The Hunger Games begins as an After School Special version of the post apocalypse and morphs into a big budget version of "Saw" with mysterious behind-the-curtain forces seeing how far young people will go to save their own skin. Along the way it attempts to be a kind of condemnation of the evils of reality tv (perhaps the thing it does best, though in this case that's feint praise). How and why the entirety of the Hollywood PR machine got behind this milquetoast effort is a story that would make a much better film than the one here.
The Hunger Games purportedly takes place on a post-nuclear-apocalypse earth where a relatively small number of humans have survived. Thing is if this is the post apocalypse earth then sign me up. Clean air and water, lush forests, and perhaps most magically of all: high speed rail in America! Woohoo!
We're told that the post apocalypse peace was hard-won and in order to maintain it one young man and one young woman from each of 12 districts are chosen to fight to the death on live TV. Why such a gruesome spectacle would occur and what it has to do with maintaining the peace are the most important questions raised in the film yet the movie gives them virtually no time. At one point Donald Sutherland's "President Snow" will spout a few appropriately cynical words about how its better to have games that produce a winner then simply execute a bunch of people to keep the masses in line, (because a winner generates "hope") but that's it. After that the movie descends into big budget Saw-land.
As mentioned the film's most effective guise is that of a put down of the celebrity obsessed "reality" tv culture. Watching the hicks from the sticks go through the fatting-of-the-calf routine where they're primped and preened and dropped into the (temporary) lap of luxury is not unlike following someone through the American Idol star making process where any actual talent they may possess is smothered in the effluence of Simon Cowell's wet dreams about glamor and fame. It's supposed to point out how the high and mighty use tv as a weapon to mollify the masses and make them forget about the drudgery of everyday life but in reality (so to speak) the show and the selection process that leads up to it do nothing but remind the downtrodden just how downtrodden they are. So what's the point? The Hunger Games tv show is supposed to provide opium for the masses not reason to revolt. Isn't it?
So as a commentary on how the innate blood lust of the people is co-opted by the powerful and used as an opiate to keep them controllable it's pretty poor. (Plus the idea has already been done. It was called "The Running Man".) Once the "games" begin it gets even worse because at that point the film becomes little more than an exercise in watching kids kill one another. Like I said it's like watching "Saw". Now if watching people do unspeakably cruel things to themselves and others is what floats your boat then The Hunger Games is the movie for you.
The film also fails as a condemnation of the puppet-masters pulling the strings behind the curtain because it fails to tell us who these people are and how they came to be. All the hints however point to them being descendants of what Newt Gingrich and his cabal are fond of calling the Liberal Elite (LE). Let's go down the LE checklist shall we and see for ourselves. They're urban (check). They wear decadent clothing and hairstyles (check). They seem to have no interest in family (check). They control the media (check) and they're corrupting our youth (check).
And what about their opposite numbers? Could they be interpreted as being those middle Americans the nasty liberal media types are always using as social guinea pigs? Let's do the Middle American Social Guinea Pig (MASGP) checklist and see. They come from the backwoods (check). They seem decent law abiding folk (check). Families everywhere (check). The young ladies dresses do not raise above the knee line (check). Sexually repressed (check).
However just when you're ready to set up a gallows in the square and take those damned liberals to task for ruining everything you perhaps remember that the last time you watched Jerry Springer there weren't a lot of Harvard Square types in the audience and, as a character says early on "No audience, no show." Also, The Hunger Games is very big business and very big business is the traditional stomping ground of Adam Smith's progeny. And the downtrodden in their tattered clothing could be seen as those who used to belong to the middle class but have been dumped into poverty by the triumph of the Reagan agenda. So who knows? It seems the author is falling back on the standard cop-out: we're all to blame.
So exactly what do we have here with "The Hunger Games"? Well, first of all we have consumer product intended to fill the market void left by the end of the "Twilight" series. That much is pretty clear. But what about the movie itself? What is this film trying to tell us? That the powerful are corrupt? Well, duh. That we're easily hypnotized by the boob tube? Knew that already. That reality tv is the new gladiatorial games and the tv sound stage the new Colosseum? Well, I think most people knew that already too.
Maybe what The Hunger Games is really trying to tell us is that if you take a bunch of well-worn themes, repackage them in a shiny new box with an attractive young lady's face on it and toss it into a media void you'll get boffo box office. Wanna be script writers of the world take note.
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