it felt like they just didn't care

Why do you say that? There were a lot of choices made to avoid showing direct dealing of more visceral violence on the kids, just the aftereffects. Why wouldn't this be another example?

Reading the page of differences between book and movie, it made me feel like the changes were really trivial, more than I did after having watched it, but I guess it's because they left out stuff like the shifted focus on certain characters (way more Seneca Crane this way--I was thinking they'd undersold his murder, but now I'm reminded it's much more in your face than in the books) and focussed on things that were easy to put in a table.

I did miss the Avox, though. I thought that really showed what sort of control by force the Capitol was exerting over the Districts. It's not like the movie makes it look like happy fun times, but a clear divide between the makes and the makes not was really driven home by that little subplot.

It kind of explains why the Districts are as numb as they are. I've seen some people asking why they don't fight back more, why all of them don't train their kids, not just Districts 1 and 2.

And I'm not sure how/if they could have worked it in with the way they had them react in the movie, but I did like that District 11 sent Kat bread. It was a big gesture from people who had little. But what happened in the movie was one of the most touching points for me anyway, so I'd just be asking for more, not instead of.

Okay, I really had to edit that page for grammar and spelling. How do people not do that?

ita, my reaction to the disjointed fight scenes comes from sad experience dealing with tyro authors who don't bother to choreograph their own fight scenes. And who readily admit that they just don't know how to do it, but cry foul when you point out that then they should do a little research.

When you've got a reasonable budget so that you can put together a hit movie, you should be able to get good resources to put something presentable together, if you care.

OTOH, what we're seeing may be the result of a deliberate editign job by the studio after the fact, in which case I suppose I should be grateful the movie holds together as well as it does.

What does the author have to do with the movie fight choreography? Not that I have any issues with the choreography--I can't tell if it was good or bad. It's the editing I didn't like.

In a movie where they went to the trouble of making sure that Jennifer Lawrence's bow work was good, why do you think we're dealing with tyros?

I also don't think that a deliberate choice to edit a fight scene so you can't see what's happening clearly has any bearing on whether or not the movie as a whole hangs together well. I'm not even sure it's the same skillsets, even if it is the same motivation at play (which I don't see a rationale for--one is don't get an R, one is to tell a story).

First, the "author" I'm talking about is for writing stories, in writing workshops and beta-ing that I've personally encountered, not this movie.

(I had no problem with Collins' fight scenes in the books -- she gave adequate weight and description to the raison d'etre of the plot.)

I guess it seems to me that in a plot like this, the fighting matters, because it's an important part of who the characters are, and what they're defined by. Good fight choreography -- as opposed to good fighting -- informs us to the characters and their relation to the plot.

Not to mention that it seems weird to me to hide the brutality that is at the root of the themes of the original narrative. There is so much violence (framed within the games and outside of it) that to back down from showing some of it is a bit off-putting to me.

Lost in Space is on the cable TV. Wow, there are a whole bunch of people in this movie who are badly, badly miscast.

What pisses me off about that movie was that there was a part that was obviously written specifically for Bill Mumy, but they cast someone else in it.

I guess I don't understand how you can see enough of the fight choreography to say that the fights were put together apathetically. How could you tell, through the cinematography and the editing? And then I don't see why the choices made for the fights would have a bearing on the ability to tell the rest of the story. Those are kinda different skillsets.

It doesn't seem weird to me to hide it, since the movie's success probably hinges on the precise balance of brutality. I think we saw one death blow land, if memory serves, and one neck being broken. Everything else happened out of frame, however horrible it was implied to have been. Hiding this sustained violence, at the hands of or being dealt to our heroes--I totally see why they made it vague.

I just think they did it poorly.

Box Office Shocker: 'Hunger Games' Third Best Opening Weekend of All Time:

Lionsgate's book-to-film adaptation grosses a staggering $155 million, shattering records and surpassing any "Twilight" pic; overseas, "Hunger Games" opens to $59.3 million for a worldwide total of $214.3 million.

Suck it, Twilight!