Can We Finally Get Some Oscars for This Franchise, Please?
"The Hunger Games" films as a set are fascinating to me because they are one of the few film adaptations I felt were UNDER-hyped.
Like, "Catching Fire" is one of the most brilliant adaptations of YA literature I've ever seen. The direction is tight, the script is ruthless, the casting is pitch-perfect, the cinematography is luscious and pretty much everything else about the film and its brethren serves only to elevate the source material. And the original books by Suzanne Collins weren't garbage by any means. "The Hunger Games" gets some flack for being a rip-off of "Battle Royale" or similar cult classics, but the execution of an admittedly old story is superb; three books and four movies use the standard YA framework to examine our cultural views of dystopia, entertainment and revolution.
And yet, the fourth and final film was just released and I have heard NO buzz about it.
What happened? Just a few years ago it was impossible to escape news about "The Hunger Games". "Mockingjay Part 2" still cleaned up at the box office, but its opening weekend grossed lower than any of the previous films, a rarity for a long-running series like this. Did it simply suffer from sequel fatigue? Or are we as audience members tuning out to this type of film altogether?
Like, "Catching Fire" is one of the most brilliant adaptations of YA literature I've ever seen. The direction is tight, the script is ruthless, the casting is pitch-perfect, the cinematography is luscious and pretty much everything else about the film and its brethren serves only to elevate the source material. And the original books by Suzanne Collins weren't garbage by any means. "The Hunger Games" gets some flack for being a rip-off of "Battle Royale" or similar cult classics, but the execution of an admittedly old story is superb; three books and four movies use the standard YA framework to examine our cultural views of dystopia, entertainment and revolution.
And yet, the fourth and final film was just released and I have heard NO buzz about it.
What happened? Just a few years ago it was impossible to escape news about "The Hunger Games". "Mockingjay Part 2" still cleaned up at the box office, but its opening weekend grossed lower than any of the previous films, a rarity for a long-running series like this. Did it simply suffer from sequel fatigue? Or are we as audience members tuning out to this type of film altogether?
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