Why the Hunger Games Fails

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is almost certainly one of the worst films ever made (no hyperbole intended). I patiently explain why, and suggest improvements

The cast of The Hunger Games, embarrassed about their crimes against cinema, listen to my suggestions attentively

A vast American woodland unfolds, bringing tidings of big-budget drama. Jennifer Lawrence is out hunting, and it's not long before she's shooting people with arrows and breaking boy's hearts left, right and centre (well, she is Jennifer Lawrence). As one ponders incredulously how anyone thought it would be a good idea to encourage impressionable young girls to adopt the solipsistic Katniss as a role model, the credits roll on an unconvincing cliff hanger. Hours have been wasted on limp social satire (if one can call it that) and gratuitous violence. I leave the cinema dissatisfied, annoyed that my cinematic companions ever thought it wise to subject me to this.
Bizarrely, my foolish friends had the audacity to believe that The Hunger Games: Catching Fire was a good film. Of course they were gravely mistaken, and so it is my solemn duty to instruct humanity on where this poor excuse for cinema is going wrong, and what can be done to stop the rot.

1) Get a better heroine

Jennifer Lawrence sets fire to a caravan. Nobody likes caravans.

Yes, she is Jennifer Lawrence, but unfortunately, Lawrence only shines when she gets proper roles, like in Winter's Bone and The Burning Plain. In The Burning Plain she set fire to some people, and yet still seemed more sympathetic than the cold fish she plays in The Hunger Games. That's mainly because she was allowed a little space to breathe as a character, rather than being flung headlong into unrealistic situations involving killer fog and spinning islands. Maybe I can't expect too much from teenage fiction heroes, Bella Swan and Harry Potter are hardly the most beautifully crafted creations in the world. But if such nauseating franchises are going to occupy so many of our cinema screens, can they at least behave a little like grown up films?
Katniss should be a little more like Tess Durbeyfield or Isabel Archer. Both of these women do unbelievably stupid things, Tess even turns homicidal near the end (not quite to the same extent as Katniss, mercifully). Yet they're likeable; you can empathize with them; they have more than one character trait. Need I continue? Yes, your heroine should make mistakes that may encourage the impassioned reader to want to shout at their paperbacks. But, she must at least feel a little self-doubt over her actions, and develop as a result (i.e. not continuing to shoot people with arrows).Then, perhaps, we may care when Katniss is struck by lightening, instead of hoping for a mortality in order to put an end to the whole sorry affair.

2) A moderately sensible plot wouldn't go amiss

Bernard and Lenina conclude they must sort their wardrobe out before they can save the world

Children killing each other? Really? Why? Aldous Huxley's World Controllers wouldn't even consider such an utter waste of resources, relying on their infinitely more subtle ways of manipulation. Orwell's tyrants recognized that fear, suspicion and constant monitoring is all one needs to keep the people down. With this, there's no need for such irresponsible, reality-TV-show inspired histrionics which, as the film demonstrates, have the opportunity of backfiring spectacularly. And don't you think that the parents would actually become more committed revolutionaries if their children were slain in the name of mass entertainment? The villainous Duke (Ralph Fiennes on top form) could only entrap Keira Knightley's eponymous Duchess with the threat of forbidding her from seeing her children. Once this threat was removed, I imagine she'd be perfectly happy to go skipping off into the sunset with Charles Grey, just as Suzanne Collins's would-be revolutionaries would then have nothing to hold back their efforts to bring down the Government.
Slightly silly plots are often a good thing. Slaughterhouse Five involved time travel and aliens, yet still managed to be a harrowing portrayal of the bombing of Dresden. Virginia Woolf's Orlando is deeply silly; the protagonist changes his/her sex halfway through for no identifiable reason, before living for hundreds of years with no one thinking this the least bit peculiar. How do these two texts get away with it while The -Hunger Games doesn't (apart from by being a lot better)? The difference is Vonnegut, Woolf and Huxley are all to some extent tongue-in-cheek, the reader is well aware that the author is delighting in being ever-so-slightly ridiculous. And yet they all portray a serious message about atrocities, gender and dystopian futures respectively. Orwell does take himself seriously, but then again Nineteen Eighty-Four had the solid grounding of the author's experience of Communist treachery during the Spanish Civil War, making much of the more elaborate aspects of the novel effectively allegorical. Until The Hunger Games stops taking itself so seriously (Harry Potter never seemed to in the earlier days), then perhaps it will have more success in broadcasting its vaguely Marxist message.

3) Get a better soundtrack (better still, turn it into a musical)

The Kaiser Chefs predict a riot

As I grimly braced myself for the ensuing cinematic torture that was The Hunger Games 2, I consoled myself with the fact that at least there'd be some decent songs in it. Coldplay had a solid contribution with the haunting Atlas (although fantastic verses give way to a weak chorus), and Ellie Goulding, Lorde and Of Monsters and Men had all chipped in. Imagine my horror when not one of these songs surfaced in the film itself. Why did these fabulous artists bother writing any of these numbers if no one was going to put them in the film they were singing about? All I got was the opening of Atlas in the credits, and as everybody knows, no one sticks around for the credits.
Baz Luhrman managed to include all of the songs sold as the Gatsby soundtrack into his film, and it clearly benefits from it (again, the point about not taking yourself too seriously stands, something Baz Luhrman can never be accused of). You can see the joyous delight Luhrman takes in cannibalizing pop culture in Moulin Rouge!. Gentlemen in top hats singing Nirvana; Jim Broadbent and Richard Roxburgh's hilarious rendition of Like a Virgin; what's not to love? Indeed, why is The Hunger Games not a musical? Jennifer Lawrence could sing The Winner Takes it All! The evil President Snow could sing "you say you want a revolution, we-ell you know/ We all wanna change the world"! One of the riot police, or whatever they are, could sing "Oooo, watching the people get lairy/ It's not very pretty I tell thee" in an admonishing tone! In fact, lets change the name from the stupidly bland Catching Fire to The Hunger Games: The People Get Lairy.
But if in their wisdom, the makers of The Hunger Games decide not to turn the third installment into an all-singing, all-dancing finale, they should at least take a leaf out of Submarine's and Into the Wild's book and include some atmospheric, but not intrusive, ditties.

