The Hunger Games

Really wish people would stop saying that the Hunger Games is just Battle Royal. Battle Royal had no real setting or setup.

Hunger Games is actually less about the children killing each other and more about just how far humanity has sunk. the Capital City is basically a new Rome, and the Hunger Games is a new Colosseum to entertain the masses. The children aren't allowed to say how horrible it is that they all have to die. They are forced to dress up and be beautiful for the camera and give speeches as if they were actors. If the children are doing well in the games or have a sympathetic "character", citizens are allowed to purchase "gifts" for them to help them out.

The whole thing is horrible, just horrible! And in later books, people start to rise up against the corrupt government and a civil war ensues.

The author's explanation of her inspiration for writing the books is enough to convince me that she hadn't ever seen Battle Royale (not everyone is a jap-fan who has seen this movie, you guys. We're in geek-culture, here).

Hunger Games is MORE than Battle Royal. It isn't just about picking random kids and making them kill each other (and IMO it's LESS random in this book than in Battle Royal, and in Hunger Games everyone knows it's coming as opposed to it just being a wtf moment). It is about WHY the games exist in the first place, how the games have corrupted high society, and what the oppressed are going to do about it.

Really wish people would stop saying that the Hunger Games is just Battle Royal. Battle Royal had no real setting or setup.

Hunger Games is actually less about the children killing each other and more about just how far humanity has sunk. the Capital City is basically a new Rome, and the Hunger Games is a new Colosseum to entertain the masses. The children aren't allowed to say how horrible it is that they all have to die. They are forced to dress up and be beautiful for the camera and give speeches as if they were actors. If the children are doing well in the games or have a sympathetic "character", citizens are allowed to purchase "gifts" for them to help them out.

The whole thing is horrible, just horrible! And in later books, people start to rise up against the corrupt government and a civil war ensues.

The author's explanation of her inspiration for writing the books is enough to convince me that she hadn't ever seen Battle Royale (not everyone is a jap-fan who has seen this movie, you guys. We're in geek-culture, here).

Hunger Games is MORE than Battle Royal. It isn't just about picking random kids and making them kill each other (and IMO it's LESS random in this book than in Battle Royal, and in Hunger Games everyone knows it's coming as opposed to it just being a wtf moment). It is about WHY the games exist in the first place, how the games have corrupted high society, and what the oppressed are going to do about it.

But Battle Royale is so fucking crazy.

@ThePhantomnaut: Yes, it is, and it's awesome, and I don't deny that. But that doesn't mean that The Hunger Games is ripping it off and isn't worth reading or watching the movie that's in the works. It has a different enough focus to make it a good book with it's own awesome. :)

Battle Royale is an amazing movie, hopefully Hunger Games will be good also, but the trailer for that movie doesn't do it any favors.

Savage violence > child actor melodrama

Edit: http://www.screened.com/trailer-2-the-hunger-games/128-924/

Just watched the trailer again, it looks terrible.

So I've been reading the Hunger Games books for my English class at college, and I'm on the third book at the moment. Keep in mind that I also read Battle Royale before I read the Hunger Games and believed that the HG was nothing more than a teen melodrama rip-off of BR.

The first book was surprisingly pretty good. I found the Hunger Games themselves really enjoyable, with some of the side characters like Haymitch being surprisingly interesting. I hated the relationship between Peeta and Katniss, especially at the end of the novel, with Peeta especially becoming annoying. From here, the series devolved into this senseless teen melodrama that while not as bad as Twilight--Yes, I actually read the first Twilight to get an understanding what the whole fucking craze was about--but was still pretty shitty. The ending to the second book was confusing as all hell, and from there, the third book is currently total garbage. I honestly don't care who she loves more, Gale or Peeta and the war between the rebels and the Capital is hamfisted.

Saying the series is a ripoff of Battle Royale is not true, with the first book being pretty good, but it never comes close to Battle Royale's quality, with the latter two books in the trilogy being utter trash.

