The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games

Lionsgate Films, 2012

Directed by Gary Ross

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Stanley Tucci, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland

Three and a half stars

Approaching the opening weekend of The Hunger Games, the first film adaptation for a trilogy of novels by TV screenwriter turned author Suzanne Collins, a lot of comparisons were being thrown around. Most prominent among those comparisons were allusions to Twilight and Harry Potter, a pair of ridiculously popular fantasy fiction novels that translated their success to the big screen. In a lot of ways, The Hunger Games fits into that same niche, especially after scoring a $155 million domestic gross in its opening weekend, the third biggest weekend ever, and the supreme ruler amongst non-sequels, but it also has something both of those franchises lacked: a film version which is truly great.

To be fair, The Hunger Games is an inherently cinematic tale, and Collins penned the screenplay herself (along with director Gary Ross: more on him later). The story, which revolves around a post-apocalyptic, totalitarian government that punishes its citizens for past misdeeds by forcing randomly selected teenagers (tributes) to participate in an annual fight-to-the-death competition, was ripe for a film adaptation based only on the book flap. Furthermore, the casting here is pitch perfect across the board. Where Daniel Radcliffe had to grow into the role of Harry Potter as he went (and where Kristen Stewart just stares blankly into space), Academy Award nominee Jennifer Lawrence arrives here (as the resilient heroine Katniss Everdeen) fully formed, giving a performance that is fiercely physical, viscerally emotional, and, on every single level, fantastic. Right from the first scenes, Lawrence imbues Katniss with emotional colors that didn't quite come out on the page: take the breathtaking sequence featured in nearly every trailer, where her sister's name comes out of the drawing for the Hunger Games and she screams out her decision to volunteer in her place; or a scene several minutes later, where she is forced to say goodbye to everyone she has ever known: these scenes showcase a young woman who radiates strength and love, even as she fights the anger, sadness, and especially fear, that threaten to overcome her. But Lawrence is only the tip of the iceberg for what proves to be a remarkably well cast film, featuring Academy award nominees such as Stanley Tucci (playing in his comfort zone, as the slightly goofy but wonderfully kindhearted Caesar Flickerman, who interviews the tributes before the start of the games) or Woody Harrelson (as the alcoholic Haymitch, a former winner of the Hunger Games who has been left jaded and bitter after watching hundreds of kids die in the contest every year). Harrelson's Haymitch, who serves as mentor for Katniss and her fellow tribute Peeta Mellark (a solid and occasionally funny Josh Hutcherson), will have his shining moments in later films, but he's the perfect fit for the role. The same can be said of Donald Sutherland, who plays the President and dictator of this world, and who hangs over the film's proceedings like a specter of death. Elsewhere, Lenny Kravitz delivers a small but undeniably effective turn as Cinna, Katniss's stylist for the pre-game ceremonies, and a true friend.

Despite the Games being the movie's namesake, much of the action of the film actually revolves around the build-up to the main event, giving director Gary Ross (with writing and directing credits such as Pleasantville, The Truman Show, and Big) a good chance to acquaint us with these characters before all hell breaks loose. Seeing Peeta's protective nature, or Katniss and her tendency towards rebellious behavior, outside of the arena actually makes those qualities more pronounced than they would be if Ross and Collins had rushed towards the Games rather than giving such a large chunk of screen time over to the exposition. It also gives Lawrence and Hutcherson a chance to give their pivotal onscreen relationship some life and conflict, which will serve their characters very well later on in the series.

The film plays as a very faithful adaptation until the moment where the tributes enter the arena, at which point Ross and Collins make some interesting choices that will likely cause grumbling among fans, but ultimately create a stronger, more organic cinematic experience. The first and most noticeable side of this is that Ross gives us more than a handful of scenes from the viewpoint of characters who exited the story almost entirely at this point in the book. Collins wrote the whole Hunger Games trilogy from the perspective of Katniss, and as a result, the action was focused very largely on her internal monologue and not at all upon what was going on outside of the arena. Ross and Collins throw in a curve ball by giving us an entire storyline focused around the happenings in the capitol: the thoughts and actions of Games mastermind Seneca Crane and his fellow gamemakers (think of them as the show's "producers"), the play-by-play coverage by Caesar Flickerman, Haymitch's struggles to obtain "sponsors" for Katniss and Peeta (which will allow him to send them supplies that will save their lives), or the brooding presence of Sutherland's President Snow, who recognizes right away that Katniss could represent a problem for his carefully laid empire, especially as unrest begins to bubble over in direct response to her actions in the arena. The second palpable aspect of Ross's style is felt in the way the film's violence plays out. Naturally, since the story revolves around a bunch of teenagers brutally murdering each other, the film could easily have earned itself an R-rating (something that will grow more problematic as the series progresses). Ross, however, shoots the violence with a dreamlike, surreal quality that makes it even more effective than gallons of fake blood ever could. Take the first moments in the arena, where Ross drops the sound and films with a jerky camera as roughly half of the tributes are taken out of action: it's not a stylistic choice that will universally praised, but in my eyes, it's the right decision.

The most criticized portion of this film will very likely be the romantic moments between Lawrence's Katniss and Hutcherson's Peeta, and while I thought some of their chemistry was a bit awkward, the more I think about it, the more I believe that this was intentional. Lawrence and Hutcherson have appeared, with terrific chemistry, in a plethora of interviews in support of this film, and I find it impossible to believe that the two of them, with the talent they obviously manifest throughout the rest of the film, would let something they have naturally fall away unless they were doing so intentionally. And it makes sense that the two of them wouldn't have that automatic spark: in the arena, love is a calculation made to get sponsors and to stay alive, and their wonky chemistry makes sense because the film never lets the audience know for sure if either of them means it. Their true feelings for each other are always kept in a blurry zone, and I would argue that the choice not to present their relationship as a sweeping Hollywood romance is one of the film's greatest masterstrokes.

The Hunger Games will always be compared to Harry Potter and Twilight because of its "young adult fiction" label and the age of its heroes, but as a film, it actually falls a lot closer to another titanic fantasy series. Indeed, echoes of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy ring through many of The Hunger Games' key moments, from Katniss's choice to volunteer for a perilous task, to the emotional death of a small but pivotal character, all the way to the brilliant cut-to-black ending, which leaves the movie feeling more like the first third of a much larger film than a standalone entry in a series (something I never felt with Harry Potter, even in the two films that came from the same book). It's a powerful triumph as a film and as an adaptation, which manages to stand on it's own a lot better than I thought it would. At the end of this past decade, when I ranked The Lord of the Rings trilogy on the top of my favorite films list, I wrote that "the cuts that are made are the right ones, the few changes made work well, and every character is written with accuracy and realism not found in many films like this," and I believe that all of those things stand for this film as well. But ultimately, even with terrific qualities across the board, everything comes back to Lawrence, who owns the film and makes it what it is. Katniss was a strong heroine anyway, but Lawrence brings nuance and color to the character that wasn't on the page, and in doing so, delivers one of the best performances I've seen in a long time. I certainly hope that Oscar will take note, but either way, I cannot wait to see what she, Ross, and the rest of the team decide to do with the other two novels, because I personally believe we have something special on our hands.