I am picky about my movies. ESPECIALLY when it’s a book-to-movie. The only book-to-movie that I’d read before I saw it and really liked was…Little Women. That was a pretty good transition, even though I’ve never been a fan of the actual story.
And The Princess Bride. That was a pretty good book-to-movie, even though I read the book after I watched the movie.
Anyway. Most books that are made into movies I despise. Because I loved the books.
Like Eragon.
I’m not even going to get into that because I could go on raving for hours.
And trust me, y’all don’t want that.
Let’s just say I severely despised that movie.
The end.
And Janette Oke’s Love Comes Softly series? Oh my gosh….butchered. Utterly. Ruined.
There are many others which of COURSE I can’t remember right now but whatever. Generally I am disappointed with movies from books and hate them completely.
I was a bit nervous about how this one was going to turn out because I absolutely loved the first book(the next two I was less enthusiastic about for reasons I will explain), so I was worried I would walk away from the theater utterly upset and angry with Hollywood once again.
But a friend who had seen it the night before assured me that I would not be disappointed. And I believed him.
And he was so so so right.
I LOVED the movie.
It was so great that I actually loved the story even more after seeing the movie than I did after reading the book.
I loved the movie so much that I went and bought the book this morning just so I could read it again.
Woody Harrelson played an excellent Haymitch, who is my favorite character.
Josh Hutcherson, who was already one of my favorite actors, played Peeta to perfection.
Jennifer Lawrence surprisingly played a good Katniss. I was skeptical at first but she pulled it off. Didn’t help me like her anymore, though. Katniss is still my least favorite character in the series because I happened to like Peeta and she was a jerk to him and I was mad at her through the entire series because she kept leading both Peeta and Gale on with her flip floppiness.
Ugh.
For the record, I wasn’t a huge fan of the second two books in the series. Mostly for that reason.
It was just too Twilight-y. Team Gale and Team Peeta.
Really?
No.
Stop it.
That’s dumb.
Anyway.
Overall, I did enjoy the movie and look forward to seeing Catching Fire produced. Even though there’s no saying if I’ll actually like it because of the whole “Peeta vs. Gale Katniss Can’t Choose So She’ll Just Lead Them Both On” theme.
Whatever.
I’ll deal with it.
Besides, that’s like at least two years away.
So until then, I’ll just watch it over and over again and read the books a couple of times and get mad at Katniss and all that.
It’ll be epic.
Taylor J.
SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS!!!
Ye who have not seen this film have been warned.
There are a few things that bug me about the movie, technical and story-wise.
On the technical side, the handheld camera shots were pretty annoying in some shots. It worked pretty well in most scenes, but there were moments when it was way too over-the-top. One moment in particular was when the tributes are training in the capitol, and it the camera moves to Peeta, and takes an unnecessarily long time to focus on him. There’s times when that camera technique is a necessity, times when it’s useful, and times when it’s just a novelty. This movie used it a little too much as a novelty in my opinion.
On the story side of things, there’s obviously going to be some big differences between the book and the movie…but you shouldn’t have something as big as, I dunno, leaving out that Peeta LOST HIS LEG! Or that Katniss received her Mockingjay pin from her friend, the daughter of the mayor of District 12. Or that Katniss lost all hearing in one of her ears in the games (which was fixed by the capitol). Other than these (and maybe other) big differences, I thought that the movie did a good job fitting a novel into a 2 hour timeframe.
The actors were great. You’re right about Woody Harrelson, he was an amazing Haymitch. I DID have a couple things about Katniss and Peeta, though. I was under the impression that Peeta was a rather large person. Not tall or fat, but more stocky. Am I remembering this right? Katniss was supposed to be more “unattractive” than she was in the movie. Her stylists had to remove leg hair, dirt encrusted on her nails, and other things. But she looked pretty clean when the movie starts! Oh well.
Overall I loved the movie, and it kept me in suspense! I’m eagerly anticipating Catching Fire!
Kait
Someone here is a bit opinionated.
I never noticed the whole camera thing that you mentioned, but I rarely notice anything technical about a movie — I more care about awesomeness and accurate portrayal and good acting and extra awesomeness.
I totally forgot that Peeta lost his leg. Even now, I am only barely recalling it. I really need to reread it. To Kindle! And yeah that’s something they really should have remembered. But we also have to remember that originally they were only planning on making the first book a movie. That might have been why they left that out because they couldn’t leave it where they obviously HAD to make the next movie.
While I couldn’t recall the whole Mockingjay pendent ordeal, my grandmother kept wondering about that throughout the movie.
See, when I heard that Josh Hutcherson was playing Peeta I was like “OHMYGOODNESS he fits it PERFECTLY.” so I’m not sure. I always pictured someone JUST like him.
Yeaaaah I did think that about Katniss. I do remember that she was quite unappealing to the eyes when she was first brought to the Capitol.
But I overall agree that it was an epical movie and I can’t wait to see the next one!
Taylor J.
Just found this. It was inevitable.
http://chzmemebase.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/rage-comics-rage-comics-i-cant-decide-whos-cuter.jpg