Hungry for the Hunger Games

Suzanne Collins published The Hunger Games, the first part of a trilogy in September of 2008, which enthralled readers all over the world. After Catching Fire and Mockingjay completed her series, many readers were deeply connected to the world of Panem.  Director Gary Ross and Collins collaborated on making her successful novels into a screenplay and, the movie version of first part of the trilogy became one of the most highly anticipated films in production. With a carefully crafted cast including Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss, Liam Hemsworth as Gale, and Woody Harrelson as Haymitch, the movie started to accumulate media attention. Many magazines, including US Weekly, published feature issues about The Hunger Games in anticipation of its film premier. Finally, on Friday Mar. 23, 2012, The Hunger Games was released to the public for their viewing pleasure. 

Many people wore book related t-shirts or even carried their own copies of the book to the premier and premier weekend showings, hoping that the movie would live up to their ideas of the book. Many people saw the movie with no background knowledge of the books, but senior Dan Duys claimed "expectations are high," and he had not previously read any of the books. 

The movie starts with a short textual history and background of Panem and how the Hunger Games started, then leads into what readers will recognize as the beginning of the novel, in protagonist's Katniss' room with her sister Prim. Lawrence looks head to toe perfect, just as Collins describes her in the book; a good sign of things to come.

Each character, as we meet them, is perfectly transformed from page to visual representations. Descriptions of District 12 and the Capitol are magically taken from text to reality, perhaps one of the most successful and important parts of the movie. The most significant part of the Games, the arena, was equipped with tubes sending each of the tributes in to the arena and the large armory filled with weapons and necessities.  As much as Collins' descriptions were vivid, the story came to be in a whole new form of media strongly. 

With perfect renditions of characters, settings, situations, and themes, one thing that seemed to be missing was the intimate connection that is shared with Katniss and the reader in the novel. Perhaps it was because her interior thoughts and troubling questions were not portrayed in the movie as they were in the novel. Although the movie was intriguing, exciting, and action packed, Katniss seemed a little flat, while she was so dimensional in the novel. 

While the loss of the above narrative remains the only main difference between the movie and the text, the rest of the film follows along closely with the book. Avid Senior Jenna Best, an avid Hunger Games reader, said "I was in no way disappointed, but the book was a better experience for me." It seems as though this is one of the major struggles in creating a movie straight from a book, but The Hunger Games was an engaging and heart-stopping experience for both non-followers and fans.