S01E01 — The Hunger Games
SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for every book in the original Hunger Games trilogy. We do not discuss or spoil the prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
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Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.
In our pilot episode, our family of four introduces the podcast and discusses The Hunger Games.
Our primary focus is the major changes from book to its film adaptation, but we also discuss fascinating trivia about the book and film.
Listen to the other episodes on works in The Hunger Games:
Final Verdicts
If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)
Our consensus? The Hunger Games is one of our all-time favorite books. While we each enjoyed the film’s visual adaptation, we struggled a bit with the shaky cam, sanitization of the grittier parts of the book, and some of the characters that got cut.
In the end, we agree that the depth of characterization and detail made the book a slightly better experience.
Tim: The book is better
Donna: The book is better
Rebekah: The book is better
Josiah: The book is better
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Full Episode Transcript
Prefer reading? Check out the full episode transcript below. It’s AI-generated from our audio, and if we’re being honest… no one sat to read the entire thing for accuracy. (After all, we were there the whole time.) 😉 We’re sorry in advance for any typos or transcription errors.
[00:00:00] Rebekah: The book is better. The book might be better. The book is always better. Maybe sometimes the movie is better. Okay, that seems a little extreme. I think
[00:00:13] Josiah: that’s a great introduction.
[00:00:14] Rebekah: Welcome
to The Book is Better. We are an audio only podcast. And we talk about book to film adaptations and complain, you know, well, in my case, about the fact that I prefer reading because I always get mad when I see the movie. And yeah, this is going to be an episode that contains spoilers for all of The Hunger Games franchise, except Songbirds and Snakes.
Today we’re going to be reviewing the first Hunger Games book [00:01:00] and first Hunger Games film. And speaking of spoilers, I actually have not read a ballad of songbirds and snakes. So we’ll maybe talk about that at some point in the future. We are a clean podcast, but we will probably talk about some darker themes from time to time, especially when we’re you know, reviewing such a dystopian IP and Yeah, from there, I’ll just let you know who I am.
My name is Rebecca. I am the daughter slash sister of the group, and I’m the oldest sibling, which obviously makes me the best sibling, as you all in the room know and are familiar with. So I am an adoptive mom of two boys married to the love of my life. And I live out in the mountains of East Tennessee.
My day job is running a digital marketing agency that we founded about four years ago. And in my spare time, I sing and I play the piano and I play the guitar and I play Dungeons and Dragons. And I’m [00:02:00] basically a huge… Nerd. Just like a really big one. So today I figured we could all introduce ourselves with a fun fact that tells what our favorite book to film adaptation is.
But my favorite book to film adaptation is actually The Martian. I think The Martian is one of those that does a really good job of capturing the character and the things they cut don’t feel like They were super important to the story, and I just adore, like, the sarcastic, science nerdy stuff. So, that is me.
Josiah, do you wanna?
[00:02:35] Josiah: So, I’m T. Josiah Haynes. Should I say group? Or family? Say family. I’m T. Josiah Haynes. People call me Josiah. Some people still call me TJ. And I am the brother slash son of the family. And I live around Nashville. I do a lot of theater, and I write, and I compose, and I also work for the [00:03:00] company that Rebecca mentioned previously.
I don’t know what else to say besides my favorite book to movie adaptation. You are a published author. I’m a published author, yeah. I didn’t want to boast. Well,
[00:03:14] Rebekah: we’ll
[00:03:14] Josiah: boast for you. So okay, boast for
[00:03:17] Rebekah: me. You’re a published author of The Heirs of History, A Nation from Nothing, and what’s the second one?
The second one is Ruins on the River.
[00:03:24] Josiah: Ruins on the River, that’s right. I’m editing the third one, and I’m writing the fourth one.
[00:03:29] Rebekah: Available on
[00:03:30] Donna: Amazon. Check them out.
[00:03:33] Josiah: Very exciting, very exciting.
[00:03:34] Rebekah: We’re also this weekend getting to see a musical comedy production that T. Josiah in fact wrote and composed, composed, I don’t think, that’s not a word wrote, composed all the music for and is directing in Nashville.
So, yeah. Pretty exciting.
[00:03:51] Josiah: It’s at a relatively small theater. for for a small theater. Boy, have we had some big audiences. So we’re very excited [00:04:00] about that. Been very well received. Yeah, very well received. A lot of all star cast. So I’m very excited about that. But about book to movie adaptations, I really like a lot because I books are long and hard to read and movies are much more consumable.
But I have, you know, a few runners up. If you, did you guys see 2019’s Little Women? I thought that was an ex I did not see it. I did not see
[00:04:26] Rebekah: that. I hate everything set in the past. Okay.
[00:04:29] Donna: So I didn’t see it.
[00:04:30] Josiah: Okie dokie
[00:04:32] Tim: then. Oh, go for the historical books
[00:04:34] Josiah: then. I loved 2019’s Little Women. I thought that 2021’s Dune was the best adaptation you could make of Dune.
Not that it was perfect, but it was the best that could possibly be done. I also think the Shinings, both the book and movies, are great for what they are, even though, as adaptation, the movie is not really an adaptation of the book. But they’re both great. [00:05:00] But I think, and I, I, again, Also, hope I don’t steal anyone’s, but, I mean, my favorite is the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Yeah, I, I hope I didn’t steal from you, but… You may have. Well, I’ll, you know, I’ll save some for, you are more, you are much more of an expert at the books than I am, but I’m, I think that the movies are better than the books. I think a lot of people think the books are these untouchable masterpieces, but I go back and read the books and I think, oh, this is great for the time.
