The Hunger Games

Katniss Everdeen preparing to shoot an arrow. Source: getthebigpicture.net

The idea of The Hunger Games is certainly quite sick and sadistic - pitting twenty four teenagers from the poorer districts against each other until one survivor remains, while the wealthy citizens from the capital cheer them on. The protagonist is Katniss Everdeen, who volunteers to join the games in place of her younger sister. 

The movie had rather positive reviews - 85% on Rotten Tomatoes as of 31st March 2012, so I had rather high expectations for it. True enough, I found it quite entertaining and likable, albeit being a bit low on intelligence. If you were to spend just a little effort thinking, it is easy to point out the loopholes and weakness in the plot. Spoilers ahead!

In such events, where there can only be one survivor, it is inevitable that self-survival instincts take over. Trust no one. Any alliances formed would be flimsy at best where each member would be wary of the other, not knowing when the alliance would crumble and when they would receive a knife between their shoulder blades. However, in the show, this doesn't happen. Five people form an alliance to hunt down Katniss first, because she seemed like the biggest threat. It is normal for people to band together in such a situation to get rid of the biggest foe, but the level of trust they showed each other was unbelievable. When they had her cornered up a tree, they actually slept at night. All of them, together! Firstly, if there was no one keeping watch, their prey could have slipped away easily (but Katniss was also sleeping, so whatever.). Secondly, one of them could have easily slit all the others' throats while they slept. One survivor, remember?

Things were also too convenient for Katniss. One obvious disadvantage of getting close to someone else is that you would never know when they will turn on you. Another is not knowing when you have to kill that person. All the friends that Katniss made were conveniently killed off by other players, relieving her of any possible guilt and dilemmas (and for the audience, drama.).

Near the final scene, when Peeta was being held hostage by Cato, Katniss skilfully shot an arrow at Cato's hand (which was wrapped around Peeta's chest to hold him). Common sense dictates that at such a short range, the arrow would have easily pierced through Cato's hand and injure Peeta as well, but that didn't happen. Cato's hand must be made of metal to be able to stop the arrow at its tracks like this.

In conclusion, The Hunger Games had great potential to become a dark and disturbing movie, but it seemed like the producers stepped away from that on purpose and toned it down significantly. There was lots of room to play on the audience's emotions, stirring up feelings of disgust on the sadistic nature of the show, but this wasn't done. The murder scenes were too quick and have too little blood, removing the sting of death and sympathy that the viewer may have at watching a teenager's life being snuffed out. On a related issue, the movie did not emphasise on the horror of teenagers committing murder as well. The ending was also weak, extremely weak - I would have thought that they would try and find a way to end the Games once and for all, but that didn't happen. They became the victors and went home. That's all.