Amph The Hunger Games franchise

Dooku stop trolling please.

As for Effie's makeup, I remember how Katniss always described the Capitol city people as looking a bit unnatural from cosmetic surgeries and having too much makeup, so I'm a bit happy they're actually going that route for the films. I wanted bright pink hair, though.

 

Just finished the first book. Very much enjoyed it and looks forward to the movie.

 

Having a differing view than the majority is not trolling. I am entitled to my take just as much as anyone else.

 

I have to agree. Your post didn't come off as trolling to me.

 

Just highly uninteresting.

I on the other hand have started the second book and am very happy with it. Though I want President Snow in the Hunger Games dammit! Grrrr arrrgh!!

 

I recently finished reading Battle Royale, which I decided to read in turn after finishing Hunger Games and encountering a lot of online reviews calling HG a ripoff of it. My conclusion: in some ways it is, and in some ways it isn't. One thing both books have in common is an excess of obnoxious adolescent romance. The politics of the two are a bit different, though. Battle Royale is set in a North Korean-style totalitarian state, and Hunger Games makes me think more of ancient Rome. (Gladiatorial combat is now televised!)

 

So... I've now read the entire series. The first book did at least have a few interesting points to make, but I was disappointed as the series went on. The ending of Mockingjay in particular was very unsatisfying.

Spoilers:

Part of a well-crafted story is some sort of development on the part of the protagonist. Katniss seems to realize by the time of Mockingjay that she's been a self-centered brat (as evidenced by the conversation between Gale and Peeta that she overhears), but still makes no effort to better herself. She votes to have the children of the Capitol's leaders fight to the death as payback for the abuses of their parents' regime?!?! Hasn't she developed any sympathy for others as a result of her experiences? Or is it only young children she happens to know and like, such as Prim or Rue, who deserve not to be condemned to slaughter one another?? I was even more disturbed to then find out that poor, pathetic Peeta still loves that stupid girl. It was established early in the series that he is compassionate and good at heart, not at all like Katniss. Why would he still want to marry and live happily ever after with someone like her? There are other nice girls out there who will actually love him back and/or not support pedicide. Maybe he should try to meet one of those.

Further, it really should not take an entire book to hammer home the point that sometimes the opposition to the bad guy is not a good guy either. Yes, sometimes the person fighting Hitler is Stalin. And no, assassinating Stalin so his underlings can move up to higher positions within that same general structure of government does not ensure any sort of meaningful transition to a free state. When we leave the Capitol, I feel no confidence that life overall will be better for the people of Panem as a result of one teenage girl's decision.

 

Thanks for putting my thoughts into words, Beth. That last book was rough. It's not good when you start hating the lead character. That ending blew swamp-donkey testes.

 

I think you completely misunderstood the scene where Coin suggested the 'symbolic Hunger Games' with Capitol children.

The "For Prim" line- Katniss, by this point, KNOWS that Coin was responsible for the attack that killed her sister. And she also knows that Coin won't give her the satisfaction of killing Snow herself if she doesn't agree with her plan. Katniss knows that her only chance to avert the continued evil of the system is to get rid of Coin. So she sacrifices the self-satisfaction of killing Snow- who knows she won't do it ("I thought we agreed not to lie to one another")- to get rid of the more immediate threat of Coin. It was her only opportunity, and she secured the opportunity by agreeing with Coin. I don't think she expected the Hunger Games plan to proceed without Coin- and I doubt it does, since the newly elected leader is a Games survivor herself (the District 8 woman, I forget her name... Paylor?)

And Haymitch understands her line of thought. That moment when he looks at her, when Katniss wonders if they truly think alike... he knows what she's planning. THAT'S why the two of them vote yes, neither actually wants to see another Hunger Games. And I think that's part of why he just doesn't fit in with the Capitol crowd, why he goes back to District 12 at the end with Katniss.

And that sequence- Katniss recovering, confronting Gale... Coin collecting the survivors, taking the vote, and the assassination- that was probably my favorite part of the book.