This… Set up a whole Genre of fantasy and I respect it for that but as far as like consuming it nowadays. I think the movies Are amazing they hold up really well epic the characters. I was re watching them very recently And the characters are so much fun. And it’s almost a cliche at this point of every Dungeons Dragons [00:06:00] campaign is based on this fellowship that goes out on a grand quest to save the world or something.
And it’s all from Lord of the Rings. And it’s insane that everything is based off of Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings books, but the movies really do a great job of adapting on the material. What you’re
[00:06:18] Rebekah: telling me is this podcast existing is probably going to mean that I finally have to read the Lord of the Rings books and watch the movies again by choice.
They
[00:06:27] Josiah: are. That’s what I would say. They are surprisingly short for such long
[00:06:31] Donna: movies. Yes. Yes.
[00:06:33] Josiah: Okay. That coming from me being my favorite books are the Game of Thrones books, which all three Lord of the Rings. books probably fit into one of the Game of Thrones books.
[00:06:43] Rebekah: They do have good audiobooks that Lord of the Rings has just released, so.
Yeah. Anyway, mom, would you like to go next? Sure. My name
[00:06:51] Donna: is Donna Haines and I’m the mom, wife. That’s out of chronological. Let’s go back. I’m the wife mom [00:07:00] of the family and my secular job in the, in the real world of 8 to 5 is a man, an AP manager at a manufacturing company. Which I love, and it’s crazy, nerdy desk work, but I get fulfillment
[00:07:18] Rebekah: out of it.
You find it riveting, which I think is what matters.
[00:07:21] Donna: Yes, I love it. My children would never work for me. So, other than that, my life is really about enjoying my family and enjoying my husband. We love the empty nest. We loved our kids and loved when they were with us. But I was so thankful to still be with my best friend when, when they flew the coop and went off on their own.
So we still kind of
[00:07:51] Josiah: live a, they love one another. We kind
[00:07:53] Donna: of live a little bit of a honeymoon still,
[00:07:57] Rebekah: and it is literally just as [00:08:00] sickeningly sweet as they’re making it sound. And it’s funny
[00:08:03] Donna: because I’m not a sappy person and there’s a few love story things I like, but really, the one thing about. The Lord of the Rings movies that I much prefer over the books is that they emphasize expounded on the relate the the love triangle between Aragorn, Arwen, and Eowyn.
Eowyn and Arwen. Yes, and I just thought that added a little bit of lightness, even though it was a serious, they were all in serious parts of the arts, I like that it was, it added some lightness to a very serious sober thing that was going on. So anyway, I thought that’s pretty cool.
[00:08:48] Josiah: Is
[00:08:48] Donna: that your favorite?
It’s not my favorite book to movie. Oh, no, my favorite book to movie adaptation is one we will never do because I will, I will never watch the movie again, [00:09:00] but it’s the exorcist. And when I was, I read the books when I was a young teenager, which why I did that, I don’t know, but I read them. I read the books several times.
It was riveting and I understand now that I did that because. I have a fascination with understanding why people do what they do. So that’s my, that’s a lot of what we talk about here, I’m sure I’ll harp on that. I want to understand why the writer had the characters do those things. And why, if those people were real, that, that we’re talking about, why would they carry something out the way that the movie takes them or the way that the
[00:09:42] Josiah: book takes them?
I definitely don’t think you’re alone in that. I mean, so many true crime shows and podcasts, I think, are predicated on audiences. Wanting to know
[00:09:51] Tim: like that,
[00:09:53] Rebekah: isn’t true crime, like be top podcast genre or something.
[00:09:57] Josiah: So, so how many, how many true crime [00:10:00] books do we have?
[00:10:00] Donna: Maybe a couple, but I would, I think that, that.
Understanding or that curiosity is always peak for me. The other thing I like is I want to found, I want to find profound. Things in not in fictional writing. I love to look for profound principles Whether they’re a Christian principle or a religious principle or just a life principle I want to find that thing and I want to see how that how it applies and how they Use
[00:10:38] Josiah: it in
[00:10:38] Tim: the movie.
So the first Matrix movie was your favorite that you got lots of different quotes from that. Yeah,
[00:10:44] Donna: we could spend weeks on that one.
[00:10:46] Rebekah: I think my mom’s like one of your quotes from my whole life that I remember is there’s a sermon in that like every time we’re watching something or whatever. Yeah. Dad, would you like to share more?
[00:10:56] Tim: Which I am the best friend. And I’m also a pastor. [00:11:00] So the fact that there’s always a sermon in that is something that we share.
[00:11:04] Josiah: The metaphorical best friend. Yes, I am
[00:11:07] Tim: the best friend, the husband, and the dad. And the grandfather. So my name is Tim. And I enjoy, I enjoy being with family. I in my life, my biggest goals were to get married and to have children.
I wanted to be a husband and I wanted to be a father. Those were my biggest goals in life. And I reached those. Succeeded! Woohoo! I’m very grateful for that. So, it’s a, it’s a great thing for me. As far as what I do I’m a pastor, I’ve, I’ve done a lot of other things. I thoroughly enjoy teaching. I think that it’s important for people to get something and to be able to understand it from what you, from what you say.
So my writing I want to be understandable, and in my speaking I like to try to [00:12:00] take complicated things and break them down. So people can, can get the complicated concept in a simpler way. I, I really like that. My favorite book to movie adaptation is The Lord of the Rings. That’s as a teenager and a young adult, I read The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
I was less impressed with The Hobbit but I read The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Many, many times and was so excited when the, the movies were being made and so afraid that they were going to be terrible because the books are massive as far as the scope of what they cover and the number of characters they cover, but I love the adaptation and it was It was a case where the things they took out, the characters they removed, the storylines that they changed, worked for the whole feel of, of the movie and of the book.
