Sunday, March 25, 2012

Hunger Hype

For the last several months my wife and Junior High son have been bugging me to read the Hunger Games. So three days before the movie was about to come out I "almost" completed it. Fortunately my son and wife were gracious enough to allow me to tag along on my sons mental health day, or fever, what ever sounds better. Hey the kids GPA is 4.125, he deserves a day off!

We arrived at the theatre around 12:45 so that we could get good seats for the 1:30 showing and almost cried when we saw about 200 junior high students milling around in the hallways of the theatre. For a moment we thought that we may not be able to sit by each other. But... "The odds were in our favor," as the group had seen the earlier showing as an incentive for reading the book. We got to our seats and I saved two seats as Wendy and Hunter got the popcorn. Then we settled in as the movie started and then ended 2.5 hours later in what seemed to be a cliff notes style movie.

Now for the critique... from the words of my son, "It was to fast, the story line was to quick, they left out to many important details." I asked, "Well what could they have done better?" He said, "They should have made it into two books!" You know... he's right! After several days of pondering it and talking to several of my high school students we came up with a marketing windfall. What they should have done is filmed the entire movie in more detail. Then split it into two movies, the first movie would take you right up to when they step off the pedestals in the games. Yes... The people that did not read the book would be highly upset! But would that not peak their interest and boost book sales? After two or three months they could release part two to much fanfare! 

Honestly I agree with my sons critique, not sure why they could not make this film like the Lord of The Rings, it was spot on with the book, yet they screw this up? In all I was very disappointed in the film, hopefully with the 700 million they can make the second movie better!

What do you think... give me your thoughts? Make sure you tell em if you have read the books. 

2 comments:

Brian said...

Unfortunately, we have a parent in this church that has decided that the movie and the producers (he's said nothing about the book and the author) are evil for making this terrible movie. He's even having nightmares about it and sending emails to all the parents! It's a little bizare but all in a days work in youth ministry, right Steve?

Steve said...

Brian... Seems a bit strange! It's frustrating that Christians in the world get so wound up about stupid things!