As for Peeta- I didn't really buy the ending where they're magically in love. BUT- I think you're forgetting that Peeta is not the same Peeta who fell in love with her. Nor do I think that Katniss could ever have loved the Peeta who saw her up on the pedestal, who loved her unconditionally. She NEEDED the Peeta who, in the hospital in District 13, saw her for who she really was.

And you know what? Maybe that Katniss wasn't perfect, wasn't ideal. You call her self-centered, but you forget that she tried to sacrifice herself for Peeta in the 2nd Games, tried to get Haymitch to help her do it. She thought she was condemning herself to torture/prison by assassinating Coin and tried to kill herself rather than use her Mockingjay standing to justify her actions.
She's certainly not perfect- but she's concerned with the inhumanity of the system while Peeta and Gale are pining after her and being jealous about what? The fact that she doesn't love either of them?

That struck me a trifle unfair on the boys' part.

Having said all that, the romance plot really drove me nuts the ENTIRE series. I liked the books, I thought they were generally good reads. But the love-triangle was just a shade too Twilight-y, and should have been a much smaller part of the books if it had to be there at all. The characters were just too young for me to buy into the true love thing.

 

Lexi, that is exactly what I took away from Mockingjay and why it was really my favorite of the books.

At the point of Katniss agreeing to those last game, I knew she would be killing Colin and was happy to see this after deciding Colin was really no different then Snow.

I'd been told Mockingjay would leave me unsatisfied, but I though it nice that all the loose ends weren't neatly tied up, that is wasn't a Disney ending. Real life is so not like that and I felt the it showed that more.

 

You might be right about Katniss having to vote yes so she'll stay in favor enough to still have a chance at killing Coin. I wasn't even thinking about the possibility that she'd lose her only shot at Coin if she weren't allowed to assassinate Snow. If that's all there was to it, I despise her somewhat less. But I still can't forgive her for how she treats Peeta and Gale. And about that...

Peeta and Gale both noticed the inhumanity of the system long before she did. Gale ranted about politics in the woods long before Katniss gave a damn (it took the immediate suffering of her sister rather than the abstract suffering of others to make her care). And Peeta understood the Capitol's reasons for staging the Hunger Games and who his real enemy was from the beginning of the first book. The fact that they later become entangled in a love triangle doesn't consume 100% of their brainpower and prevent them from thinking about their earlier beliefs. And I do think Katniss unfairly strings both of them along when she knows they're interested in a relationship with her and she's not interested in one with them. Her actions sometimes suggest the opposite of her words. Oh, I only want a platonic friendship with you.... but I'm going to kiss you anyway.

That's exactly what bothered me about Katniss' relationship with Peeta. The boys were right - she does end up with the person she needs. In a healthy relationship, each person cares for the well-being of the other, perhaps even more than they do their own. But when Katniss claims she loves Peeta at the end of the book, there's still very little evidence that she really cares for him or wants to give of herself to help him realize his potential. Love for her is a synonym for need. She concludes pragmatically that Gale's influence is bad for her and Peeta's influence is good. That's no better than the relationship models celebrated in Twilight.

 

I guess, but I can't hate her for it. Mainly because a) she's 16 years old and doesn't seem to quite grasp the whole romance thing before she gets thrown into the mess and b) she's an idiot, but she legitimately thinks that Peeta is messing with her for the entirety of book 1, right until the very end. She thought the whole 'desperately in love since the age of 5' thing was an act to get them sympathy, an act contrived with Haymitch. I don't think she really grasps how serious he is until they're on the train home, does she? When Peeta is confused that Haymitch would warn her about them being in trouble with Snow/the Capitol, but didn't talk to him... they have the mutual realization that the other is on a totally different wavelength.

And aren't most of her kisses with Gale him grabbing and kissing her and her going "HUH?" The kiss by the fence, when she first comes home, and then when she asks him to run away but before he gets in a jealous rage that she (*gasp*) doesn't want Peeta to die either?
The only time I remember her really willingly kissing him is when he's all drugged up and injured after the whipping.