@Gearhead said:

with the latter two books in the trilogy being utter trash.

I completely agree with that part. I loved the first book, but the second two were garbage...I'm excited to see the movie, but I don't think it's even at the quality we saw in the later Harry Potter movies. But...it does have Jennifer Lawrence in it. :-D

I enjoyed the trilogy. I also enjoyed Battle Royal that one time I watched it. I'm not very critical of things though and tend to enjoy things for what they are and don't linger on what they aren't

@calophi:

I agree with you that I wish people would stop calling Hunger Games Battle Royale because that misnomer is insulting to Battle Royale.

And I guess to Hunger Games too.

@calophi said:

@ThePhantomnaut: Yes, it is, and it's awesome, and I don't deny that. But that doesn't mean that The Hunger Games is ripping it off and isn't worth reading or watching the movie that's in the works. It has a different enough focus to make it a good book with it's own awesome. :)

I get what ya mean. :)

@Kidavenger: The trailer is mostly all the setup, and the setup is a lot of explaining why there's a hunger games and all the cozying up to the audience so that the players will be sent gifts through the games. I can see why it'd be disappointing to someone not a fan of the book, but all it does is excite me. :)

I'm a little worried the movie is only PG-13, though. There is a lot of violence that I can see getting cut out because of that.

Battle Royal is so much better than Hunger Games. But you are right that they are fairly different with a similar set up.

@Gearhead: I didn't find the teen melodrama to be NEARLY as bad as in books like Twilight and other similar YA books. The reason is because Katniss is actually a fairly strong character and never really makes a decision about either boy because she doesn't really NEED either boy, and it keeps her from waffling back and forth pathetically. Sure, any girl that likes two guys is going to feel bad about not being able to pick one, but she doesn't dwell on it nearly as long or angstily as in other YA books, which makes it a really refreshing read.

By the by, I also read Twilight because everyone was telling me that it was "the next Harry Potter", which it most certainly WAS NOT. I managed to get through it only because I figured that it must have a plot SOMEWHERE since everyone else liked it (it didn't). I spent the entire book wanting to punch Bella in the face. She's the worst role-model for young girls ever.

Edit: Never, ever read Tiger's Curse, no matter how many people tell you it's good.

@calophi: Bella is not so much a role model for young girls as she is a mirror for them. There is actually a kinda brilliance to her as a non-character.

Grow up, it's for kids. ;-)

@TentPole: A MIRROR? I don't know of many kids who would honestly try to almost kill themselves because they thought they could hear their ex-boyfriends voice in their head, or go empty for months and start to look like the dead b/c of not having a boy in their life. And if MY kid ever did that, they'd be sent right to goddamn therapy.

@alternate: It's for teenagers, actually. :)

@calophi: No, but they like to fantasize that they would. You do know a lot of girls like it right? Like millions and millions and millions of them. There must be something they are relating to.

Edit: How the fuck did I end up a Twilight apologist?

@TentPole: I AM a girl, and I know a lot of other girls that ALSO think it's terrible. And all of those girls and myself have read paranormal romance books for ADULTS and enjoyed them. Twilight is just written shitty and has shitty characters. I'm not saying the fantasy isn't valid. I'm saying anyone who's read the adult books that gave Meyers the idea for Twilight in the first place will see that Twilight is really, really awful.

Edit: book examples include the earlier Anita Blake novels, the Kitty Norville books, the Mercy Thompson books, etc. Not the Sookie books, though. Those can suck it.

The Hunger Games is just Battle Royal with less gore and Twilight mixed in one.

I read the book.

DON'T LET ANYONE TELL YOU DIFFERENTLY.

I doubt a book written for adolescents is as great as the Battle Royale novel

@blindisaac said:

I doubt a book written for adolescents is as great as the Battle Royale novel

It isn't. It was a horrible book. They even found a way to throw in werewolves.

