I watched the first half of the Hunger Games movie (and also the last few minutes -- where Katniss arrows the last evil boy off-camera). Then, completely coincidentally, I read the book. I usually read one of my sister-in-law's Nancy Drew books, but they were lost after the move and my niece's Hunger Games was right there. It turns out that the movie didn't even understand the book. For example, in the movie they reverently repeat the slogan "may the odds be with you". In the book we hear it once, spoken mockingly. The kids hate the hunger games and find its slogan repulsive.
So here's the movie: Katniss is good with a bow, volunteers for the death match to protect her sister, spends time training and parading around for TV, hides when the games start, is attacked by fireballs, kills some people with mutant wasps, blows up the tough kids' supplies, shoots a guy who killed her buddy, fake-makes out with the boy from her village for the ratings, and they get to be co-winners.
All of that stuff was also in the book, so it's fine right? But over half of the book was flashbacks. Let's go over them: Kat's parents had a big romance, but her father's coal-mine death plunged them into poverty and drove her mother to dispair. The family got death benefits, but not nearly enough and cut-off too quickly. Kat is forced to become the breadwinner, but their mining town is so poor they're about to starve to death. Then a single nice gesture -- the baker's son tossed her a loaf of burnt bread -- starts her clawing her way up to become a successful poacher, navigating the underground economy. When she's forced to travel to the city she worries her mother may revert back to helplessness, but that may be fine since her sister now has a milk-producing goat -- and more importantly, the family has the town's goodwill.
There's more, still told in flashbacks. Katniss doesn't have the time or inclination to think about romance for herself, but maybe some boys do, like her hunting buddy. She also finds out that the "rich" baker's son who threw her the bread is nearly as starving and poor as she is, and has a thing for her. We learn how the supposedly fair lottery is rigged in favor of the rich. Everyone enters once, to begin with. But you'll need to put your name in extra times to get welfare, with a complicated cummulative system to hide how badly the odds are tilted against the poor. We also find out why the town hero -- a local who won the Games years ago -- is so glum. He knows the system is rigged, and and how little he can do to help.
That's a much better story. It's almost as if children murdering each other was just a half-developed trick to get people to read the real story -- the story which was cut out of the movie.
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