her predicament. More importantly, almost (but not quite) every part of this actually works, it's part of a cohesive story. There are different styles of writing, and this one has plenty of room for improvement, but it is far from horrible. Snak fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Mar 19, 2012 |
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Mar 19, 2012 05:57
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Astro7x posted:It's unnecessary bonus information for reading the book though. Personally when reading the book, I thought that the Tessera was sort of a flawed system. Why doesn't everybody agree to put their names in and get food? Then you all get the exact same odds of being drawn, and you get food. Makes sense to me. Because in the current system you if you think you can hack it with what food you have, you can get better odd of not being drawn. That's kind of like saying "Why doesn't everyone just work together for the benefit of all?"
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Mar 26, 2012 20:33
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IShallRiseAgain posted:As a non-book reader, it was pretty apparent that kaatnis was the sole provider, and you could tell she closed herself off emotionally. Also, that she was starving when she received that bread. It's also cumulative, as in, each year your name is put in as many times as it was the year before, plus one time for this year, plus any additional times. So when you turn 12, you go in once. If you're really hungry, and you put your name in 3 more times, your name will be in 4 times this year. Next year, your name will be in 5 times before you even consider extra times.
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Mar 26, 2012 21:31
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Bongo Bill posted:[stuff] I figured that the ending was more about him being punished for including the poisonous berries in the arena to begin with. I mean, best case scenario they allow for a surprise death like foxface, which is entirely contrived and most instances of accidental poisoning would have been big boring letdowns to the audience. On top of that, such a simple, effective poison gives people like Katniss an out, which is also unacceptable. This guy's job was to make a good arena and including those berries was a stupid mistake.
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Apr 8, 2012 06:35
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redjenova posted:Nah, that doesn't make sense. It would make a lot of sense to have poisoned berries in the arena—one more hazard for the tributes. Most of them, barring the Career district tributes, probably would have no idea they were poisoned, case in point Peeta gathering them up, thinking they were viable as food. It's a really boring hazard though. No one wants to see a survival deathmatch where a few contestants just up and die on their own anti-climatically.
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Apr 8, 2012 17:45
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Bongo Bill posted:Recall that early on, much ado was made of the importance of survival training and the fact that exposure is the biggest killer. I understand this, but watching a struggle for survival is much different than watching someone drop dead from poison in a few seconds. I'm just saying that from a spectator sport perspective, it's a really poor decision. There's a reason most games and reality shows don't have random eliminations. I'm not saying it's the only factor in the scene in question, but I think it's relevant. Also, while you are right, they mention in the book how in the past, games where people all froze and starved to death weren't well received and as a result the game makers more actively tried to prevent that sort of thing.
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Apr 8, 2012 17:54
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TOOT BOOT posted:One thing that doesn't make much sense to me, if the capital can genetically engineer werewolves over the course of a couple days and spontaneously start forest fires and all that, it doesn't seem the games are really necessary to subjugate the populace. They can just do it through technology and starvation. More importantly, if they have the technology to make muttations, they should have the technology to save Peeta's leg, or grow him a new one
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Apr 9, 2012 14:56
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redjenova posted:But why bother? Good point. I just figured it would be part of the "hope" they were selling. Another thing that really bothered me about the movie as far as Katniss's character was at the end when the rules are changed back so there can be only one winner, she doesn't react with hostility. In the book, Peeta reaches for his knife because he's going to chuck it into the lake, but Katniss immediately draws on him with her bow ready to kill him before she realizes he's throwing it away. It's a great moment that shows not only how hard Katniss is, but also the asymmetry of their relationship. It could have been a really powerful scene in the movie and instead we got nothing.
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Apr 12, 2012 06:46
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Yeah, I realize that it's the cool thing now to point out when something is "a total ripoff" of something else, but art has a long, long history of similar yet independent ideas. It's also true that, beyond part of the premise, the story's aren't that similar. The fact that gladiatorial sports were a real historical thing kind of makes the only real similarity the fact that it's children. Well, I have news for you: Science fiction loves to put children in classically adult roles. Also, the fact that historically, people of a much younger age were able (sometimes illegally) and sometimes necessarily, to fight in wars. The idea that more than one author would choose to explore these ideas is not only not far fetched, it's expected. My initial reaction when I heard of Hunger Games was "Oh, so it's battle royale," but after reading it, I can say that it's not a ripoff anymore than The Road Warrior is a ripoff of The Postman.
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Sep 28, 2012 18:18
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Fog Tripper posted:Especially when it is: a) - this is a valid similarity b) - not in hunger games c) - nature of all gladiatorial entertainment d) - 75% of all drama ever e) - again, not in hunger games f) - announcers in a spectator sport? holy poo poo I just realized that baseball is a complete ripoff of soccer! Also, since the nature of the story is different even if the setting is similar, does it really matter? Is it THAT IMPORTANT to constantly discredit things that may be intentionally or unintentional derivative of other things? I'm not even defending hunger games, I think it's mediocre as gently caress, but I simply don't understand hating something because of some sort of certainty that it's a ripoff of something else, when it's literally different in many ways. It's also VERY possible that Susan Collins had never heard of Battle Royale. Battle royale came out 10 years before hunger games and never got that popular in the US outside of a cult following. Snak fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Sep 29, 2012 |
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Sep 29, 2012 00:39
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It's also important to remember that only two children from each district are taken each year. Now, the movie doesn't do a good job at making districts seem larger than small towns, but they obviously have to be if they are the industrial and agricultural support for the capital. There would be millions of children in each district, and only two of them would get chosen each year. The movie portrays each district as a tiny rural town, but the capitol having millions and millions of people living in lavish excess. This doesn't make any sense.