@calophi: And I assume they are shitty books as well (I don't have time to read preteen romance novels) but Millions and Millions of young girls, grown women, and old ladies love them. Stephen Meyer must be doing something right and a lot of people are able to put themselves in the role of Bella wither you think they should or not. I don't understand your issue. This is not a subjective statement. It is a verifiable fact.

@Rudyftw said:

@blindisaac said:

I doubt a book written for adolescents is as great as the Battle Royale novel

It isn't. It was a horrible book. They even found a way to throw in werewolves.

Those dog things were around as far from werewolves as you can get. Seriously have you read the books?

On a side note we all agree that movies which are obsensively for kids (pixar, myazaki) can be as good or better than adult movies. Why can't the same hold true for books?

You all should put the kids books away and read a real book . . . like Blood Meridian.

I'll watch the movie, think I'm too old for the books :/.

The third book was my favorite by far. Yes, the war part might not be the most interesting, but the ending's a gajillion times better than what they did to Harry Potter (that awful epilogue). I thought the social commentary was pretty blatant and an anti-trope of these epic tales we've been excited about for a while, but I guess it's really subtle considering what people did and didn't like about the last two books.

It must be a character connection thing. At the end of the day, I didn't care what happened between Katniss, Peeta, and Gale, I cared what happened within that world, and what happened both blew me away and seemed like the most realistic resolution possible.

@kashif1 said:

@Rudyftw said:

@blindisaac said:

I doubt a book written for adolescents is as great as the Battle Royale novel

It isn't. It was a horrible book. They even found a way to throw in werewolves.

Those dog things were around as far from werewolves as you can get. Seriously have you read the books?

On a side note we all agree that movies which are obsensively for kids (pixar, myazaki) can be as good or better than adult movies. Why can't the same hold true for books?

If you're half human (even dead) and half dog than you're a werewolf. It doesn't matter how you got that way, but you're a werewolf. Well.... because The Hunger Games, was a bad rip off of Battle Royal. All i'm saying is the book wasn't that great. It was very awkward and reminded me a lot of Twilight. People are making it seem like it has a lot of action and is a dark movie. IT ISN'T. The book found a way to make killing kids boring and the opposite of edgy. I just don't want people to think that it's something that it's not. It wasn't a horrible book, but it wasn't great either.

@TentPole: When I say it was a shitty book, I also mean that it needed a LOT more editing than it received. It was just awfully written. Trying to read it was like slogging through mud. I kept stumbling over awkward sentences.

A source: http://reasoningwithvampires.tumblr.com/

@Sammann31415: I completely agree. I love how bittersweet the ending was. Not everything was happy and hunky-dory at the end. Things are still shaky. The characters are still broken. Their country is still trying to re-build itself and their children will eventually learn about all the horrible things their parents had to do. Good stuff.

@TentPole said:

You all should put the kids books away and read a real book . . . like Blood Meridian.

What's it about? give me a rating.

@TentPole: The chances of me enjoying that book are very, very slim. Probably about as slim as the chances of you enjoying paranormal romance novels. :)

@Rudyftw said:

@kashif1 said:

@Rudyftw said:

@blindisaac said:

I doubt a book written for adolescents is as great as the Battle Royale novel

It isn't. It was a horrible book. They even found a way to throw in werewolves.

Those dog things were around as far from werewolves as you can get. Seriously have you read the books?

On a side note we all agree that movies which are obsensively for kids (pixar, myazaki) can be as good or better than adult movies. Why can't the same hold true for books?

If you're half human (even dead) and half dog than you're a werewolf. It doesn't matter how you got that way, but you're a werewolf. Well.... because The Hunger Games, was a bad rip off of Battle Royal. All i'm saying is the book wasn't that great. It was very awkward and reminded me a lot of Twilight. People are making it seem like it has a lot of action and is a dark movie. IT ISN'T. The book found a way to make killing kids boring and the opposite of edgy. I just don't want people to think that it's something that it's not. It wasn't a horrible book, but it wasn't great either.

