Movie Review: Catching Fire, The Hunger Games 2

This is a spoiler-free review

Here is another book-to-film movie. Catching Fire was the 2nd book in The Hunger Games trilogy. While I hadn’t seen Enders Game before watching the movie, I have read Catching Fire, so I will compare the two. Good thing for Catching Fire, this comparison is fairly positive.

The nature of The Hunger Games is that one book leads directly into the other. So it is for the movies. If you didn’t see The Hunger Games, do not watch Catching Fire until you do. Catching Fire dispenses with any and all explanation of the world of Panem and the 12 Districts. You will be lost if you have not read the books or watched the first movie.

I’ll be rating this movie on story, acting, and overall quality. I’ll also be discussing the spare differences between the book and the movie.

Story

Starting less than a year after the first Hunger Games, Catching Fire begins with a tour of the 12 Districts by Peeta and Katniss, who are now at odds because Katniss faked her feelings for Peeta. However, President Snow himself has a given Katniss orders to make sure the relationship seems real to the people of Panem. He wants to avert a rebellion that was started by Katniss’s defiance in the Hunger Games. It is unclear exactly how Katniss and Peeta pretending to love each other will matter. Only talk of distracting the people is mentioned. I assume that Snow and the others in charge are supposed to be too stupid to think that people pay more attention to their reality TV than they do to the reality of their own lives. The tour is a failure because the people of the Districts see past the sham. So President Snow and his new GamesMaster, Plutarh Heavensbee, cook up a plan to quell the uprising. They start a new Hunger Games, using only winners of previous Hunger Games, which puts Katniss and Peeta back into the arena.  All of this is just Act 1. 

In Act 2 and 3, we are treated to a new Hunger Games. This second movie assumes you've seen the first, so most of the preparation is skimmed over and none of it is explained. I like not having to sit through the exposition again, so I was happy. The training and prep along with the beginning of the Games themselves go by swiftly, with only a few necessary plot points thrown in. It is when we are in the arena again that we can enjoy the new things that the GamesMaster has in store for the tributes. It's all very exciting. It plays a bit like Jurassic Park. It's not just the other tributes that are the danger, but the arena itself is turned against them.

The story is well put together and from the beginning, you can see how the writers and filmmakers ratchet up the danger and tension. When I read the book, I didn't see this as well as I did in the film. But with every new scene, it seems, there is a new danger to overcome, even before the Hunger Games start. This all made the movie fly by at incredible speed.

Acting

The acting in this edition of The Hunger Games is spot on. There were plenty of emotional moments to go around and every involved actor sold it. You even got to see Effie, played by Elizabeth Banks, break down when it was clear “her victors” would be going back in again. First, she tries to calm her own anxiety by resorting to her usual superficial quirks. But when it comes to saying goodbye to Peeta and Katniss forever, she can’t contain her grief. It was an amazing moment of character; bravo, Ms. Banks. Of course, Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence was flawless as Katniss. I still don’t like Josh Hutcherson as Peeta, but that is more of a personal opinion. I just think he looks and acts like a blockhead. His acting was okay. 

Even new characters like Finnick Odair (who I always thought of as Middle-Eastern by his last name) was played well by Sam Claflin (not Middle-Eastern). Johanna Mason, played by Jena Malone was a fun, sparky character and well done. There was even an elevator moment where I wish I could have seen out of Hamish and Peeta’s eyes. Lucky guys!

The villains were well played again. Donald Sutherland is delicious as President Snow. He is able to handle the delicacies of this character, who is sinister and threatening in private while being charming and threatening in public. This is such a scary man but you only see it when you read between the lines like Katniss obviously does. Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is somewhat of a backstabber, it seems and you can never tell what his true motives are or where his allegiances truly lie. I liked him better than the GamesMaster from the first movie, who had an amazing beard, but not much character.

Book vs. Movie:

This edition of Hunger Games adhered closer to the book than I remembered the first Hunger Games being. They did make sure to highlight romantic moments between Katniss and Gale more than I remember the book doing. I always thought that was a limitation of the books. It seemed to me that they made much of Gale/Katniss/Peeta, yet there never seemed to be a connection between Gale/Katniss. The first movie was a stern offender on this point. But they made up for it in Catching Fire.

One of the offenses this movie made was glossing over Peeta’s artistic skills. They barely made mention of it, and then he’d spout off about colors and it left the audience going “Where did that come from?” (In the beginning of the book, you find out that Peeta turned to art after the first Hunger Games and became an accomplished painter.) If the movie was going to forget about the art thing, they should have cut that artistic dialogue, too. In the arena, you get most, if not all (that I can remember) of the dangers from the book. From the mist to the monkeys to the lightning, they cover all the bases. However, I wish they had done less, because there was one scene that left audience members in my theater chuckling and it occurred to me that if you didn’t understand the nature of the arena (that everything is created by the Gamesmakers) then it would seem silly. As it was, it even drew me out of the story for a moment.

Overall

This movie clocked in at 2 hours and 26 minutes (thanks IMDB), but I didn’t realize it until I looked at my clock on the way out of the theater. I was actually thinking that it was too short. When the movie was over, I guessed an hour and a half had passed. This is good. The pacing was spot-on. It was high intensity, high action all the way through. When this long of a movie passes this fast, it means the editor and director did a great job putting the film together.

 

I had two problems with this movie (together costing the movie ½ point). One, was the issue with the arena I mentioned earlier. The other was the way in which it ended. The ending is abrupt and there is very little resolution. The end serves only to set up the final film. If I remember right, the book ended the same way, which is one of the reason I didn’t like it so much. A bad ending can ruin a good book (or movie for that matter). 

I am enjoying the films far more than I enjoyed the books. I absolutely hated the third book, Mockingjay, so I am hoping the film version is as good as this one was. When I read the books, I read all three together. Now, I must wait another year or two until the final film. Catching Fire is my favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy film of 2013 so far.

Overall Score: 9.5 out of 10