Some science fiction fizzles at the box office or fails to capture the public's imagination. In some cases, they simply miss their mark with audiences. Tron didn't find an audience until decades later. Despite spectuacular effects, John Carter failed because viewers did not buy the life-on-Mars premise. The Hunger Games' novel and movie, a futuristic gladiator fight-to-the-death, hits it mark because readers/viewers want to think about the premise--that injustice surrounds us and pervades our way of life.
While people struggle to survive in District 12, a fence prohibits inhabitants from hunting in gathering the fertile meadow beyond the enclosure. Hunting with a bow and arrow or simply owning a weapon is strictly forbidden. Other districts are wealthy but they offer no help to the coal-mining district.
Even more disturbing are the gladiator-like games that happen randomly. The lottery system in which tributes are chosen for the games may remind readers of two things, the short story "The Lottery," and the system for choosing soldiers for the Vietnam conflict.
The novel is a critique of war and the effects of war. Perhaps even more than this it is a critique of the war machine, the military-industrial complex that profits from the wars.
The soldiers sent to war and the tributes chosen for games have ceded control. They are pawns. Everything that the tributes do is controlled. Balls of fire or other diversions will force them together to fight or force them apart.
Where is the resistance movement you might wonder? The Capitol and the government of Pandem are evil forces and sadly the winners become collaborators with the blood-thirsty Capitol by training the next batch of tributes.
Katniss does engage in small acts of rebellion. She places flowers around Rue that shows she mourned for her. She refuses to participate in an unexpected rule change that would pit her against Peeta.
I wonder: did you see the review on CNN that compared Hunger Games and John Carter?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cnn.com/2012/03/27/opinion/seymour-hunger-games-john-carter/
I have not seen either one, but most of the people I know who have seen John Carter praised it as a good sci-fi adventure flick, and a very good adaptation of the Barsoom books it's based on. To be fair, most of those anecdotal reviews come from people who are fans of old-time pulp SF, and therefore already know who "John Carter" is. Do you think that the movie itself is a failure, or that its lackluster box office performance is due to bad marketing? I wonder if, like Tron, it might have a productive "afterlife" in the video market. Burrough's books about John Carter on Mars continue to sell, a century after their introduction.
I haven't seen the Hunger Games either, but I enjoyed the book (just as, years ago, I enjoyed the Barsoom books.) I found the book's description of the travails of Katniss's home district to be very reminiscent of the stories I've heard about life in the Great Depression. I like your observation about living with injustice. When I read the book, I got caught up in the viewpoint of the main character and did not think about "big picture" issues.
What did you think of the actress who played Katniss? Based on her performance in "Winter's Bone", I'd think her nearly a perfect fit for the role.
I'm going to see both movies and see what I think of them.
Good questions. I have not read the Barsoom books or watched Winter's Bone. I will have to think about doing both.
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