Hunger Games

Yes, even I have caught a little bit of the fever that seems to have consumed most of the media for the past few months.  But only a little bit.

In the past two days I managed to read all three of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy, and overall I'm pretty pleased.  She's a decent author who came up with a wonderfully detailed world with a great lead character.  I was enthralled while reading it and it was no difficulty to dive into each book after I finished the others.  (eternal thanks to my friend Kyrie for lending them to me before the movie came out)  I'll now be greatly interested to see how well the story transitions from book to movie, as it seemed ideal to adaptation (in its pacing and story line etc.).

But may I--for one moment--rail against the weakest link in an otherwise decent story?  (spoilers ahead for those who care)

I'm talking about the love triangle thingy.  And I use thingy with great seriousness because whatever is going on in that story, it hardly deserves to be called anything more profound.  (for once, will modern teen lit stop with the love triangle thingies?  The best love triangle in literary history has already happened, so very sorry, none of you can compete with King Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot.  Poor Arthur.  By the way, why is it always two men and one girl?  Is this some commentary on how women are wishy-washy and can't make up their minds?  Or do men never run into this problem, which I find hard to believe) 

Number 1.  We are introduced to Gale in the first chapter of Hunger Games.  He seems nice.  Has a connection with lead character.  Seems steady and dependable and loyal etc etc etc.  But we are only given a total of five pages with him (hardly enough to establish a character, let alone enough to really prolong a love story) before Katniss is whisked off to the Hunger Games with Peeta.  (did anyone else wonder if his name is a joke?  Peeta the baker.  Pita bread....my mind winces with the possibility that this was intentional)  Now, compared with Gale, Peeta receives oodles and oodles of page time.  We hear stories about how wonderful Peeta is.  We see first hand evidence that he's a good guy.  We also know Katniss is going to have to kill him, so we--like her--try not to get too attached.  So the entire time Katniss is all,  'ooh, Peeta seems great, but I'll have to kill him anyway--and what would Gale think?'  Well Katniss, since we've only known Gale for a fraction of the time that we've known Peeta, and we don't even have a clear idea of if he likes you, there's really no competition.  It's all Peeta Peeta Peeta.  But you've got this hangup about the whole situation, and it only gets worse in the other books.

In fact, we get very little to work with for a lot of the characters.  Some of them do wonderfully well with limited time (Cinna, Rue) but others are mostly just cardboard caricatures of stereotypes.  A lot of that I'm fine with, because we're inside Katniss' head and it's clear that she's not interested in trying to see people around her as people, because she knows she's just going to have to kill them all.  (or they're trying to kill her or just watch avidly as she dies)  Not exactly a situation where you search for a deep understanding of the people around you.

But as time goes on, we still get very little time with Gale.  He's a silent background participant to the story, even when he's there and talking.  We never get to know him like we do Peeta, and yet somehow he's supposed to be equal to him in Katniss' mind and ours.  How?  I personally kept rooting for him because we saw him first and he's Katniss' old friend so he should have some influence--but no.  We've been given so little to work with in really identifying with Gale that I'm just plain miffed.  And what is up with the end of the third book?  Katniss admittedly goes a little strange after killing Coin, but why does Gale never come to see her?  She's hardly done something so horribly unforgivable--at least, not in any way we know.  So why does he just take a job in District 2 and seems to forget all about her?  He was in angsty love with her only thirty pages ago: what happened?  Who knows.

And speaking of the end of the trilogy--really?  Lots and lots of character death?  And people I liked too!  It was like the end of Harry Potter all over again, only I didn't feel like they'd earned it.  Oops, we have too many people still--lets just kill them off!  That'll take care of it!  No!  I don't agree.  It should have added gravity and depth and sorrow to the story, but to me it felt like a cheap melodramatic shot at our emotions.  And what was the point of dragging Peeta all the way through the sewers and keeping him alive/sane so he can 'help,' but he has absolutely no point at all in the resolution of the story?  Wasted plot arc.  In fact, the only thing I really liked about the end of the story was how shattered Katniss was.  That made sense to me.  She was so altered by what had happened to her that she could never be normal again.  (that's one thing I wish JK Rowling had done with Harry Potter, but ah well.  In almost every other respect HP was better)

Katniss is by far the most believable character in the whole story.  She's loves her family but she's selfish enough to want to ignore the big picture and just stay alive no matter what it takes.  She's entirely human and easy to relate to and that's just wonderful.  The story would have completely fallen apart without her.  She is easily the reason why the books succeeded like they did.  Well, that and the very good world building.

And from what early movie reviews are saying, that's holding true with the actors.  The girl playing Katniss completely blows everyone else out of the water and I suspect she's got the character spot on.  But I can't help but feel bad for most of the other actors, because they really weren't given much to work with.