I feel like the [00:13:00] feel was what you wanted. I don’t have to have a happy ending for a book, but for me to like a book or a movie, I need to have a satisfying ending. I have watched some things and read some things over the years that did not have a satisfying ending. It’s like, wow, I’m so glad I wasted all that time.
To get to this point, but it doesn’t have to be a happy ending, it does have to be a satisfying ending.
[00:13:29] Rebekah: I know you all looked at me, it’s not that everything has to be happy for me, I like the bow at the end, it is kind of a running Joke in my family that I do only like happy endings, but that is also not true.
I am the same way I like a satisfying ending. So today we’re going to talk about what comes in as a close second for me in terms of book to film Adaptations that are my favorite which is The Hunger Games. So like I said this episode We’re gonna focus on just the [00:14:00] first Hunger Games book and movie And in subsequent episodes, we’ll cover the other two pieces of the original trilogy so I’m gonna give you a quick rundown of the plot, like, in case it’s been a while since you’ve seen it or read it or whatever, and then we’ll jump into next, like, what are some of the major differences between the two.
So, The Hunger Games is a dystopian novel set in the far future. They do mention at the beginning that it is in what used to be called North America. They’re now in a country called Panem, and Panem, as far as we know, is the only thing that exists, at least within the confines of the trilogy here. And the main character, Katniss, volunteers to go in The Hunger Games.
for her sister, Prim, when her sister is reaped. The Hunger Games is a yearly pageant where two tributes from each of the 12 districts are sent in. They’re between the ages of 12 and 18. They’re sent into a game [00:15:00] where essentially 23 of them kill or die kill one another or die in some other way. And At the end, the tribute that wins the games is bathed in riches and their district is honored and stuff like that.
Katniss is, what do you say?
[00:15:18] Donna: As if that’s all. Yeah,
[00:15:19] Rebekah: as if that’s actually what happens. Yeah. And so Katniss is reaped or her sister Prim, sorry, is reaped. She volunteers to go in instead and she goes into the arena with Peta, a boy with whom she had very little interaction beforehand, but it turns out to have been in love with her the whole time.
So the two of them go into the games, they split off at first Katniss is incredibly adept at archery and foraging and etc. She ends up befriending little Rue who is killed by one of the career tributes. The careers are the ones that are essentially trained up from birth, kind of in a way they’re not really supposed to be but they usually win the games because they’re more fit and well [00:16:00] fed and trained and all those things.
They’re preferred districts. Right. And The game makers in the middle of the games changed the rule to say that instead of only one tribute winning that two tributes from the same district can win. Katniss and Peeta reconnect in the arena. They have an on screen love story that for Katniss is really just a play to survive, which is fair, it’s the whole thing.
point is survival. And at the end of the games, the game makers try to change their minds. Peeta and Katniss essentially threaten to pull a Romeo and Juliet. And right on the moment that they were going to consume some poison berries, the game makers call out and say that they can indeed win.
And the game, or excuse me, the book essentially, and movie, end with them being crowned victors and arriving home, at which point. PETA realizes that Katniss is not indeed in love with him and Katniss finds out that PETA is genuinely crazy about [00:17:00] her. And so that is where we leave it in the, in the trilogy.
So, why don’t we talk about some of the things that stuck out as like big differences from book to film? For
[00:17:13] Tim: me one of the things that, that I have is in order for the, for the book to become palatable for a larger audience. As a movie I think that the movie obscures the severity of the capital subjugation of the districts.
In the, in the book, I think that’s more evident, they’re, they’re more, you know, they live in more squalid conditions, even than the, than the movie shows. They look like they’re death warmed over, barely surviving.
[00:17:47] Rebekah: She describes people from the scene where she’s, Katniss is from, as being like, like so starved that you can see bones and they’re all tiny.
[00:17:55] Donna: Barely surviving. And even at one point, she says. [00:18:00] In the, when, I think during, in the winter, it’s not unusual to be walking through and someone be just laying or up against a house or, or what, however she describes it, frozen to death, they, they just died of starvation and froze. And
[00:18:16] Tim: that’s all because the Capitol has absolute control over the district.
And the reason is because after, after the war, That the Capitol won, you know, after that war, they came up with the games as a reminder to the districts. We are the ones that won and you are under our absolute control. So you will give us two of your children to kill. every year and you’ll watch it.
[00:18:46] Rebekah: Yeah.
I mean, I think it also reminds me of the the other thing that sticks out as soon as the movie begins for me is like, and I think, again, this is just like to make something more. [00:19:00] Like you said, palatable really another thing that sticks out is how like Katniss like Katniss didn’t shave her legs Katniss said her hair was always like knotted and her mom like braided it for the reaping that one day You put the hair
[00:19:14] Donna: on her legs?
The hair on her head Okay I need to make sure They
[00:19:21] Tim: might have been able to braid the hair on her legs
[00:19:23] Donna: She did refer to it as like A layer that kept her warm. Oh, yeah. How did the boys get to keep that? And she had to lose it
[00:19:30] Rebekah: in the arena. She’s bathing in that first scene or whatever. And you’re like, she has shaved legs.
That doesn’t actually line up. But I agree. I think you’re right. There is definitely poverty in District 12 that you can see in the movie, but I think it was toned down. It
[00:19:44] Josiah: feels, well, I think that, I mean, we’ll talk about the shaky cam, but there are a lot of things that the filmmakers do to make District 12 feel like West Virginia.
It’s be, and it makes me [00:20:00] think that nowadays West Virginia is not the most economically stimulated place. So I almost felt like it’s just modern day West Virginia instead of subjugated West Virginia.