But they weren't half-human. They were given certain features (eye and fur color) that looked like the dead kids - the better to freak out the remaining contestants. They have other creatures in the other books, too. The government likes to take a mismash of genes from a LOT of animals and make horrible mutated creatures out of them. It's possible those things had some human in 'em, but it wasn't a half-and-half creature.

I've read both books and have seen the film version of Battle Royale. They have different stories, but where BR tells its story from the perspectives of many of the students, giving a full spectrum of emotional responses, HG is told strictly from the perspective of one character that often comes across as flat. Further, the Hunger Games themselves lack the immediacy of BR and involve MTV-like reality TV elements and ill-explained oddities in a world that doesn't feel particularly plausible. BR is nothing more than pure hell for the students in a world that feels much more plausible than the far-flung science fantasy of HG. Battle Royale is just the better story and premise, in my view.

@calophi said:

@Rudyftw said:

@kashif1 said:

@Rudyftw said:

@blindisaac said:

I doubt a book written for adolescents is as great as the Battle Royale novel

It isn't. It was a horrible book. They even found a way to throw in werewolves.

Those dog things were around as far from werewolves as you can get. Seriously have you read the books?

On a side note we all agree that movies which are obsensively for kids (pixar, myazaki) can be as good or better than adult movies. Why can't the same hold true for books?

If you're half human (even dead) and half dog than you're a werewolf. It doesn't matter how you got that way, but you're a werewolf. Well.... because The Hunger Games, was a bad rip off of Battle Royal. All i'm saying is the book wasn't that great. It was very awkward and reminded me a lot of Twilight. People are making it seem like it has a lot of action and is a dark movie. IT ISN'T. The book found a way to make killing kids boring and the opposite of edgy. I just don't want people to think that it's something that it's not. It wasn't a horrible book, but it wasn't great either.

But they weren't half-human. They were given certain features (eye and fur color) that looked like the dead kids - the better to freak out the remaining contestants. They have other creatures in the other books, too. The government likes to take a mismash of genes from a LOT of animals and make horrible mutated creatures out of them. It's possible those things had some human in 'em, but it wasn't a half-and-half creature.

. I'm pretty sure they used the dead bodies of the kids. I remember very clearly that Katniss or whatever pointed out that The Capitol NEVER takes the dead bodies away, but that that year they did. Those sick freaks used dead bodies to reassemble wolf zombie hybrids.

I tore through the first book in a day or two, but it was clearly written for 12 year old girls.

Haven't sen Battle Royale though it appears I might have to, I've read The Hunger Games as a school assignment and I'm halfway through the second book

Loved the first book, the second one is a bit slow but I like it, really looking forward to the movie, Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen is a great choice

@Rudyftw: Full title is Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West. It is from Cormac McCarthy (writer of The Road and No Country For Old Men). It is kind of a western in setting but not really in genre if that makes since. It is about the violence of the expanding western frontier. It focus on a group of scalp hunters and is about a bunch of bad people doing a bunch of bad things. The writing is really well done but rather dense and for some it is impenetrable. McCarthy's writing has been compared to the bible. But if you can appreciate denser more literary writing it is fantastic. Honestly though I don't think it would appeal to the majority of Giant Bomb users.

In the entire range of American literature, onlyMoby-Dick bears comparison toBlood Meridian. Both are epic in scope, cosmically resonant, obsessed with open space and with language, exploring vast uncharted distances with a fanatically patient minuteness. Both manifest a sublime visionary power that is matched only by still more ferocious irony. Both savagely explode the American dream of manifest destiny, of racial domination and endless imperial expansion. But if anything, McCarthy writes with a yet more terrible clarity than does Melville.

—Steven Shaviro, "A Reading of Blood Meridian"

Boring?? What about the scene when she was tripping balls and had to dig into someone's chest cavity to remove the arrows. Of course it won't be as bloody as it should be but the tracker jacket scene should be messed up.

@rentfn: Yeah, that scene's pretty horrifying for someone to have to live through. I hope they do it justice.

