Now some of you may think the title to this piece is a little harsh, maybe even disrespectful. But I’m telling you, if you had seen the movie I just saw, you might be calling her something a little to the left of the term I actually used.
There is a word for her kind, and it rhymes with itch!
I’ve been hearing about this movie for months, and I was really looking forward to it. The title alone had me sold from the beginning. It sounded like a nice sports flick, maybe with a bit of a charity angle worked in. How can you not love a movie with sports and philanthropy? I was really looking forward to this.
I missed a minute or two at the beginning, but as I understand it, there were supposed to be 24 kids in this contest; it’s winner take all. Great! I love a nice high-stakes contest. So, I can’t wait to learn how the games are played and watch our hero develop character and depth on the way to becoming a true champion.
What followed was the most vulgar display of brutality and poor sportsmanship that I have ever seen.
Ever!
You see, the lead actress is not down with the plan. Katniss Everdeen (played by Jennifer Shrader Lawrence) doesn’t even want to hold her team-mates hand in the opening ceremonies. With all the people from her home town pulling for the two of them, she has to be talked into this simple gesture of solidarity.
As if that wasn’t enough, you should see what this spoiled little princess does when some television executives don’t give her enough attention. All I can say is you better stay away from the orchard fruit when this girl wakes up on the wrong side of the bed.
I mean seriously, …sounds a bit like glitch!
Katniss doesn’t even stick around for the start of the game. When the pepper meats the paprika, this spoil-sport takes off and runs the opposite direction. It works out in her favor though, because some sort of disaster befalls the other contestants. I really couldn’t figure out what it was that happened, because the cameraman was awfully shaken up by the whole thing. That sequence was really hard to follow, but the one thing that I know about the opening sequence to the games is that while other athletes were playing and dying, our main character was doing her damnedest to get the hell out of Town.
Cowardly stitch!
The people who run the games had to trick little Katniss back out onto the game field, and even then she spent most of her time hiding in the trees. When some of the other boys and girls came to welcome our wayward girl back to the contest, she wouldn’t even come down to meet them. Worse than that, Katniss soon proved just how far she was willing to go to prove herself the worst sport ever to disgrace any game ever. She knocked a big nest of wasps down onto her fellow contestants as they slept below her.
It was awful. One of the girls died. I can only assume the poor girl was allergic or something. That’s right, Katniss killed one of the other contestants. I don’t even think she was sorry.
Knows a guy named Mitch!
In fact, Little Miss spoil-sport was just getting started with the wasp nest. Next, she blew-up the food stores for all the contestants (apparently the games had an endurance element to them). Katniss followed that up by killing yet another of the other contestants just as her new best friend falls prey to some terrible accident. That’s right, while the innocent little girl dies an unfortunate death (the cause of which I never quite understood), our girl Katniss was busy shooting another contestant with an arrow.
Yes, it was fatal.
Up to this point, you could perhaps have given Katniss the benefit of the doubt. She had no way of knowing about the one girl’s allergies, and her friend, Rue? Well Katniss can’t really be blamed for that, …I don’t think. I don’t even think you can blame her for disaster that befell the other contestants. But when you shoot a guy with an arrow, there just isn’t much doubting your intent. By this point it’s damned clear. Our girl Katniss is a damned murderer.
An itchy murderer!
I can only guess as to the intended nature of the games, but what difference could that possibly make? When you invite this girl to the party, it turns into a war of attrition.
The whole thing comes to a head when one of the contest finalists falls prey to a pack of wolves. Guess how our hero helps out!
Go-one guess!
She kills the guy. I mean how cold do you have to be to refuse help to a man being eaten by wolves?
Cold! I tell you. Stone cold pitch!
So, after all the murder and mayhem, the game officials make one very simple request, that our girl and the one person she hadn’t put under the turf should actually play off one final round. You would think the least she could have done is to grant this one simple request, what with a whole nation watching and the fate of the hungry poor hanging in the balance!
How does little miss Ever-mean react? She threatens to poison herself instead.
You have to wonder, what the hell is she afraid of? It’s just a contest! Can’t she just play one round of this game after all that’s happened? Couldn’t she just give the audience just a little taste of the contest they were supposed to be watching all along?
You would think that wouldn’t be too much to ask. But no. With a single injured opponent, this girl STILL wouldn’t step up and give it a go. Instead, she gets out some poison berries, cons the other contestant into some sort of suicide pact, and gets ready to Jim Jones the whole affair.
And do you know how the people behind the games respond to this pathetic display of passive-aggressive manipulation? They give-in. they totally give-in! In some typical lefty-liberal display of everybody-wins nonsense, the fools declare a shared victory, thus depriving a whole nation of viewers of the chance to watch even one, JUST ONE, actual game.
I can only assume the hungry didn’t get their donations!
Damned Dirty Ditch!
What always gets me about movies like this is that you know in real life the protagonist would be dead meat without a writer, movie crew, and director creating the plot that greases the skids for them to victory. Let’s see how victorious this little girl would be in the real world going up against a Navy SEAL. This is why I avoid these kinds of movies. If kids could be this capable on their own, they would be.
…the real problem being the inability to envision a strong woman as sexy. So, instead we get a conventionally beautiful woman that we are supposed to believe is a bad-ass.
AW! You should’ve read the book!
I heard it was interesting, but (shhhh) I actually did like this movie.
The books kept me awake at night. I bought the trilogy (on Kindle) to read during my 6 week job in China. I was so captivated that they lasted 3 weeks. But I’m a book junkie, and I love this kind of brain candy. I teach high school and it helps bridge the gap between me & my students if I can talk about something they’ve read … and The Hunger Games was that ticket this year.
I’m glad you liked the movie. I did too, but I’m not sure it would have meant as much to me if I hadn’t read the books.
Sorry, I just have to ask…is this post sarcastic, or did you really not know what the Hunger Games was about before you watched it?
Hm, well let’s just say that I’m up to 10 posts in this series now, and every one of them is about a character that I actually like in a movie that I actually like. …I can say no more.
I’ve read the books and found them really good but I haven’t seen the film yet. I hope that they haven’t let the books down ..that would be a real shame and I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy it .
Of course I enjoyed it. I enjoy all my favorite movie villains. 🙂
Thank you for the clear analysis. Finally.
Lol, thank you.