[00:20:14] Rebekah: It did kind of look to me the first time I saw the movie like, Oh, this is West Virginia like 30 years ago, but not that long.
Just
[00:20:22] Tim: impoverished, not necessarily subjugated.
[00:20:24] Rebekah: And we should say, so we don’t sound like terrible people, we literally, like, my, our mom was born in West Virginia. And we all, I grew up there, essentially, you lived there. Obviously, we were all there for about what, eight, nine years when I was little and then a few years before that.
So we we call ourselves West Virginians. So we’re not just insulting anyone. It
[00:20:43] Donna: looks familiar. Pictures of pictures I have of dads. This town, the town where my dad grew up and even like their pictures of their town, pictures of their high school, around their high school and businesses downtown [00:21:00] looked a lot like this.
They could have all fit in the picture. And it is. It’s a mining, it’s mining towns. mining towns are the way the seams described. That’s, that’s legit.
[00:21:10] Tim: Coal dust does get everywhere. Yes, it’s. Everything. You don’t get away from it. We lived near a coal town and.
[00:21:18] Rebekah: You say near, it was like 45 minutes away.
[00:21:21] Josiah: Well, but. I drive. But
[00:21:23] Tim: if you drove through it. It was always, there was always this grayness to everything. Just a little layer everywhere. The bricks were a little gray, you know, different than you would see in other
[00:21:36] Josiah: places. When I was first viewing the movie, especially the first time through, but every time, I was a teenager when I read the books, saw the movies, and I didn’t have a lot of experience with book to movie adaptations, so I was very unpleasantly surprised.
When maybe, was it PG or PG 13, the movie?
[00:21:56] Rebekah: It was, all, all four movies were PG 13. Okay. Well,
[00:21:59] Josiah: I was a [00:22:00] little surprised at the wounds, at the scars, that the injuries were not as severe as they are in the books. And I guess they sanitized them for a PG 13 rating and for a wider audience, so as not to horrify 13 year olds that came to the theater.
Are these
[00:22:18] Tim: considered young adult books?
[00:22:20] Rebekah: Yeah, they’re young adult fiction They’re in the young adult fiction section. Like if you go to the bookstore
[00:22:25] Josiah: young adult is 13 to 18 Yeah,
[00:22:29] Rebekah: it is interesting though because seeing something on a page about like something happening like that is Definitely different than seeing it depicted like the visual aspect does Make it a little harder to that.
That was actually one of the major criticisms, though, of like what critics had to say, like the film was, it had pretty good ratings and stuff. But in general, a lot of critics said that it was obvious that they wanted a broader audience, because in general, like the movie should have been rated R for a [00:23:00] number of reasons, really, but like the violence being the most like significant reason.
And so toning a lot of that down. was kind of one of the only things that people had to say, like, pretty negatively about the movie in general. But I thought one of the things that stuck out to me in relation to that was like PETA. First of all, when he, I know we’re not like going chronologically through the movie, PETA was stabbed by Kato in the leg and obviously developed this infection.
When Katniss like discovers him in the book, he is like near death. He is. deliriously fevered, like very, very, very ill. And obviously they have the, I don’t know why I said obviously like four times. He’s very ill. He’s able to get medicine when Hamish sends it to them. But at the end of it, like after he’s recovered from that in the last fight scene, like with the mutts and everything, he is like.
It I think they open the wound again or something. I’d have to go back and look at it. She Katniss puts [00:24:00] a tourniquet on his leg. He ends up having his leg amputated And I think I read that like the original reason they didn’t do the leg amputation was because they would have to CGI The fake leg in future movies and like couldn’t justify the budget not knowing how successful it would be.
But like he was all both of mostly him, but they were both incredibly badly injured in the final fight. And none of that is really reflected,
[00:24:26] Tim: right? She threw from the explosion. She never hears out of that ear again.
[00:24:31] Rebekah: Well, they fix it in the Capitol after the games are over. So she does lose, that’s another major change.
She lost all the hearing in her left ear, which like affected her hunting and stuff. I didn’t
[00:24:40] Tim: remember, I didn’t remember
[00:24:41] Rebekah: them fixing it. Because in the second book, that’s what she says. She can hear the force field from when the Capitol fixed her ear. That’s how she uses the excuse.
[00:24:50] Donna: I remember to the emotional toll that this brings.
Of course they cover it, you see [00:25:00] it. And as you go through the 4th movies, you, you see it more and more people and how they process all this, but you find out very quickly once, once you get started into it, I guess this 1st movie, you don’t see as much of it and the, the book as well, but you realize that being a victor really just means you become a capital tool.
So you’re not really going to be able to live in this life of luxury. You’re living in a luxurious house in your district and you have some possessions that, you know, you have monetary possessions, but to get to that, the level of depravity you have to see and that you have to partake in, I think is something that would be very difficult.
To capture super realistically, you can capture it and they did their best. I think they [00:26:00] did probably about as good as they could do with Jennifer Lawrence taking that taking Katniss’s character into this horrible dark place. She had to live in, but we were just just watching the movie recently. I noticed in the scene where she goes off to blow up the food, goes back to find Rue.
And then Rue gets killed and she Katniss kills Marvel at, where she blows up the food, you see Kato come in and get mad at this little dude that’s helping them. The boy from 7, I think? The districts that’s just watching over him.
[00:26:45] Josiah: But in the book, in
[00:26:46] Tim: the book he was from 3 and he’s probably the one that actually was able to.
Make the mines yellow. That’s right. He, because he was from a techno, technological
[00:26:57] Donna: district. But they just kind of used him as [00:27:00] this little, not really important. They knew they’d end up, he was going to end up dying. But you see Kato just take his head and snap it. He falls to the ground. She runs back to look for Rue.
