The hope in the Hunger

I'm becoming rather excited at the prospect of this Hunger Games movie.  I'm also quite nervous.  It is a young adult novel.  Which means the film could quickly go the shrug-it-off-as-nothing-serious-we-only-need-to-entertain-stupid-kids route much like many before it.  When I saw the first trailer for Beastly, I almost laughed myself silly.  You call that ugly?  Since when do tattoos and a few scars indicate abominable?  Don't get me started on the horrific '07 adaptation of Nancy Drew.  Wasn't I just saying something about abominable?  And of course, I would be remiss if I did not mention Twilight which, had it actually been done tongue-in-cheek, could have been funny on purpose.

The Hunger Games trilogy has a love story in it but it is not a love story.  I hope that the screenplay writers are quite clear on this point.  The themes of political intrigue, government control, self-preservation, and loyalty are first of all, far more interesting and secondly, kind of the whole reason for the story at all.  Author, Suzanne Collins, says she got the idea for the plot while channel surfing.  She saw footage of a reality game show on one channel and coverage of Iraq on another.  They began to combine in an unsettling manner.  Thus, The Hunger Games were born.

The unfortunate thing about this series is that it does have one similarity to Twilight and it galls me to even admit it.  There is a love triangle.  Only this time, the protagonist (Katniss) at one of the vertices is likable and relatable merely because she was written as a specific character with specific characteristics.  Not as an "everyman" any such girl could paste her face on to feel important.  The other two vertices are Peeta and Gale.  Gale, especially early on, is somewhat transparent and vaguely expressed.  But I always got the impression that he got the short end of the stick, both in the novel and because of his absence of character elaboration.  Peeta is selfless and, although ostensibly naive, quite intelligent and almost makes you despise Katniss' indifference.  You want to scream, "LOVE HIM!  LOVE HIM, YOU DOLT!"

I should hope that when this film is released, I will be pleasantly surprised.  I don't expect every moment in the book to be played out on screen.  I don't expect everything to look as I imagined it while reading.  I also do not expect changes will not be made.  It is, after all, an adaptation; not a copy or a read-aloud, a fact that I'm perfectly at peace with.  What I do expect is for Collins' story to remain intact.  I would hate to discourage movie-goers from actually reading the books because they were unfairly and incorrectly represented.

I would dance in the streets if this turned out to be something in the same vein as V for Vendetta.  As I was reading the series, I imagined that if these books were to be brought to life, that's how they would look; how they would feel.  There's quite a bit of violence and brutality in the series and there is much talk on the message boards about possible ratings.  Yet this is a complete waste of time.  These movies will not ever be rated R.  They are based on young adult novels. And I'm not sure if any of these R-rating viers have been watching cable television lately but if they have been, they would see the kinds of allowances on shows like Bones, CSI, and Law & Order that cause me to second-guess how far PG-13 can go.  Believe me.  A PG-13 is more than enough to permit full-throttle Hunger Games madness.

My hope is that this series will be taken seriously.  By all involved so that the audience can then do the same.  These are the closest young adult novels I've thus found (in which children must act like adults and they actually do) that begin to compare with Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.  I've become increasingly both angered and disgusted by media such as books, movies and especially television these days that indicate children having adult problems, adult conversations, and seemingly without any real and responsible adults around.  Stop it.

In The Hunger Games, I get a glimpse into a world. . .immersed, in fact, in a world where I find myself forgetting we're talking 12-16 year old children here.  Not because they're killing one another or kissing one another but because of the way in which they must conduct themselves in order to deal with it all!  Get a clue, producers of teenage crap!  It's not merely violence and sex that make you a grownup.  It's how you manage and control yourself in the face of such conceptions.

This film should not shy away from awkward or uncomfortable scenes.  I'm not much for nudity in films.  I don't really care to see anyone naked, no matter how good they look.  I always feel like an intruder.  However, I am not completely uninformed in the ways of cameramen.  I know there are numerous approaches to filming nudity in such a way that it is implied and not explicit.  Having re-read the first book just the other day, I had noticed much more foreshadowing and symbolism, now knowing how it all ends.  Whether these were done purposefully or stand as happy accidents, they are very cool.  When Katniss is stripped down by her stylists in order to ready her for her first public appearance as a tribute, it is extremely indicative of what she is to experience further on.  It's a very literal depiction of the route her life is about to take.

I hope they show Katniss as her rawest and least refined self; hairy, dirty, warts and all.  Her emergence as a tribute in the Capitol world will be so much more startling; her separation from her roots and the life she has become comfortable with and dependent upon that much more agonizing.

I hope they place emphasis on how normal the Games are.  This is the 74th Game.  Some of the citizens of Panem will be sending their children off to die but. . .it's to be expected.  Maybe even desired.

I hope that this movie is not a romantic one.  And that even the small amount of romance is unbearable.  Not because it is poorly written or unbelievable but because it is the very worst kind of love; the unrequited kind.  The kind that makes your heart tear in two; that puts that insufferable lump in your throat that only sobbing can remove.

I hope this is not an action movie.  I hope for the disquiet of moments in which I can see, hear, smell, taste and feel the fear inside that arena and within the tiny bodies of these children conditioned to destroy in the name of peace.

I hope Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson rock my socks off.  They need to carry this movie with grace and innocence and heart.  I am not expecting everything but I am expecting that.