 |
| The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) |
The best thing this movie does is function as a sequel. The film takes a significant chunk of the first act showing us how the events of the previous film have affected our main characters, which I always love when movies do. It also takes some time to do a bit of world-building outside of the Hunger Games themselves, which you may remember I thought was lacking somewhat in the previous film. The best part, though, is that we get to see a little more of how the society is governed, again beyond the Hunger Games. We see the totalitarian regime, we see how the citizens are treated, and we get to see the beginnings of a rebellion. One of the drawbacks to this is that the Hunger Games don't really get kicking off until about the 50 minute mark, and we do lose a lot of the really compelling storytelling from inside the Games themselves, but the trade-off is pretty even across the board, so it's not a huge negative working against the movie.
 |
| Josh Hutcherson as Peeta Mellark |
Talking about the Games themselves, they've been made a lot more interesting this time around with the gimmick they implement inside them. It was a really clever twist on the formula, and made it about battling the conditions as much as it was about battling the other contestants. Initially, I thought this was a problem, as, again, one of the more compelling things about the previous Hunger Games was watching kids kill each other for sport, and there's nowhere near as much of that in this film. There's not really emotional scene on par with Rue from the last movie, and that is a big drawback, especially with a concept like this. It becomes more about the larger world, but part of me just wanted the personal stories from inside the arena again. Those are what made the previous film so great, not just the carnage. Then again, they don't want to tell the same story again, and advancing the story and setting in this way was probably the smarter move, I guess a just prefer the more focused angle of the previous Games over this one. That doesn't mean these Games were bad, or didn't offer those moments of personal introspection for our characters, they were just fewer and further between.
 |
| Jeffrey Wright as Beetee Latier |
Speaking of the characters, let's talk about them for a second. There are a few returning favourites, particularly Peeta and Haymitch, and they're just as good here as they were previously. Donald Sutherland gets a bit more focus, which I like, and I hope we get a bit more of it in the next films. The new cast do a great job as well, although we don't get nearly as much of them as I'd have liked. Another drawback for having less of a focus on the Games themselves. Characters like Mags, Johanna, Beetee and Finnick were all really interesting people, especially with the angle of 'previous champions' that the film goes for. However, the antagonists from Districts 1 and 2 are nowhere near as developed, and probably get about 2 or 3 minutes of screentime tops. This is another issue with having the conditions being the main threat here. Despite this, they were still pushing Districts 1 and 2 as threats, and yet, unlike the previous film where their presence was felt whenever they were offscreen and how they were set up as remorseless killing machines, I never got that from these people. Whenever they showed up, I was like, 'Oh, yeah, they exist.' I couldn't tell you their names. I couldn't tell you if and when they were killed. I do understand how they're now pushing the Capitol as the main antagonist, but if you're going to do that, you might as well not have any antagonists in the Games themselves, and have everyone working against the Capitol. That might have helped drive this movie's overall message home a little harder in the end.
 |
| Donald Sutherland as President Snow |
Especially since the movie doesn't do itself any favours by keeping Katniss as bland as she always has been. I'm sorry, I just don't get it. The movie keeps building her up as this big rebellious hero who's going to take down the Capitol, but it doesn't do a very good job of setting her up as one. The only time in the entire first half of the movie that she does anything rebellious is when she saves Gale from a lashing, and even then, Haymitch then has to step in and save her. Yeah, that's a leader right there. As a symbol of hope, I can see how she would become one, but I don't see how this person is going to lead the uprising in the next films. Particularly since no one tells her anything in the entire movie. The movie plays it off like, 'she can't keep a secret' or 'she's a terrible liar', but if that were true then she wouldn't be able to convince anyone of her and Peeta's 'relationship' in the previous movie or this one. It's another case of the movie telling us what her character is instead of doing a good job of showing it to us. I've been told she's just like this in the books as well, but when you're making a movie you need to make your protagonist relatable and likeable, otherwise your movie falls short. She keeps telling us she can't make friends, yet she keeps making friends. We keep being told she's a terrible liar, yet she's always doing a passable job of lying, to Caesar and the like. Keeping Katniss in the dark ultimately serves as an excuse to keep the audience in the dark. And, on that front, it's executed rather well, so even this criticism isn't without merit. You can see the bind I'm in here.
 |
| Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen |
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) isn't awful, or bad, or even okay. It's a great movie that I think overextended itself just a little, whether it was to raise the stakes from the previous film or set up the subsequent film, and I think the more focused story being told in the last movie was just a little bit better. On it's own, though, this is still a great time. Maybe things will change once I find out where it's all heading in the next film, but right now, I'm satisfied enough. 8/10.
Tomorrow: Mad Max 2.
No comments:
Post a Comment