The Hunger Games (film)

[The Twilight Mexican]

Why the fuck weren't those in the movie.

 

[Kuroto]

So now it's official, Gary Ross isn't directing Catching Fire.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2012/04/hunger-games-catching-fire-gary-ross-director.html

 

[LunarSkye]

@the people who don't understand the complaints about Katniss being white


Olive skin isn't exclusive to white people and the role of Katniss was only opened to white actresses.
Katniss is said to look like her father and most of the people where he comes from have olive skin and dark hair. The author said this is a result of alot of mixing. NOTHING about JLaw looks mixed. It's classic Hollywood whitewashing.
If a women of color was cast as Katniss this movie wouldn't be nearly as successful. The disgusting comments about Rue & Thresh prove that. They went with the safe option.
All the complaints are valid.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

As you said, people of any skin -- or hair -- color can be olive. Olive is a hue to skin, rather than a tone or shade. Seeing as Suzanne Collins took part in the casting, I don't see a problem with Lawrence being selected. Collins seemed pretty stoked about her selection:

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/03/21/hunger-games-suzanne-collins-jennifer-lawrence/

If the author was happy with the pick, the rest of us very well should be.



I'm sad to hear Gary Ross won't be directing the next one. Whoever replaces him has huge shoes to fill.

 

[LunarSkye]

As you said, people of any skin -- or hair -- color can be olive. Olive is a hue to skin, rather than a tone or shade. Seeing as Suzanne Collins took part in the casting, I don't see a problem with Lawrence being selected. Collins seemed pretty stoked about her selection:

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/03/21/hunger-games-suzanne-collins-jennifer-lawrence/

The problem is women of color weren't even given the CHANCE to audition for the role.

If the author was happy with the pick, the rest of us very well should be.

I will never be happy with Hollywood denying people of color opportunities. I'm sick of this white=default mentality. No amount of shitty excuses will ever justify it.


/Bye

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Katniss is white, Rue is black, and in related news -

Spoiler: no casting options will ever please everyone.

And before anyone gets all up in about this, yes I understand that some whitewashing / racial alterations are uncalled for and fucking ridiculous. That being said, this is one of the instances where I feel that it's not a significantly big deal. *shrugs*

X

 

[Tennyo]

@the people who don't understand the complaints about Katniss being white


Olive skin isn't exclusive to white people and the role of Katniss was only opened to white actresses.
Katniss is said to look like her father and most of the people where he comes from have olive skin and dark hair. The author said this is a result of alot of mixing. NOTHING about JLaw looks mixed. It's classic Hollywood whitewashing.
If a women of color was cast as Katniss this movie wouldn't be nearly as successful. The disgusting comments about Rue & Thresh prove that. They went with the safe option.
All the complaints are valid.

So we're supposed to ignore the fact that Jennifer Lawrence is a fantastic, Oscar-nominated actress who nailed the part?

Are you seriously saying that just because a white actress was chosen that someone of another race never would have had a chance to audition based on their race alone? Are we just never supposed to hire white actresses ever again because it supposedly isn't fair?

This isn't exactly The Last Airbender where Inuit children were made white. Jennifer looked close enough to Katniss to play the part. Keep in mind that Katniss' mother and sister are pale and blonde, so I don't see why a white actress with darker features is such a terrible choice.

If they really were going to white wash the cast to be safe why didn't they make Rue white? I mean they made Haymitch blonde, so why worry about physical descriptions at all? It would have certainly been "safer."

I mean, they made Cinna black and as far as I remember his race and skin color are never specified in the book. They could have gone in any direction with him, but they chose NOT to cast a white man.

And given that Collins is happy with the cast maybe Jennifer Lawrence really is what she imagined when she wrote the book. She defends Josh Hutcherson as being exactly what she thought Peeta should be even though everyone claims he was a horrible choice. I think she would probably do the same for Jennifer.

I don't know, I think I'll go with the original creator. If she's happy, I'm happy.

 

[Kuroto]

I think that if you make a movie based on a book, then the characters should be pretty much the same as in the book. I don't really remember, if Collins said anything about Katniss's skin colour in the book, but I always thought her to be white. And I definitely remember Rue and Tresh been dark skinned, so I really don't understand why people are so troubled about it being the same in the movie. I'm pretty sure that Collins thought Katniss to be white, if no other colour was allowed to audition for the role.

Anyway, think how fans would have felt if Harry Potter was black in the movies? I guess you just can't make everyone happy.

 

[looneymoon]

Keep in mind that Katniss' mother and sister are pale and blonde, so I don't see why a white actress with darker features is such a terrible choice.