Ah, sorry- when I say 'needed,' I meant more along the lines that she needed the changed Peeta to be able to respect his feelings for her, not so much that she couldn't live without him, as Peeta and Gale discuss in the cellar. With Peeta though... remember, they didn't even KNOW each other before the Games. They'd never spoken. Not once. And he was head-over-heels in love with her? How was she supposed to reciprocate that? It was obvious infatuation with little substance, I thought.
But after his ordeal with the Capitol, when he was forced to sort through memories, to pick out the truth from the lies, to ask her about everything they'd been through- he finally saw HER, not this idealized version he'd been carrying around for 10 years.

But I hardly see how you think Katniss doesn't care for Peeta's wellbeing- yes, even above her own. She goes to great lengths to keep him alive in book 1. She thinks she's convinced Haymitch to help her make Peeta the winner of the Games in book 2. She's a wreck in book 3 while Peeta is in Capitol hands. And even when she thinks he's going to kill her... even when Peeta himself wants HER to kill HIM before he compromises their mission... she cares about him. And it's morbid, but she cares enough to give him the poison pill before setting off on the last leg of the journey to get to Snow.

Also bear in mind- in the end, it wasn't a choice between Gale and Peeta. It could never have been Gale, after what happened to Prim. Months go by, between her imprisonment during her trial, her isolation in District 12, and the months that her and Peeta spend recovering and adding to the 'book' that she's writing and he's painting... it's not like she just decides that once Gal

 

I pretty much agree with everything Beth's said so far, and I'll admit that I haven't read all of the HTR posts, but in the second book did anybody feel like "oh, great, we're gonna blow up the Death Star again..." when they announced they were going back to the Hunger Games? Overall the writing just felt lazy from the midway point of the second book.

Yeah, it's not just her actions, but the fact that her thoughts didn't match her actions. It's one thing to say something and do another, but quite another to have the character's inner monologue contradict her actions. The schizophrenic inner monologue from Kat just became tiresome.

That said, I really enjoyed book 1.

 

This.

 

I honestly hate Katniss. When Gale says she'll pick the one she can't live without, he's pretty much admitting that he recognizes how selfish she is.

 

omg so much highlighting. Beth, I had the same problem you did with the vote at the end of Mockingjay, although I get the explanation in retrospect, I don't think Collins did a good enough job of explaining why she voted that way, especially since it was a first person narrative. Katniss never seemed to understand why she was doing anything that she did, ugh.

 

So...from all this why should I see this thing?

 

The first person, present-tense narrative really hurt the books in the end, I think. If you take that approach, you eliminate the discovery part of reading as we try to ascertain our protagonist's motivations. In order to still get some element of surprise into the story, you almost have to get the protagonist to lie to herself constantly and while healthy people might do that occasionally, they don't do it all the time. The discontinuity between Katniss' thoughts and actions throughout the books got worse and worse to the point that it was distracting in the extreme. She would do things that struck me as utterly out of character based on her own thoughts.

I do think the first book was brilliant, though.

 

Arlon, read it yourself and make up your own mind.

 

So for the uninformed, how is this any different from Battle Royale?

 

Teenage angst?

I haven't seen Battle Royale, but it's been on my netflix list.

 

Watch it and rejoice. Definitely Top 5 Asian Cinema.

 

Fewer Springsteen lyrics with characters' names swapped into them.

 

I second Battle Royale.

 

I'm a bit scared to post in this thread as I've just finished the first book. Nice to see all the HTR text above, but I still hit reply almost as soon as I entered.

Anyway, I've just finished the first book this evening and thought it was pretty amazing. I'll pick up the second this evening.

Also watched the trailer for the film, and think it looks great. Happily only a month until release, too. No worries about film Katniss invading how I've imagined her... because they're very similar. Peeta perhaps a little too handsome?