@TentPole: Man, dense and impenetrable writing, and compared to the bible? I DEFINITELY wouldn't ever finish it. =D

@calophi: Only impenetrabe to some. But to any who find stuff like The Hunger Games fluffy and lacking in depth it might be right up their ally.

@kashif1: Books written for kids bore me now and have since 7th grade. The works of Pixar and Miyazaki are universal in that they reflect experience in life and whatnot on a different level than a book written for 10-13 year old kids can.

They are similar, yet BR came out in 2000 so it is understandable why HG is accused of Plagiarism. HG is the teen version of BR as it has much less gore etc. BR's cast revolves around the shear desperation and instinct for survival, and all 42 'players' are class mates. BR is much more about the character interactions such as how school friends betray each other in a heart beat in order to obtain better weapons.

HG features more 'teen' themes such as werewolves (fuck the twilight age) and more romance... the book features a select few strong main characters who do not deal with the psychological difficulties as seen in BR.

Both are good books regardless, but I prefer BR due to its darker tone and slightly more realistic feel.

Read HG if you like a more romantic story featuring a strong female lead, and you do not like gore or sexual themes

Read BR if you prefer a darker more twisted tale that does not have any strong characters, and you can handle (or like) detailed gore.

Lastly NEVER use the BR film as a substitute for the Novel. The film while not bad, is not anywhere near as good as the book!

@blindisaac said:

@kashif1: Books written for kids bore me now and have since 7th grade. The works of Pixar and Miyazaki are universal in that they reflect experience in life and whatnot on a different level than a book written for 10-13 year old kids can.

Howl's Moving Castle is based on a YA book. :)

Edit: And IMO the book is better. I know Miyazaki likes to make his movies correlate to things going on IRL, but I was a bit confused by what was going on at the end of the movie.

@Tomkang said:

HG features more 'teen' themes such as werewolves (fuck the twilight age) and more romance.

Wait, how is werewolves a "theme" of hunger games, and one that's similar to Twilight? there were in there for only a bit at the end, and they were in there for psychological fuckery, not as sexual interests. Also there was barely any real romance, because since we are tuned in to Katniss, we know most of what she does is an act for the audience. At least in book 1.

@Tomkang said:

the book features a select few strong main characters who do not deal with the psychological difficulties as seen in BR.

They might not have quite as many psychological problems in book 1 because most of the characters don't know each other, whereas all the kids in BR did. However, by book 3 of HG, both Peeta and Katniss are severely fucked up in the head from everything that happened to them. It might not be as deep as in BR, but it's there, it's unpleasant, and things are not a-ok with them.

@Tomkang said:

Read HG if you like a more romantic story featuring a strong female lead, and you do not like gore or sexual themes

Yeah, there's definitely some gory scenes in HG. It's not over the top, but what's there is horrifying, and it only gets worse through the series. And I don't find most of what happened in HG to be particularly "romantic", either. Anything that happens in the arena was made up for the cameras, and everything that happens outside of the arena in the "real world" is heartbreaking and bittersweet.

The "romance" in HG isn't anything like in Twilight, where all Bella does is talk about how perfect Edward is, and how white and perfect his skin is, and how sweet his breath is (blehhhhhh).

@TentPole: Thanks for the recommendation! Blood Meridian fell off my radar a little while ago. If you can't tell from my icon, I'm a huge fan of Anathem by Neal Stephenson - a very rewarding and challenging read, if you're interested!

@calophi said:

@blindisaac said:

@kashif1: Books written for kids bore me now and have since 7th grade. The works of Pixar and Miyazaki are universal in that they reflect experience in life and whatnot on a different level than a book written for 10-13 year old kids can.

Howl's Moving Castle is based on a YA book. :)

Edit: And IMO the book is better. I know Miyazaki likes to make his movies correlate to things going on IRL, but I was a bit confused by what was going on at the end of the movie.

I mean actually reading them. I lost interest in Harry Potter by the 6th book and almost did not finish the last one. I will watch adaptions of YA books.

