With the last Harry Potter movie ending in 2011 and the famous Twilight series winding down, it should come as no surprise that today’s youth is looking for a new book-turned-movie to obsess over. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is garnering a lot of chatter, largely because the movie is set to be released March 23.
Since its release in late 2008, The Hunger Games novel has been well-received and was a New York Times Bestseller. Its success is further evidenced by its two subsequent sequels. However, as Maria Imbett ‘13 notes about many other books that become movies, they usually “… stay obscure until the movie is about to be released.”
Suddenly everyone is scrambling to get a copy of the book before the movie comes out in an attempt to capture the true essence of the story.
Whether or not we see fans of this novel dressed in fire costumes at midnight movie premieres, it is clear that the movie has a lot to live up to. The Hunger Games film is under a lot of pressure to avoid the horrible fate of the popular fan criticism: “the movie was nothing like the book.”
Long before the movie was in the works, the entire Hunger Games trilogy was criticized for the theme that may have generated most of its following: violence. Nothing gets a reader’s blood pumping like the idea that his or her favorite character might die at any minute.
On that note, it is somewhat shocking and disappointing that the movie has a PG-13 rating. How can a devoted Hunger Games fan live without seeing the graphic accounts of arrows being callously shot into people? This move by producers, while expanding viewing audiences, might compromise the excitement of the novel and reduce the somewhat mature teen fiction into something reminiscent of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight.
Much like Meyer’s Twilight series, The Hunger Games does appear to have elements that will appeal to almost any viewer. It features a love triangle, family and murder, as well as characters that cannot be easily forgotten.
Perhaps the single thing capable of providing a sigh of relief to crazed Hunger Games fans is the movie trailer. It starts out slow but after a few seconds one can see the disturbingly rich detail. The world generated by the movie’s creators follows the book rather closely, in my opinion.
By the end of the trailer, nearly everyone who has read the book is left in anguish and excitement for the upcoming movie.
As for those who are not left with this feeling, well, there will always be critics.
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