It is an interesting experience seeing movies based on popular books that I haven't read yet. That is not always the case with me, especially in the science fiction and fantasy genres, as I devour them readily. However, that was the case with me and the Lord of the Rings films. I mean, I had absorbed much Middle Earth knowledge through osmosis, but I hadn't even read The Hobbit yet. The disadvantage was that I felt like a failed nerd with a huge hole in my vaunted literacy score. On the plus side, I had no idea what was happening and could enjoy the story in a way my more learned Tolien-ites could never experience. I have since corrected that, but still am glad I did it that way.
On the other hand, I did read the Harry Potter books before I saw the films. The films were an enjoyable experience, but I LOVED the books and JK Rowling's vision, which the films brought to life unevenly. I hope to see someone else take a crack at an adaptation down the line, though I do think some of the films were quite visionary, while others, though fun, were more run of the mill Hollywood.
This brings me to The Hunger Games. I have the first book in my towering "to read" stack and will get to it, probably sooner than later. But...I will wait until I have seen each movie first. For I am finding out I am enjoying the experience more going into the films uninitiated. This dystopia in an unspecified future setting can easily be conjured out of trends that not only can be seen in the modern world, but repeated throughout history, with an economic and political elite hoarding power and resources, oppressing the masses, but since these people don't read their history, they don't realize that such an arrangement is inherently unstable and they sow the seeds in their repression for their downfall. They think, every time, they have cracked the code and THIS TIME know how to keep "those people" in their place. It never works out that way, nor should it. The world should before ALL, not just those who manage to climb to the top of the greasy pole social ladder.
Anyway, in this world, part of the pacification of the populace is the annual "Hunger Games". With the world divided into twelve Districts (there was a District 13, but it is remembered as a curse/warning and the implication was that genocide was committed there). Every year, each District offers a boy and a girl to participate in the Hunger Games, a fight to the death, with only one winner. Katniss Aberdeen and Peeta Mellark won the 74th games in a a narrative quirk and now have been pulled into the 75th games, a quarter quell, in which all the participants are surviving winners from the districts. Now, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) is trying to manipulate events behind the scenes, as Katniss's actions from the previous games have inspired rebellion in the Districts. Open direct confrontation only inflames the populace further, so he works with the Gamesmaster, Plutarch Heavensby (Phillip Seymour Hoffman-RIP) to try to manipulate the Quarter Quell Games to an end favorable to the establishment.
Katniss begins her small defiance early, extending little middle fingers to Snow regularly, but her humanitarian instincts as well as her skills and survival traits put her in good stead in the Games deadlier arena. But when her actions crack the facade of their stage...she finds out some things about the larger rebellion going on in her world.
I enjoyed the story from the outset, but at first, it reminded me of the Harry Potter books before the Goblet of Fire, where the pattern of fun with the Dursleys/go to school/Quiddich/foil Voldemort's plot was broken. Little hints were dropped here and there of the bigger game as well as the developments in the characters' lives, but overall, up to that point, there was a sameness. Which is how I felt at first with Catching Fire. A contrivance for another round of this world's Quiddich, except more teenagers will kill each other. But...that turned out not to be the case at all.
As a side note, in this dystopia, such a fierce war is waged over image building and protecting, controlling a narrative and the "perception is reality" paradigm, it both reminds me of some of the crappier tendencies of media in our world, especially public relations, just taken to an extreme, with image utterly divorced and even concerned with facts of life on the ground.
Oh, the places I could go with that line of thought. But that's for later. Right now...this movie was great.
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