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Apr 12, 2013 16:31
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While I often find YA fiction to be too simple, the issue that's really being discussed here is genre fiction vs. literature. It is ridiculous to assume that genre fiction targeted at adults is better written, or has any more depth, that its counterparts targeted at young adults. Just like genre fiction target at older readers, young adult fiction comprises a broad range of qualities. That said, the reason that I don't find most YA fiction particularly engaging is not because of the quality of the writing, but because it generally addresses its themes as though it might be the reader's first encounter with them. This is great when it is, and I think that YA fiction is great for getting younger people to think, but YA fiction does not make me think more than non-YA fiction of the same quality. I could walk into a bookstore right now and point out a half-dozen non YA novels that are worse than Harry Potter in every conceivable way, but I also have never encounted the YA equivalent of, say, Foucault's Pendulum, or Cryptonomicon.
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Nov 22, 2013 02:58
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aslan posted:
To be perfectly honest, while there are definitely different qualities of writing, I'm not really comfortable with the distinction between genre fiction and literature. I think there is also plenty of middle ground between the two where non YA writing is concerned. Secondly, I'm sure this wasn't your intention, but I feel like you're selling YA authors a little short if you don't think a lot of them construct their stories to fit coming-of-age type themes. YA publishers ARE extremely suspicious, but a lot of great writing (and art in general) is done right under the noses of people who don't know what it's about. I actually really love Hunger Games despite not caring to read past the first book, because as far as I know, it's about two things: A girl who is independant, talented, and knows what she wants, but has to cope with the reality of her culture, AND that her culture and authority figures are fundamentally flawed. These are both incredibly important messages for people in general, and are the kind of things that aren't commonly sold to young people, much less young girls. This is why I love Hunger Games. I'm not personally engaged by it, but I recognize it's value as the anti-Twilight. Foucault's Pendulum was kind of a cheap shot, since I would consider it a(the?) holy grail of genre fiction. I picked it because it does exceed any example of YA I can even imagine. I just now noticed your username and I have to say, C.S. Lewis bares mentioning in this discussion, because while his plots are nothing to write home about, he is a perfect example of allegorical YA fiction who's themes are clearly the driving force of the plot and not the other way around. I saw Sabriel mentioned in this thread, and I'm glad that it was. I read it several times when I was much younger. At the time, I had no idea it was part of a trilogy. I must confess that, due to childhood nostalgia, my favorit YA books are the Prydain Chonicles ( The Book of Three, the Black Cauldron, Taran Wanderer, The High King, and I know I'm missing one... ) I haven't read them as an adult, and from what I remember they were very simplistic yet set in a wonderful world based on welsh mythology. I would say that I ultimately judge most fiction (YA or otherwise) based on where its heart is at. If it sends a good message towards impressionable minds, I will forgive it many trespasses. If, for example, there was a YA target branch of the Tom Clancy brand, I would be highly critical of purely on moral grounds, regardless of writing quality. In order to bring this back to topic, as I said before in this very thread, the reason that I did not like the first Hunger Games film is that they robbed Katniss of her assertive independance and made her far more dependant on other characters. They took a ligitimate strong female character and turned her into a steriotypical hollywood female character who needed to be told what to do. As far as I was concerned, that robbed Hunger Games of the best thing the book had going for it. I hope that the second film has done a better job of providing a positive role model for young people.
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Nov 22, 2013 11:45
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Neu! posted:
I'm not sure how I have you the impression that Focault's Pendulum is a YA novel, as it most definitely is not. I was using it as an example of a type of novel that has no YA equivalent. I do wholeheartedly recommend it. It's a big part of why I found the DaVinci Code so mediocre, because while they are verydifferent novels, Focault's Pendulum does everything that DaVinci Code does, and does it better.
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Nov 24, 2013 08:01
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I think that's a common issue with adaptions of first person narratives. Katniss works well as a protagonist in the books* because they are from her point of view. When you move the narrative outside of her head, you lose a lot. I feel the same way about The Road, which is an absolutely amazing book, but a very mediocre film for this same reason.
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Nov 28, 2013 18:23
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Oh yeah, put that * there because I was going to put *I only read the first book, and haven't seen the second movie. So I have no idea if it's handled better in this installment.
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Nov 28, 2013 23:39
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Yaws posted:Looks like they're going ahead with digitally recreating Hoffman to complete his unfilmed scenes. As I recall they didn't CGI Oliver Reed, but they did use creative editing and used some audio from previously recorded scenes for his voice when his character was off camera.
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Feb 11, 2014 03:03
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Krowley posted:This is gonna suck so hard. There's no way they can faithfully recreate one of the greatest actors in our time by using computer diddlery. Might as well just hire an impersonator at that point. They almost certainly will and then use digital masking to put Hoffman's face on him. Doing it any other way would be incredibly stupid.
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Feb 11, 2014 16:58
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Surlaw posted:Interesting, both his speaking and his face in that opening looked really wrong compared to every other scene, and much of his lines were read with his face off screen. Well it's possible they would have done reshoots if he was alive but they just had to make do with what they had?
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Nov 22, 2014 18:56
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He's probably one of the people who couldn't tell Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon apart in The Departed. I thought that Arrested Development made up "face blindness" but it's obviously very real.
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Dec 16, 2014 02:30
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