How to get me interested in The Hunger Games

Til now, I’ve had little interest in reading or watching The Hunger Games, having suffered through one too many kids-having-to-hurt-each-other dystopian sci-fi novels and movies. If you want to get me interested in the franchise, you’d have to remake it something like this.

Cookieness Evereat. Hah.

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How to get me interested in The Hunger Games
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9 thoughts on “How to get me interested in The Hunger Games

  1. 1

    I have to admit to reading all three books and watching the first movie. I’ll wait on the second movie until it hits Netflix, though.

    I’ll clarify a little by admitting that I’m rather picky with what I read – basing my choices on referral and inclination – so I don’t have your problem with too much of the genre (the Obernewtyn Chronicles being the only other one I can think of). My purpose with these books was actually to check if Aiden would be able to read them since he’s reading ahead of his age group (he’s not ready yet). I’d also had a friend who had read the series and put it in the “couldn’t put it down” category.

    That being said, that definitely made me laugh.

  2. 3

    I haven’t read the books or seen the movie — frankly, the idea of forcing kids to kill each other squicks me out.

    Here’s my theory: as the society most of us live in grows more and more peaceful, there’s more room for violence fantasies, stripped away from the old trappings of romance — “it’s a hero, he has an important quest, the bad guys are trying to stop him” — and boiled down to something more basic: if I, a regular person, had to be a killer, how good a killer would I be?

    The first manifestation of that fantasy is the explosion of the zombie genre. Zombies are basically your friends and neighbors, but it’s ok to kill them, because, well, zombies. Then we get the Hunger Games, where you’ve got to kill because you’re forced to by an eeevil government. Another version is the slasher flick — especially ones like Scream, where it’s kind of explicit that being a serial killer is a whole lot of fun.

    I’m not really sure how any of this is good for society.

  3. 4

    Zombies are basically your friends and neighbors, but it’s ok to kill them, because, well, zombies

    “Dad! You killed Zombie Flanders!”
    “Flanders was a Zombie?”

  4. 5

    Just watched the first movie on Netflix. Will see the second on my birthday. (Would honestly rather see Thor 2 or Frozen, but the first isn’t playing in town anymore and the second isn’t out just yet)

  5. 6

    brucegee1962, #3:

    Then we get the Hunger Games, where you’ve got to kill because you’re forced to by an eeevil government.

    I read an essay that did a convincing job of treating the Hunger Games trilogy as a metaphor. Specifically, for the way in which the US government does in essence put children in an arena and force them to kill. The “children” are 18, so legally adults, but only barely. And they’re commanded to kill not each other, but the children of brownish foreigners, but the result is still our children killing and being killed. And they do it for inadequately explained reasons, like: Saddam trained the 9/11 hijackers; well, no, but he’ll have nukes by Christmas; well, no, but… humanitarian invasion for the Iraqis’ own good! Yeah, that’s it! Kill ’em over there for their own good, so we don’t have to kill ’em over here!

    Whether or not the author intended that, the metaphor is actually very thinly veiled. Anyone who proudly flew a flag on Memorial Day, or “thanked a vet,” shouldn’t have any squeamishness about watching movies like this featuring child sacrifice.

  6. 7

    Well, the scenes and hype for the second movie (and for the foreseeable milk-it-to-death future) make me disinclined to see or read any of it. I kinda thought about reading the books after I had head about the first movie, but it looks now like a bunch of pop-glamorized sellout crap. We gonna kill peeps in beautiful exotic Hawaii! (Oh fuck off.)

  7. 8

    My sister in law recommended that I get the HG for my nephew. What I find hilarious is that she was utterly against the Harry Potter books (being an evangelical Christian), but has no problem with having her kids read a book where children are encouraged to kill each other. Golly, it’s so much better having that rather than kids who are friends and who fight against a big evil.

    sigh.

  8. 9

    I’d rather read a story where children are overtly made to participate in a lethal game and everyone knows it than live in a society where people can put on concerned faces and talk about responsibility while cutting food and health and educational benefits to children, thereby achieving the same end in a fashion that lets them walk among us not just unvilified, but made leaders of the community.

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