Can’t, can’t, can’t get to, can’t find her. Their, their signals of the Mockingjays are not working. She hears her voice, runs to her. Rue’s in a net. As soon as she gets out of it, she grabs Katniss, sees over Katniss’s shoulder, Marvel, screams, then the spirit comes flying and kills Rue. Katniss turns around and kills Marvel.
So in that space of 30 seconds, 45 seconds, I mean, even if it was a few minutes, yeah, just even a few minutes. She has to see this progression of death from three perspectives of children. Rue’s younger than her, Kato’s probably older, Marvel’s probably her [00:28:00] age. She had to kill Marvel. And
[00:28:02] Tim: the young guy at the electronics.
In the electronic, yeah, the electronic.
[00:28:06] Donna: Help, if you remember this. I don’t think it was in the movie, but now that you say it, I’m not sure, but at least in the book, when they go back after the games and recap with her and Peeta, she makes the comment, I didn’t even know his name. Yeah, I forgot his name was, you know, I didn’t even recall it or, or, or I hadn’t locked in memory.
And so to see all that, I can’t comprehend being in a real place where I see a guy just snap somebody’s neck and they drop to the ground. Much less go on to, I mean, that the whole thing is.
[00:28:44] Tim: They try to do a good job of showing desperate and despicable their circumstances while keeping it clean enough.
And, you know, to, to avoid [00:29:00] enough that it gets a broader audience, there, there are movies that have been made adaptations from books, even that are very, very dark, but they have a very small audience. Yeah, they chose to, to do that. And for this one, they chose to, to get a broader audience. And probably using some people, some actors and actresses in the movie that were a little more beautiful than the book called
[00:29:30] Rebekah: for.
Sure. I mean, Jennifer Lawrence. doesn’t physically look like the person that she, like, she doesn’t look like the character described in the books. In some ways, she’s much more, like, muscular and she’s obviously not a big, like, she’s not big at all, but she’s taller and more, like, has more presence physically and, and things like that.
I do, I think that’s why I use the word sanitized because it’s like you, you want to take out just enough of it so that it [00:30:00] feels… I still, I mean, I had a friend in Nashville and we lived here that. Was one of our I think it was our young adults pastor church that said this. I said something about, I’m going to see the, whichever might’ve been like the third or fourth Hunger Games movie.
And she was like, Oh yeah, I can’t do that. I said, why? And she said, I just, I went to see the first one and it was like too much, the, it was just too heavy. And that’s even with the sanitization that’s even with all of that because she’d never read the books. Oh, wow.
[00:30:32] Tim: She probably never would have gone to see the movie if she’d read the book.
Right. If the movie was too much for her, the book would have, she would never have even given it a try.
[00:30:41] Donna: Yeah. And the interesting contrast in what they did as the next few weeks, we’ll uncover this more, but the way they concluded these. As opposed to a movie like in Twilight, where the main characters achieve [00:31:00] their, these power, they, they found these powers, they go through all the stuff that they go through to make, to come to this little happier, the bow was
[00:31:10] Rebekah: tied, their little piece of forever or something is how Twilight ends, you know,
[00:31:15] Donna: their, their little piece of forever, this similarly to Harry Potter, this doesn’t have the ending.
That’s like. Oh, everything was wrapped up and we’re so happy after they lived happily ever after and as much as I don’t want ill to come to people. I don’t know if I would have liked it as much if they had wrapped it up. In a sweeter way, this was what they did and the way they got to the end. I felt like.
Even in each movie as well as at the very end I felt like it was. It was real you, you don’t recover from those things so quickly you can. You can go on and live, but [00:32:00] it’s not just all of a sudden. Oh, that’s okay. Oh, this is cool. Now I can move on.
[00:32:04] Rebekah: I
[00:32:06] Tim: was going to say one of the things I think the movie changes as well as the time, the time of all of this, because in the books, this is weeks, multiple weeks from the time they get to the capital so they can fatten up these emaciated kids.
And clean them up, and, you know, deep clean them, and begin to present them, and then they’re in the arena for weeks. In the movie, even when they’re in training, the, one of the trainers says to them that they’ll be in, in two weeks time, 23 of them will be dead. Well, that’s, that’s not a time limit in
[00:32:46] Josiah: the, in the
[00:32:47] Rebekah: books.
Yeah. And it, I think I, it might be a little over a week, but I’m pretty sure if you go into the movie and like calculate based on how many times they went to sleep, I think it’s no more than like eight [00:33:00] days. And in the, in the book, it, I think it was, I mean, it was at least two or three weeks, if not more.
Obviously the timeline is very, very, I mean, it’s the second. Movies even worse about that, but the timeline is very, they also
[00:33:14] Donna: make mention in the books that over the 74 years there have been some games that drug on a few that were huge misses with the audience because it got boring. The deaths were boring, whatever, and they ended up having to
[00:33:33] Tim: kill something to death or whatever.
Yeah, and then you’d have
[00:33:36] Donna: others that were like, enjoyable, longer lasting and. So even in the life of, of these three, you know, of these 75 years, you, you still have a variation of what goes on. So I could deal with that. It didn’t bother
[00:33:51] Rebekah: me. What about some of the other, like, changes they made that were more about, like, I, I had written down that I [00:34:00] didn’t love that they took out Madge as a character.
Like more, I know we’ve talked about, like, the setting changed a lot, but that was one of the changes.
[00:34:07] Tim: Characters that they dropped. Which meant that some storylines became less significant in the movies. You don’t get as much about what the pin represents.
[00:34:18] Rebekah: I think that’s why I hated Madge being gone.
She
[00:34:23] Tim: gives that story.