Yeah I mean, this really. It's strongly implied that Katniss is at least half white, and personally I imagined her as a darker-skinned white character tbh. "Olive skinned" doesn't really say much in regards to race as it can literally refer to any ethnicity.

I mean yeah it sucks that coloured actresses weren't given a chance. But I can't really say it's "whitewashing" since the character's race wasn't exactly specified. Though since we know she is at the very least half white based on the descriptions of her mother/sister - and keeping that in mind I suppose the decision to consider only white actresses is at least somewhat justifiable.

 

[Tennyo]

I imagined Katniss to look maybe Italian or Mediterranean myself. I did feel that Jennifer Lawrence could have been slightly darker, if anything because I imaged Katniss as being very tan due to spending a lot of time out in the wilderness hunting so maybe she'd be getting a lot of sun. But It wasn't something that was so vastly different from her physical description that it was make-or-break.

It seems less of a leap than Agelina Jolie playing Mariane Pearl in 'A Mighty Heart,' a woman whom we at least know for certain is of a mixed race.

Here is the real life woman she was portraying:

Pearl was born in Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine, France, to a Dutch father and a Cuban mother of Afro-Chinese-Cuban descent

But Pearl and Jolie are apparently friends and Pearl approved of the casting, but I remember there being some mild drama.

 

[looneymoon]

I thought the most striking thing about Katniss was actually her dark braid. I mean, her skin/eye colour is mentioned in once passing but her hair gets quite a few detailed descriptions. Visually, I found that made the character more than anything else and would have been kind of pissed if they didn't have it

Maybe my priorities are just off though

 

[Tennyo]

I liked that, too. The book does talk about her hair a lot. I actually really liked that aspect a lot.

 

[Marle]

I get where you're coming from with the white washing but I have to agree, it wasn't a big deal with Jennifer. They dyed her hair and she's a fantastically talented actress. She played her really well and I don't have any regrets. I pretty much agree with what everyone else already said.

The Last Airbender was probably a LOT worse when it came to their cast, imo. My God.

 

[Ami]

New trailer, ahoy!

 

[Danseru-kun]

Thanks for sharing^

No Finnick though

I want Sam Clafin

I honestly think the movie was better than the book and I have higher expectations for this next film.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Having read the books since the last time I posted in this thread, I feel rather inclined to agree with that sentiment about the movie being even better. Yeah, a couple things were lost in the transition, but a lot was also gained. For that matter, I have the official movie guide and Collins herself made most of the choices about what to cut -- and they were for the better of the film.

Really, though, the film and book are so similar, it's almost like like they're two different angles on the same story. The only significant loss in my opinion is that the Muttations didn't have the DNA of the fallen Tributes mixed in, though it's easy to see why that was left out (would have required too much explanation at a moment when the film was kicking into its final act).

 

[Danseru-kun]

^

I don't think the Mutts being the other tributes is a significant loss, I think does not really take away anything. Horror factor maybe, but personally it just didn't have an effect on me.

The thing that I was sad that was left out (I watched the film before reading the books) was Cato and Clove's brief moment. It was painful to see that they actually cared for each other.

As for the things the movie made better, Lawrence's acting is superb and the Capitol in general is much more captivating onscreen rather than what Katniss described. I wasn't a fan of the first person POV from Katniss at the first place. It is great to see other characters watching the games and planning stuff.

 

[Kuroto]

The thing I really remember liking in the movie was that they gave a bigger role to President Snow (the bastard from the... wait, wrong thread...), and that they revieled a bit more of his motivs and so. Also I think Hutcherson is magnificent as Peeta. He is just how I imagined him. I still don't think that the movie was better than the book. One thing I didn't like was that the scene where Peeta hears "the truth" was left out, and I'm sure for those who haven't read the book it can be quite difficult to understand what the relationship between Peeta and Katniss really is without it. I would give more examples, but I've only seen the movie once, so I should really see it again to remember the other things that I didn't like about it. Also I need to read the books again before this next film comes out. I have to say, it looks really good.

P.S. I love Donald Shuterland.

 

[JBedford]

Since I haven't been in this thread, I'll post my thoughts on the first film. I saw the film a while back, and therefore I don't recall my reactions entirely, but I know I wasn't too fond.

I think it is mostly in-part to having read the book, and not too long before watching the film either. It was really the first (and only) film adaptation of a book where I had read the book (other than English Lit. in school, but I hated those books because it was forced reading, if I even read them at all). And i loved the trilogy.

My first thoughts when the movie started was that it had terrible acting. That thought did change as the film progressed, but I did cringe at the opening scene with Katniss and Gale.

