Movie: The Hunger Games

[butterfly]

giandujakiss mentioned, quite casually, that The Hunger Games movie doing so well will mean that Mystique should have a larger role in the next X-Men movie. I had not previously realized that Katniss = Jennifer Lawrence = Mystique. Finding this out was my personal tipping point that made me decide to see the movie.

I am so glad I did.

I have not (yet) read the books, but now that I've seen the movie, I'm going to read them, for sure, probably very soon.

So, several big things that I noticed/enjoyed:

a) Katniss. AWESOME. Love her. I think that she's a great character. She's resourceful and protective and just kinda fierce.

And Jennifer Lawrence was just fantastic as Katniss. I knew she was good from X-Men but getting to see her play lead in a movie was really great.

b) This movie passes the Bechdel test less than two minutes after it starts. And it keeps on having interesting women who have interesting relationships with other women. This is a very female-driven movie - Katniss is the remaining protector of her family, which consists solely of women (her mother and her sister). The person who reads the note that sends Katniss into the games is a woman - she's the embodiment of the system that Katniss actually has to deal with, which is by turns ridiculous, tragic, and horrifying. And Katniss bonds with a little girl and experiences emotional stress and pain during the games because of that relationship, and it's because of that relationship that the outside world is first affected by Katniss and her choices.

c) That said, the male characters are great, too. I was particularly fond of the people who were fond of Katniss, unsurprisingly.

I really liked Peeta - the bit of memory between him and Katniss was well-done. It's interesting, because she obviously has this whole history with her friend Gale, but this one moment between her and Peeta is this huge thing to her that just hangs between them. And that's the sort of thing that draws me in - impact. Katniss with or without Gale would probably be roughly the exact same Katniss (from what I could see, anyway), but when she and Peeta interact, it changes both of them. That's what I find appealing in potential romantic relationships. So, yeah, kinda shipping Katniss/Peeta right now.

Comments

[waketosleep]

They took out some more awesome female characters that were in the books, so you'll enjoy that, too.

Katniss' motivations are not really super obvious in the movie, though, and they took out an important thing at the end that happened (one that bothered me as it changed her character quite a bit). Katniss personally drives me nuts but thankfully in the same way that most teenagers do, ie. it's brain chemistry and they will someday be a human being. :D