[00:34:24] Rebekah: It’s beginning. They show you this pin. We were watching a Cinema Sins video about the sins of the, you know, first Hunger Games movie. And one of the things that he points out is he’s like, well, They show us this pin and then everyone tells us it’s really significant, but no one ever explains why.
And in the book, obviously, like the, the pin for Madge is incredibly significant. And the Mockingjay is this huge big deal. And in the
[00:34:48] Donna: book, they had to get permission to let her keep the pin because one of the other tributes from a career district had a ring that they really wanted to wear. But [00:35:00] the ring, if you twist it or something, it became a weapon.
Right. And so he had to get the special permission and they let her do it. In the movie, they suggest that Senna, in the first movie, a big deal about, they make a big deal about it. It’s like he’s hiding it under her, under her
[00:35:21] Tim: jacket. It’s a quiet rebellion. So they use the theme of the re, of rebellion.
More in the movie.
[00:35:29] Rebekah: Yeah, because it really, in the book, I don’t think until they did the thing with the Barrys, there was never any indication that anyone was rebelling against anything. Right. The Capitals
[00:35:39] Josiah: did it. I think that part of that is because it was from Katniss point of view. And she wasn’t outside The Hunger Games.
You see after, is it, after Rue’s death, the District 8 goes berserk.
[00:35:51] Tim: 11. For me, like I said, I like a satisfying ending and things like that. For me that was a little bit of satisfaction [00:36:00] that the District was beginning to rebel. Something that wouldn’t have been in the books because the book is told entirely from Katniss perspective.
So anything that she doesn’t see isn’t in the book. Obviously, you know, that’s what happens when you’ve got a first person narrator for the book. But that was a little satisfying to me considering that I think that The Hunger Games concept, not, not the book about it, but the concept that we would take two of your children every year and kill them.
To remind you that we’re in control. It’s an appalling concept and it, it’s just difficult to believe how people, how people can become so accustomed to that, that they just let it go on.
[00:36:50] Rebekah: Well, and I’m interested to see I like I said at the beginning, I have never read a ballad of songbirds and snakes.
So I will eventually obviously read it and we’ll see the movie when it [00:37:00] comes out in November, but I’m interested to see, cause this is not a spoiler. It’s in the preview. Songbirds and snakes is only 10 years into the games, right? And so by the time you get to the first Hunger Games book, this is the 74th annual games.
And with the death and the. Destruction and like all of that stuff that goes on in 12, you can reasonably assume that if anyone in 12 was alive when the game started, they were a baby or, you know. Like whatever. So I think that it speaks to the idea that you can be after that long if there’s no it’s not like you live in a country in the current world where there’s some way for you to know at some point that you’re oppressed.
It’s like you have to kind of come to that conclusion on your own. And after such a long period of time of being under authoritarian rule, like The idea like Katniss says, you know, Gail had said things in the woods [00:38:00] growing up that the, you know, Capitol did all this stuff, or he would like say things that were slightly rebellious.
And she was always just so off put by it because to her, that was never an option. Like she had to be really convinced eventually of a rebellion holding weight. There is a,
[00:38:17] Donna: there
[00:38:17] Tim: is a statistic, and I don’t want this to particularly get controversial at all. There’s a statistic out currently that shows that a large majority of those under 30 say they would give up their freedoms before they would give up their access to TikTok and other other types of things like that.
That’s a strange thing because, you know, well, if you’ve never shows what it is, what it’s like.
[00:38:47] Rebekah: Well, and you’re what, 61? You are, you were alive during the Vietnam War. You were young, but you were alive. I watched it every night on television. That was like the first televised war and [00:39:00] like, I know, you know, I’m 35.
So I’ve been alive during the war on terror and like some of the other stuff and those kinds of things. But it’s, it’s tough because if you think about it, if you were born after the year 2000, you know, obviously you’ve been through a pandemic. It’s not like there’s been nothing bad happened, but there’s a lot that you haven’t seen about the realities of like what it looks like to not have your freedom.
And so I, I mean, I hope that’s not a controversial thing, but it is, I can understand. Like I. I think that that is a legitimate thing and you see it, it’s kind of like put on display in the capital of The Hunger Games where, you know, they’re willing to watch this and it’s just entertainment. Well, and you’ll notice they don’t say that it’s barbarism.
I mean, at least, you know, as from the perspective that we have in the books, they don’t say that until Katniss is like saying that she’s going into the games pregnant in the second book, you know, so. That’s like, that’s their kind of like limit, I guess, but like the children part is [00:40:00] fine, you know, which is kind of, it’s kind of random.
It is strange. So let’s talk about a couple of the other changes and then we’ll move on to some of the trivia stuff. So some of the little
[00:40:09] Josiah: ones are like, they made the salute, the three finger salute with the whistle. They made it right handed instead of left handed.
[00:40:16] Rebekah: Fun fact about that, and I know this is just a quick one, I have a friend who was an extra in The Hunger Games, and when we were talking about this, like, she mentioned the scene where they do a salute.
I think it’s in the second book when they’re going into 11 on the train and they see some of the farmers or something, if I’m remembering this right, and I, I made a comment and I And I was like, Oh, did you guys do the salute with your right hand? And she’s like, yeah, it’s a right handed salute. And I was like, well, actually in the books, it’s with your left hand.
And she did not believe me. Like she argued extensively that it was not a left handed salute in the books, but anyway,
[00:40:53] Tim: probably right handed because that’s just simply normal. It’s more straightforward. Salutes are right handed. Yeah. [00:41:00]
[00:41:00] Josiah: Huh. Another one was the AVOXs are not explained, are they?
[00:41:07] Rebekah: No, they’re like present, but in the background they never mention AVOX, I don’t think the word, until the third film.