@Tomkang said:

They are similar, yet BR came out in 2000 so it is understandable why HG is accused of Plagiarism. HG is the teen version of BR as it has much less gore etc. BR's cast revolves around the shear desperation and instinct for survival, and all 42 'players' are class mates. BR is much more about the character interactions such as how school friends betray each other in a heart beat in order to obtain better weapons.

HG features more 'teen' themes such as werewolves (fuck the twilight age) and more romance... the book features a select few strong main characters who do not deal with the psychological difficulties as seen in BR.

Both are good books regardless, but I prefer BR due to its darker tone and slightly more realistic feel.

Read HG if you like a more romantic story featuring a strong female lead, and you do not like gore or sexual themes

Read BR if you prefer a darker more twisted tale that does not have any strong characters, and you can handle (or like) detailed gore.

Lastly NEVER use the BR film as a substitute for the Novel. The film while not bad, is not anywhere near as good as the book!

I'd argue against the notion of Battle Royale not having strong characters. While none of the characters are particular deep, the book does a good job of portraying the mental states of each of the students it shifts perspectives between. Katniss falls flat at times. There's also never really any doubt that she's going to win the Hunger Games. Despite everything that fucks her up, that the book is focused on her perspective takes a lot of the suspense out. Worse still is the way that the other competitors are, for the most part, rendered in broad strokes if they're given any detail at all. Only Peeta and Rue could really be considered characters; everyone else is either a non-factor, cartoonishly villainous (Glimmer), or only present enough to be distinguished by a nickname (Fox face). And the end of the Games is more or less an absurdity, with the lone remaining opponent wearing full-body armor, rendering him invulnerable to from the neck down, only to be brutalized for hours by wolf monsters until he gets a merciful arrow in the head.

And as for the wolf monsters themselves, it really doesn't matter whether or not they were the murdered competitors brought back to life and transformed or not. (It really isn't made clear in the book, or if it is, I didn't register it.) Either way, it's an absurd method to bring the Hunger Games to an end.

@TentPole said:

@Rudyftw: Full title is Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West. It is from Cormac McCarthy (writer of The Road and No Country For Old Men). It is kind of a western in setting but not really in genre if that makes since. It is about the violence of the expanding western frontier. It focus on a group of scalp hunters and is about a bunch of bad people doing a bunch of bad things. The writing is really well done but rather dense and for some it is impenetrable. McCarthy's writing has been compared to the bible. But if you can appreciate denser more literary writing it is fantastic. Honestly though I don't think it would appeal to the majority of Giant Bomb users.

In the entire range of American literature, onlyMoby-Dick bears comparison toBlood Meridian. Both are epic in scope, cosmically resonant, obsessed with open space and with language, exploring vast uncharted distances with a fanatically patient minuteness. Both manifest a sublime visionary power that is matched only by still more ferocious irony. Both savagely explode the American dream of manifest destiny, of racial domination and endless imperial expansion. But if anything, McCarthy writes with a yet more terrible clarity than does Melville.

—Steven Shaviro, "A Reading of Blood Meridian"

That sounds amazing. I love the Western Spaghetti genre. Film/video games EVERYTHING. I'm not a big book reader, but I have seen the movie The Road and I thought it was really great. I don't read to much because I have attention issues, but it sounds interesting, so im gunna buy it.

I should probably watch this Battle Royal movie. I'm reading the Hunger Games now and its a decent read and pretty interesting. I've never really heard of Battle Royal until Screened announced its coming out on blu-ray soon so yeah I really want to check it out. I'm sure the only similarity of the two films will be its just kids killing each other which is cool! Knowing theres a world in The Hungers Games where its entertainment to see a 12 year old girl get murdered is pretty fucked up! Enjoy your things and just ignore the assholes who want to be dicks to you.

Edit: Also the Hunger Games has Jennifer Lawrence which is MY book, makes it a HELL of a lot better.