he broke his neck in the book.

Ah, well, good for him.

I found this list of differences between the book and the movie. Lots of little things I'd forgotten, and a few bits where I prefer the movie.

Book: District 12's pouch with Peeta's medicine was orange.
Movie: The bag was grey.

OMG BLASPHEMY.

OMG BLASPHEMY.

True, but I did think when I saw that scene that the book had made a big deal about the size of the packs and how it would be easy for someone else to grab Peeta's because it was so small. That is something they could have done easily and, while much of the audience might not notice or care, others might wonder about big packs and think about what it was the others needed, you know?

Wait, the backpack Katnis got at the beginning was orange. Was the second backpack orange as well?

Oh, I was thinking of the later ones. But I did also notice that the first one wasn't orange in the movie. Don't know why that stuck in my head from the book when so little else seemingly did.

I was bummed that the night-vision glasses got left out of the movie.

Is this stuff "plot-related"? Should we be spoiler-fonting?

I noticed the change in the color of Katniss's bag and the uniform sizes of the 4 bags by the cornucopia. Because this is the shit that sticks in my brain. Thanks, brain.

I was surprised that the "Voice of God" announcements weren't more polished, especially the "there can be only one winner" one.

I need to go back and read the berries scene again, because it felt like Katniss showed her hand too much in the dialogue, which is somewhat understandable, as we don't get her internal monologue, but I was internally yelling at her to shut up about her thought processes, since they were being filmed with, you know, audio.

Debet, I felt the same way about the Voice of God announcements! They felt so...dull. I always heard them with far more fanfare in my head.

And I wish the berries scene had gone on longer. I thought that it took Katniss longer to come up with the idea, but I reread the scene in the book, and the timing is about the same, actually. I think because they compressed the Peeta-berries-Foxface thing, though, that it seemed too quick in the movie.

My Hunger Games review. LJ just introduced a new spoiler tag, so you can click at the end to magically make all the spoilery stuff appear!

So I saw the movie last night with Beau and I am still trying to process my reaction in light of all of your own and Beau's. This is long. So apologies.

Beau did not read the book. He had a very negative reaction to the movie. I see his points actually about what he didn't like in the film, but I liked the film more (but was still a bit disappointed in some elements of the film). Beau equates HG with HP:HBP (which is a movie I really disliked). Beau hadn't read that book either and thought HBP is a better movie than HG.

Which seems like extreme blasphemy to me. Now for the spoilers.

Some things I liked:

I really really liked the actor who played Peeta. I took one look at him and wrote.him.off. By the end of the movie, I was totally in his court. That said the dialogue with Katniss and Peeta in the cave was some of the cheesiest shit EVER. I thought I got dropped into ABC Family all of the sudden. Not cool.

Like Debet, I also saw this movie in a theater with a gaggle of pre-teens/early teens and I could hear girls giggling through out! I nearly lost my mind. They did an "aww" during the scenes we see Gale looking at the tv when Katniss was kissing Peeta. Really? Oh, I guess I no longer remember what it was like to be 14.

I think what I have reconciled is that I really liked seeing a book I enjoyed on screen. Generally speaking, many parts of the film were close enough to my mental image that I did not experience much dissonance. I found, on that level, that I really liked the film. However, as someone who read the book, I am not sure I think this movie stands alone. It is always true that movies lose some subtlety in adaptation, but I feel like too much subtlety was lost.

Beau didn't really come away from the film understanding the story the way most of us do. For example, he really didn't see Katniss as strong. He said: she only killed 2 people! Which I suppose is objectively true, but that is not what I thought reading the book. We saw more of her internal struggle and her growth, and what a survivor she was. He focused on how much help she needed to complete her goals (and in that way, she is not different from Harry Potter!). So I'm wondering if the marketing of the movie for the non-readers was misleading?

He also was pretty appalled by the lack of screen time for Thresh and he thought that Rue should have been more cutthroat. Like try to cut her when Katniss hugged her. He couldn't believe she died saying she wanted the pretty White girl to win. Since we had more exposure to the characters in the book, it did not come out like that to me when reading, but I can see that point of view in the movie. We didn't see that they formed a relationship and that kids survived by forming alliances. We also didn't see Rue's true talents in detail.

Beau also did not get that the arena is in a dome (or similar structure). He thought Panem had the technology to create a forest fire storm WHEREVER. So he did not get the technological disconnect and that it takes a lot of effort and planning to booby trap a defined space. So he was not impressed with the society as depicted because it seemed too close to our own.

Oh and btw, guess who his favorite character was? Effie. He said that Cinna came off as a pedophile!

Seriously. I am not sure that a lot of people who haven't read the book would experience the movie this way, but Beau certainly did.

Oh: one of the things I liked the absolute least about the movie were the hand-to-hand combat scenes. WTF was up with the filming of that? Worst fight direction. Ever.