Yeah.
[00:41:14] Donna: Well, she, and she alludes to it, not with the word, but she uses She uses a phrase when she and Gail are out in the meadow at the very beginning of the first movie. She makes a joke about, oh, well, they’ll take you and cut your tongue out
[00:41:29] Rebekah: or something. Oh, yeah. Well, and that’s another big thing. The avox is in the, so there’s avox things that are cut in the first and second books.
The first book, I don’t know if you remember this, I mean, we all read it sort of recently, but in the first book, the reason that the AVOX thing comes up is because when they’re in the training, or not training center, but in their like rooms in the Capitol, they have an AVOX that waits on her. That was a member of a duo, I think, that she and Gail saw be taken out in the woods that were running.
[00:42:00] They
[00:42:00] Josiah: were
[00:42:00] Tim: outside the fence. Was it
[00:42:02] Donna: both of them or just her? It was just the
[00:42:04] Rebekah: one boy. I think it was just
[00:42:07] Donna: Katniss. Okay. I think it was both of them. She was out at, I think, but
[00:42:10] Rebekah: yeah, the, they, she at least saw them.
[00:42:13] Tim: Right, and they, and she was calling out for help.
[00:42:18] Josiah: She made eye contact.
[00:42:20] Tim: Help. The boy was killed and she was taken captive.
Right, and
[00:42:24] Rebekah: she, Katniss made eye contact so she knew that the girl knew who she was. And then they just kind of cut that. I mean, I feel like that’s an obvious cut this for a movie thing, so.
[00:42:32] Josiah: Peeta’s father is, has a small scene in the book. And he’s not ever mentioned or shown in the movie. Peta’s father, oh gosh, I’m going to embarrass myself.
Is it in the book that he brings Katniss baked goods after the
[00:42:51] Rebekah: reaping? Yeah, because there’s actually an hour long in the books, it’s only a few minutes in the movies where she gets to talk to people so people can come see her and his father [00:43:00] brings, I think he doesn’t say anything if much, and hands her the baked goods kind of to, you know.
[00:43:07] Tim: She appreciates that to begin with, but then she throws him away.
[00:43:11] Josiah: She doesn’t want to emotionally connect.
[00:43:13] Rebekah: She believes she’s going to have to be either responsible for or present during the killing of PETA.
[00:43:22] Donna: Do you know what his connection to that, do you know why he was connected to Katniss?
[00:43:33] Rebekah: Didn’t he think her mother was beautiful or something?
[00:43:36] Donna: In the books, and not using Madge, there’s A plethora of stuff that they could have brought into the story that they wouldn’t have had time to flesh out. So, I’m okay with that. But, in the books, Peta said, My dad always thought your mom was so beautiful because her mom didn’t grow up in the same way her dad did.
And she said, what, and she thought he was [00:44:00] making all that up. She thought that was another part of just him being incredibly good at lying off the cuff. Playing, playing to the camera, playing to the camera. And he said, he thought your mom was so beautiful, but your dad won her over. And he said, my dad said, when your dad sang all the birds stopped.
Stop their stop their voices to hear him and she said, how does he know that? Because that’s true. I mean, you know, she’s thinking this in her mind and so the dad has a connection there and says something about watching after prim, he makes some comment to her.
[00:44:42] Tim: He’ll make sure to take care of he’ll make sure they
[00:44:44] Donna: don’t starve and that’s what Gail says.
I think and a similar well, she says, don’t let them starve. And he said, but a similar story, a story arc. Is Kane’s mother and Mag’s mother and mag’s [00:45:00] aunt, her mother’s twin. They were they were very three extremely close friends. And all through school, extremely close, like inseparable. And um, so when her, when Madge’s aunt got selected to go into the games.
Do they talk about that in the second book? They talk about that in the second book, but not using Madge. You can’t go anywhere with it. And there’s this great piece where, in the second book, they’re re watching the films. And, you know, and stuff like that. And, and Pete is like… Look, I think that’s your mother at the reaping with, with Madge’s mother and they’re huddled together and so there’s several things like that, that give another depth of the emotion of this in the, the 3rd movie, 2nd movie, 2nd movie, the 2nd, [00:46:00] yeah, 2nd movie, they take Gale back to the, to the Victor’s village because he’s been whipped.
And they make, Hamish and Katniss’s mother have a, have a little exchange there. They get back to the old, it’s back to the old days of New Game Maker. And he says a new game maker in the movie, they have a, an exchange in the book that you know that they remember. Yeah, they remember worse times. That was Hamish’s games as well.
[00:46:30] Rebekah: I want to get into that in the next episode, though, because there’s a lot of interest
[00:46:35] Josiah: there. I don’t think we’re ever going to run into a movie adaptation that has more backstory and detailed layers than the book. Another little change was the careers. The District 4, uh, are considered careers in the book?
Is that right? Yeah, because it’s
[00:46:55] Rebekah: Minix. It’s Phoenix District. You know, she mentions the careers from 1, [00:47:00] 2, and 4 in the first book, but the careers from 1 and 2 are really the ones. That like, I basically survived the initial bloodbath, but I think they cut it from the movies to make the second movie simpler because instead of having to like understand why Finnick isn’t a career, even though he’s from a career district, like that was more, that would have more complicated.
I do. I
[00:47:22] Donna: wish that another one similar to that where they, it’s a small thing, but they leave out. I would love to have seen them do more with the stylists. And I know that’s extra
[00:47:36] Rebekah: Tom, I’m sure. Her stylist team is like present, but there’s no, they don’t really build a relationship like they do in the book.
