Collins’s story brings a very exciting and different take on the idea of "hunting"

When a beloved book, like The Hunger Games, is adapted into a movie two things are certain: details will be left out, and it will break records at the box office. And this movie did just that.

The Hunger Games is a young adult novel, the first in a trilogy that is sold worldwide. The author, Suzanne Collins uses Greek and Roman mythology as influences for the dystopian society where the novel is set. In this society there is a country called Panem located in North America, and because of an unknown war has lead the Capitol to take control over 12 outlying districts. As punishment for the rebellion of these districts, the Capitol has each district send one girl and one boy between the ages of 12 and 18 to partake in the event known as The Hunger Games, where these children fight to the death. The games are viewed as entertainment in the Capitol, broadcasting it to all the districts as a morbid reality show.

Collins’s story brings a very exciting and different take on this age-old idea of “hunting,” while the movie brings terrific visuals. Before the movie was released I had heard many people compare it to an older Japanese film that have been adapted from a book called Battle Royale. While the stories are similar, there have been other books and movies that have used this similar concept.

The movie translates the world of Panem very well. Its Roman and Greek as well as ancient Egyptian architecture give the Capitol a strange combination of futuristic and classical looks. The costumes and fashions from the Capitol and from district 12 are done amazingly and add to the juxtaposition of the wealthy and the poor.

One of the aspects of the movie that I was strangely surprised by was the use of the shaky camera. At first I thought it was annoying and it hindered the viewer from seeing everything they wanted to see. But as the movie progressed I found that its use was a good cinematic element taken from its source material. This was also a good way to get around most of the violence. Since the bulk of the book focuses on a group of children trying to kill each other, and because its target audience is young adult, by using the shaky camera technique, the graphicness of the novel was avoided enough to get a PG-13 rating.

All in all, I really enjoyed the movie. There were some small things that were left out that disappointed me, like the subtraction of minor characters. But I don’t think that this took away from the movie at all. Even without reading the book, The Hunger Games proved to be a great movie. I laughed, I cried, and I cheered, and I had to see it again.