Quickfire Reviews (Part 6)

This Is The End/ The World's End

Can James Franco's strange hand gestures combat apocalyptic tidings?

 By some strange coincidence (or perhaps as a premonition of our impending doom) two apocalyptic comedies have been released about a bunch of blokes coping badly with the end of days. This Is The End is undoubtedly the funniest, with a collection of debaucherous American actors facing God's final reckoning at James Franco's house (much of the humour consists of the protagonists knowingly mocking the egotistical nature of actors, more specifically, them). The vague plot involves Emma Watson wielding an axe, Jonah Hill undergoing an exorcism and Danny McBride founding a cult of cannibals. But whilst This Is The End unashamedly goes for the obvious laughs, The World's End seeks to win your heart by one of the most bizarre set ups in the history of cinema. It's another collaboration between Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, in which Pegg plays an alcoholic, egotistical failure of a man who, refusing to let go of the glory days of his adolescence, decides to revisit an unfinished pub crawl in his home town with four despairing friends. The beginning is almost painful to watch, with Pegg playing an utterly unlikeable character whose refusal to accept adulthood is more pathetic than funny. But in a shocking plot twist, the town has been taken over by robots with blue blood and it is up to the now drunken, slightly confused gang to save the world from invasion. The result is a decent send off to Edgar White's Three Flavours of Cornetto trilogy, although it's a shame that the chemistry between Frost and Pegg is only really capitalised upon at the film's climax, surprising being outstripped by Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel in the former film. So if your in the mood for a comedy about the end of the world (I often am), then This Is The End is your best option.

This Is The End 7/10
The World's End 6/10

Dear River/ The Civil Wars

John and Joy smolder as they think of sheep and banjos

Everybody loves a bit of folk (well maybe not everybody). But aside from Mumford and Sons, and their mini mes the Lumineers, which bands are likely to get you raving whilst sheering sheep in a desolate field in Scotland, if that is indeed what folk fans do? Fortunately, help is at hand. Emily Barker and her Red Clay Halo are back with Dear River, but for fans of her previous album Almanac, a melancholic and atmospheric tribute to traditional folk, this latest offering may be something of a surprise. Emily Barker is now something I never thought she'd be: loud. Indeed songs like Tuesday and Ghost Narrative almost call for head banging, which as we all know, is a bit odd if you were expecting something along the lines of Danny Boy. Barker and her entourage appear to be veering towards the marketable stereotype of madly-strumming-guitars-accompanying-massive-folk-sing-along that the Mumford and Sons have clung to. Nevertheless, Dear River captivates with its first song and is never short of memorable melodies. The same can be said for The Civil Wars eponymous second album, although it's a somewhat darker affair than Dear River. You get the feeling of the songs been set in some barmy small town American backwash, where our male and female vocalists John Paul White and Joy Williams boast about their sexual exploits in the rollicking I Had Me a Girl. In the surprisingly cheerful Oh Henry, Joy threatens the lecherous titular character with the alarming line "Don't you know that we don't need one more grave in this town?". But despite being slightly dangerous to be around, The Civil Wars deliver an impressive collection of songs, with the addition of a couple of atmospheric covers. So all in all, folk lovers should probably buy both, to while away the midnight hours whilst leaping round a camp fire roasting marshmallows on horseback (is that folk lovers or Boy Scouts?).

Dear River 8/10
The Civil Wars 8/10

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet/ Jacob's Room

Something very interesting occurs to the left of Virginia

So as I am such a cool person, I decided to compare modernist Jacob to postmodernist Jacob, or in normal terms a Virginia Woolf novel and a David Mitchell novel. Jacob's Room was Woolf's first experimental novel, and the seeds of Mrs Dalloway are clearly identifiable. But there are a lot of things wrong with it, the authorial presence seems uncertain at times with ill advised intrusions and her attempt to convey the meaningless of life through the idolatry of the silent Jacob begins to become "Jacob's heartbreak of the chapter" near the end. But nevertheless, there are those traditional details of character that make any Woolf novel sumptuous, and a bad Woolf novel is still a good work of fiction by any other standard. Whilst modernist Jacob is an enigma, postmodern Jacob is your likeable Everyman, desperately trying to hold on to moral standards in the immoral surroundings of the Japanese port of Deijma. The book is divided into three acts, which start off fairly sensible and end up utterly barmy. Of course it's all a comment on how we poor souls are being manipulated by advanced capitalism, with a particularly nasty villain and the theme of language, culture and their manipulation running through it. And although the central set-up of the evil monastery on the mountain is a little bit silly, it works out as a clever metaphor for women trapped in the expectations of modern day life. And at any rate, the historical backdrop is fascinating.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet 7/10
Jacob's Room 7/10