Eps 1647: Hunger Games
— The too lazy to register an account podcast
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Greg Dean
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The Hunger Games follows teen main character Katniss Everdeen and her younger sister, Primrose Everdeen, in District 12. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, living with only her mother and younger sister, 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen sees being forced to represent her District in the annual Hunger Games as a death sentence. In exchange, teen protagonist Katniss Everdeen demands immunity for Peeta Mellark, Johanna Mason, Annie Cresta, and Enobaria, fellow winners of the previous three novels, all of whom have been captured by the rich Capitol.
Their districts lone living victor suggests that teenage protagonist Katniss Everdeen fake feelings for Peeta Mellark to win rich sponsors that could supply critical supplies for them both throughout the games. The confession shocks the teenagers main character, Katniss Everdeen, who is her own. Throughout The Hunger Games trilogy, Katniss struggles with her position in the limelight; with feelings for fellow Tributes of the District 12, as well as for another young female fighter in District 12, Gale Hawthorne; and her own sense of her own purpose as a warrior.
As the relationships of the main characters of the show, and her care for Peeta, remains central to her goals throughout The Hunger Games movie series, her characterization is damaged because viewers never really get a sense of her steadfast commitment to protecting Peeta. Without building on their relationship from the first movie alone, the series protagonists wish for Peeta to make it out alive rings hollow. From the very first movie, their relationship is unnecessarily altered by the Susannah Collins trilogy, since the viewer is told at the beginning that the two had met earlier.
In Suzanne Collins trilogy, the scene is actually one of the most significant of the Hunger Games movie series, and informed a lot of the later relationships between the main characters in the series with Peeta. By the time The Hunger Games movie series reached its needlessly divisive Mockingjay, Katniss near-pathological preoccupation with Peeta distracted viewers from the far more exciting war between the Capitol and the districts. The books protagonist ends the series by reflecting on that contrast, That which I needed to survive was not Galeas fire, which was lit with fury and hate.
The things that made Katniss particularly vulnerable in The Hunger Games books--Katnisss childhood, her food shortage, her nonwhiteness, her disabilities--just did not exist in the film adaptation. This excerpt teaches us an immense amount about the cruel pragmatism and unlikability that makes Katniss such a peculiar, remarkable character, and Constance Grady glossed right over it when I read The Hunger Games for the first time, because I did not bother looking for it. The second half of The Hunger Games is completely focused on Katnisss relationship with Peeta Mellark, a young tribute to her districts.
Along with her younger sister, Prim, Katniss waits for a yearly lottery to determine who will compete in the Hunger Games, a nationally televised fight where competitors--one boy and one girl, aged 12-18, from each of the 12 districts of Panem--fight each other to the death. As retribution for the previous revolt against the rich Capitol , which destroyed District 13, one boy and one girl, aged 12 to 18, from each of the 12 remaining districts are selected through a lottery to participate in the annual pageant called the Hunger Games. American writer Suzanne Collins has said that reality TV shows are similar to The Hunger Games, as the games are as much for fun as they are for reminding the districts of their revolt.
Ten years ago this fall, the child writer Suzanne Collins published The Hunger Games, an unsettling, ominous tale about a dystopian government forcing children to compete in gladiatorial death matches, and televising the entire event. American writer Suzanne Collins has said The Hunger Games will also examine the 10-year period following the wars conclusion, when the residents of Panem are trying to find their feet again and figure out how to continue living in their new reality. While the book is comprised of familiar, difficult themes--such as civil war, political instability, and brutal wealth inequality--Suzanne Collins blends the familiar with the new.
Suzanne Collinss novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Serpents is set 64 years prior to the events of the original film. Hunger Games is shot with a mans knowledge who once worked in television, and the child-like writer Suzanne Collins is always cautious about putting the story that Katniss is trying to sell into the larger plots and strategies everyone around Katniss is locked into.