I felt the film wasn't as gory or violent as it was depicted in the book. In the book we hear the struggles of Katniss, and how bad it is for her, but I don't think I got anything like that from the film.

For the casting, I've forgotten most of how I originally imagined the characters because my minds replaced them with the film's actors. When I read books I often don't take in parts of the story, and thus end up with completely wrong pictures, but it's always fine. I think Peeta is close to how I imagined, Katniss is close, but I imagined shorter and skinnier. I imagined Gale to be black, and Rue to be white but with dark hair (something I probably didn't read properly in the book). Thresh was as I imagined. The way the book describes Cato makes him sound superhuman, so I don't even know what I expected him to be like-- overly muscular for sure. I also imagined Haymitch to be an old white-haired drunkard, but that was probably based off misreadings and how my brain interprets things.

I think the dynamics between the characters were right, although I couldn't stop thinking about how much I preferred the medium of film. It got across Katniss's feelings better. Peeta's camouflage was more than I expected. In the book I think I just imagined him to be covered in mud.

I think the film additions, such as Snow's scenes, the riot scenes, Capitol/commentary scenes, and the gamemakers' scenes were good additions. But I was definitely disappointed with the muttations. Apparently the mutts did have the eyes of the other contestants, but you can't tell. There's no close up shot of a mutt, and a realisation on Katniss's face, followed by an out loud comment to Peeta. I think there should have been.

And either I didn't care about the shaky camera, or have completely forgotten about being annoyed by the shaky camera.

So I didn't really enjoy the film that much. But that is probably mostly due to my mindset and automatically comparing everything to the book, where that is the goal, any any deviation makes it worse. But I'm still more than likely to watch the other films though.

 

[Carlie]

@Trailer - I was disappointed Finnick and Johanna weren't in the trailer, they're my two favorite characters from the series.

As someone who has also read the books yeah I also think the movies are better. The books suffered from being from the POV of Katniss and that was one of the reasons why Mockingjay wasn't good, there's a war going on with the Capitol and all Katniss is thinking is about Peeta and Gale, dear lord just get on with the fighting and killing I don't give a shit about any of this.

 

[Danseru-kun]

Ah yes

If I was Lawrence I would have starved myself to make myself look undernourished. She said she wants to send a message to girls that thinning yourself should not be a requirement to get a role, but I think it the message that Katniss is a hungry girl is lost. She doesn't have to go on a Christian Bale diet, but just look how convincing Jackman and Hathaway are in Les Mis.

In Catching Fire it's okay to keep her healthy body because it works on the premise that she won the games and can now eat, but for the first movie it would have been better if she is skinny.

@ Arya Stark

Yes, Mokingjay was the weakest of the trilogy, while I think Catching Fire is the best. I didn't even feel anything when

Spoiler

Prim died

and I find the final battle to be unimpressive and just a glorified obstacle course. The descriptions for the monsters didn't help I kept on imagining philosoraptor.

 

[Cthulhu]

For the record, I wasn't impressed by the movie, thought it was pretty bland and predictable,

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I really enjoyed the last book, but then I do like

Spoiler

urban warfare shit. Also, I know some people feel all that struggle and death was for nothing, but it wasn't. It put Katniss in the position of seeing Prim die, which led to her conversation with Snow, which led to Katniss's decision to kill Alma Coin and prevent more Hunger Games.

With how bloodthirsty Katniss can be, I think she might have allowed it if anything else had been different.

Also, that ordeal brought Peeta back to her. Seeing her in danger like that triggered his instinct to protect her, which got his feelings for her back on the surface.

Also, while I do appreciate the POV thing, I'll agree there are times the story might have benefitted from other characters taking up the role once in a while.

Still, I loved that device.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

I love 1st person (or limited 3rd person) when the author switches between different characters pov. There's so much more irony that way as you actually know what people think happened vs. what really happened. Staying in one persons's pov the entire time (whether 1st person or 3rd person) is really boring as I know everything I'm hearing/reading is filtered though that person and there's no way to get a better perspective on it.

I wasn't that impressed with the premiss of the Hunger Games as it makes me think of Athens, Thebes, Thesus and the Minotaur. Which is a part of Greek mythology which is more interesting then 99% of premisses in novels today.

 

[Lord Noctis]

My only significant complaint about the movie is that Katniss just looked to good.

What I mean is, throughout the course of the novel she's going through all these ordeals and struggles for survival, and the way the novel describes her makes that appearant. She lost a lot of weight, accumulated wounds, would have been covered in dirt and sweat. The novel gets that across.

The movie just fails to convery that element. To me thats a significant loss.