The Major Problems of The Hunger Games Films

In this I’ll be looking at the problems I have with The Hunger Games film series and how they could have been solved. I am aware that they are obviously based on books by Suzanne Collins but I have not read them, nor do I intend to read them. This is about the films and how they work as a series. If you’re a fan of the books, I will probably annoy you so be warned. Also, warning of the spoilers for the films.

In the series of films that is The Hunger Games, there some major issues with the direction of the story and some of the characters contained within them. Before we fully get into this, I will say that I do enjoy these films a fair deal. There is some great stuff contained within this series but some big, big issues stop them from becoming a great staple of the recent decade. There are about three main issues and they have some similar solutions but let’s just get on with it.

I like The Hunger Games about the same amount that I like The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. This is because they are the same film. With the minute differences sprinkled in, mostly at the end of the film, both pieces have the same plot and barely do any more character development that wasn’t already accomplished in the first. We have the main character, Katniss Everdeen, reluctantly taking on the task of competing in the Hunger Games representing District 12 while Peeta Mellark sits in the background and occasionally stares at Katniss. And as I said, I like these two. I just didn’t need to see the damn thing twice. The only good thing to come out of this repeat is the addition of a much better cast of characters in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Admittedly, most of the additional characters are due to having the need for them to be included so that they can fit the requirements in the two-parter final film. The only way this can be properly solved is by merging the two films into one. Most of the first film can be discarded with the only characters in the arena to keep being Katniss, Peeta, and Rue. You can transplant pretty much everything from the second film especially when you have that fantastic cast. The story is something you could go either way on. My personal favourite would be to have it so that this is still Katniss’ second Hunger Games, the only difference in the two films being that Rue is now in these games so that when she dies, the audience gets that connection to her that we get in the first film. This option obviously has the least amount that you would need to change around and allows the films to go deeper into the survivor’s guilt and PTSD elements they already touch on quite well. The other option, although my least favourite out of the two, would be to have this Hunger Games with Beetee, Wiress, Finnick, Johanna, Heavensbee and the rotating clock arena as Katniss’ first games. Although it means the film would have to do a lot more work in terms of setting up the ending of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and the impact she has on the citizens of Panem, it would help bring the audience into the world using Katniss as an equally clueless character about the Hunger Games like she is in the first film. You would still include Rue but again, I feel like they would need to massively increase the time that her and Rue spend together in order to make her death more impactful where as where the films are separated, you have that time of both films to deepen that sadness. Overall, it’s bizarre to me why they decided to repeat the same plot twice but there we are. Now we come to a very similar issue.

Oh dear, another film series around the 2010–2015 mark where they decided to split the last film into ‘Part 1’ and ‘Part 2’. Luckily the industry appeared to learn from this and at least made sure films change their title in order to hide this a bit more but this fiasco of a fad soured the ending of a couple of different franchises. The idea that any of these moves were to please the audience and give them more time to fully realise the work they were basing their films off of was absurd. Film companies simply hate the idea of having a long film and in their mind think that splitting it into two films makes it fine. But what you got in all of these scenarios was a film that could’ve been a well-developed three-hour piece of art get split into two, two-hour pieces where the first one is always incredibly slow and dull as they have to save all of the excitement, important plot points and big character moments for the final installation. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 was probably the worst offender out of them all — and yes, I am including The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1 in that statement. The eternity of the first Mockingjay film was setting up what they had done to Peeta. We had a small amount of backstory and lore update for District 13 and pushing Coin as an equal villain to Snow but aside from that and the introduction of characters like Coin and the film crew (fantastic casting again), most of the film consists of Prim’s cat running about and Katniss interacting with Gale which is a whole other point. The solution to this, as you may have guessed already, is the same as the last issue. Merge the films together. It’s simple and I’ll reiterate that it would be a lot more interesting a film if it was a solid three hour piece than the combined runtime of approximately four hours and twenty minutes. There’s not even much work to do when merging the two films. Most of Part 1 can be cut out and simplified. The question when it comes to merging the two Mockingjay films is where to put Peeta. You could keep him where he is in the story arc and have him go out with the crew after a bunch of treatment and him dealing with knowing what memories of Katniss are real and which have been fabricated by Snow and the Capitol. The other option would be to have the crew go out towards Snow’s mansion without Peeta and then have them come across him later on the film in order to give the impact of his re-appearance a more central placement in the film’s runtime. If they ran into him on the streets, then they have to wonder whether he’s been sent by Snow or whether he escaped himself which would create some nice tension between some of the characters in the squad. These changes in terms of where to place Peeta is a bit less clear to me. Either could work if given the care and attention the change would need but I’m not decided on which one I would have rather seen. Thankfully, this idea of splitting up films has pretty much disappeared due to the failure of every instance they tried it.

Then we come on to Gale Hawthorne. Without doubt, the most useless and pointless character in the entire franchise. And this is most certainly no hate directed towards Liam Hemsworth. The idea is to have a love triangle between Katniss, Peeta, and Gale but they fail at making this successful as they forgot to give Gale any kind of backstory or any character motivation other than ‘I look after her family I guess’. In the first couple of films they set him up quite nicely if he was the only love interest which I think is the main issue I have with Gale’s character. Peeta and Gale separately both have great potential as love interests if they were placed in the film without the other. But since both are shoehorned in as much as possible. Gale simply suffers and when choosing as a viewer which you would like to see end up with Katniss at the end, there is no other option beside Peeta. If Peeta was not in the film, you could have developed the relationship between Katniss and Gale as he struggles to understand what she went through in the Hunger Games and tries to help her the best he can. But since Peeta does exist and has some excellent character work himself, it is impossible for Gale to compete. Not only has Peeta been through the same experience as her, he also has his own horrific experience that Katniss struggles to help with. With these two different perspectives of the same character interactions, the points also go towards Katniss with Peeta over her with Gale. With the Gale storyline, we as the audience have also been through that experience with Katniss and therefore aren’t as sympathetic to Gale as he struggles to understand. Where as, with Peeta, not only has she been through an experience with him, we also don’t see any of Peeta’s experience as he underwent the brainwashing by the Capitol so we are much more in Katniss’ shoes and can sympathise with her magnitudes higher than we ever could with Gale. The solution to me is simple. Keep Gale simply as a platonic friend that struggles to understand her experience in the Hunger Games and keep Katniss’ full romantic focus placed onto Peeta. It would put Gale further back when it comes to character importance but I feel it would service the story and its characters far more if focus was taken away from the potential romantic relationship between him and Katniss.

And those were the three major problems with The Hunger Games Film franchise. There are a number of small things about the films that keep it back but I wanted to emphasise these three and again state that these are some good films that are worth a re-watch every once in a while. But they could have potentially reached much higher heights. Trust me.

I thought we’d agreed never to lie to each other.

-Boad