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!

The Mary Sue was just positing that there should have been commercials during Hunger Games, since it is the media event of the year in Panem. I find the idea fascinating.

Like this one?