I love their names. Yeah, they’re Octavia, Vinia, and Ooh, what’s the third one? You remember? Vinnia or Vinnia and Octavia are the two I always remember. I remember that I liked it. But [00:48:00] while the, the last couple of things I wanted to mention, we can just run through these and then wanted to talk about some interesting stuff that happened, you know, during filming and stuff like that.
The inside, like, understanding that Katniss and Haymitch have about the, the gifts that he gives her while in the arena is cut. I think that that was a bad choice. Personally, he just, like, sends a note in the movie that tells her what to do. But in the book, like, her developing this, like, understanding of what he wanted and when he didn’t send her something, it meant something.
And when he did send her something, it did. That being cut, I thought was a, a Weird choice, personally. I kinda, like, I get it, but It’s so tough to
[00:48:39] Josiah: do that with a visual medium where you’re not inside Katniss’s head. To understand what she is getting, what she’s not getting.
[00:48:47] Rebekah: Yeah, but some of the coolest scenes they added were scenes with other people.
Like, could you not add a scene where Haymitch is watching the screen going, Just give him a kiss. Just tell him the story. You’re so close to the water. Like, you know what I [00:49:00] mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like where he verbalizes that. So I thought that was a weird choice. She also, that’s true because Hamish in the first book is essentially a drunk who kind of gets motivated to help them when they don’t immediately die.
Thank
[00:49:13] Donna: God they did not keep him as the despicable drunk. book. That
[00:49:19] Rebekah: would have been hard on screen. Yeah, but I feel like he had more depth in the book. There was more growth there. Oh, tons more growth. Yeah. They also did not show Katniss when they announced that both tributes can’t win. They didn’t show her pulling her bow, which I thought was really weird.
It’s not weird. I understand the reason it would have felt more conflicting for the audience, but in the book, she’s going through this constant internal struggle of like, I promised prim I would live. I promised prim I would live. That’s her only motivation. And so this whole thing with PETA, like I’ll act like I’m in love with him because I promised prim I would live.
And then PETA says go for it, or like, go ahead. He says go ahead, [00:50:00] and it like, speaks more to her, kind of, honestly, her conflict, like, internally, because at this point she hasn’t really developed feelings for PETA. They had like, one kiss that felt like something, is how she describes it, but that was about it.
And then I know you wanted to talk about the mutts, but just with her and PETA, I will mention it annoys me so much that her and PETA are not in the movie in like as close physically as they were in the book, which I know sounds dumb, but like one of the whole things that I think drove it home for the Capitol people was that they were essentially like making out a lot in the cave.
I’m not saying I needed to just see a bunch of makeout scenes, but they like barely. kiss or get super close. And like, it is a young adult movie, but like at the end in the books, they have to rewatch the three hour recap of the games. They don’t do that in the movie, but they do still have an interview with Caesar.
And like, she describes like being on a couch with him, pulling up next to him, putting her feet [00:51:00] behind her and like cuddling up with him. And I felt like in the movies, they were like pushed further apart, which just kind of drove home that they didn’t really look like they were in love. Like it was so obvious.
And so I’m like, I don’t know if that was because it’s a visual or not. Like, I don’t know. That bugged me a lot. I
[00:51:16] Josiah: get that. I think that, is there a chance that they decided they didn’t have the chemistry to do
[00:51:24] Rebekah: that? I mean, their chemistry is
[00:51:28] Donna: not
[00:51:28] Josiah: amazing.
[00:51:29] Tim: Their ages are farther apart, aren’t they? The actors?
[00:51:34] Donna: Oh, I
[00:51:34] Josiah: don’t know about that. I didn’t, I
[00:51:35] Tim: didn’t, we’d have to look that up, but I don’t, I don’t think they’re, I don’t think they’re as close in age as, As the book would be,
[00:51:44] Josiah: they would slave Flavius
[00:51:45] Rebekah: Flavius is the third character. Sorry, we’re going back to that one.
[00:51:49] Donna: The first time I watched the movie, I was less than thrilled [00:52:00] with Josh Hutcherson, but I think now that I’ve seen it so many times.
And I’m gonna tell you, I’m a re watcher. Multitudinous Times .
[00:52:11] Rebekah: We had to make up a number or a new word for the type of way you watch
[00:52:14] Donna: movies, but I think, I think I felt that way the first watch because I’d read a couple of critics or a couple of thoughts outside from outside sources who questioned hi, the strength of his acting.
But the more I watch it and read the book and see who Peter is. He is never, he would never be as strong a, of a, of character as far as grit, determination, stubbornness. He would never be as much as Katniss. Right. So I think had he been any more. aggressive of a person or strong. [00:53:00] He’s not supposed to be gay.
Right. His gentleness
[00:53:03] Rebekah: is the thing that sets him
[00:53:04] Donna: apart. So I’m OK with it. Could there have been a better portrayal? Maybe. But I’m OK with it. It doesn’t it doesn’t ruin it for me. Yeah. So
[00:53:13] Josiah: Josh Hutcherson was about 19 during filming. Jennifer Lawrence was about 21. They’re not super far apart.
[00:53:22] Tim: Not as far apart as I thought they might
[00:53:23] Josiah: have been.
I think that Jennifer Lawrence did a great job at being this every woman, feeling like a very normal person who’s dealing with very normal things. Did not ask to be a part of, and this comes into play in a bigger way in the following films, but she did not ask to be at the center of the rebellion. I think she plays that really
[00:53:48] Rebekah: well.
I agree. She’s just someone who wants to take care of her sister and her mom. Mostly her sister, but like because of her mom’s ineptitude after her father’s death.
[00:53:56] Tim: She’s satisfied to simply remain in the [00:54:00] scene. Yeah, she wishes. And just live. Just don’t bother me, let me live and take care of my kids. My family.
Yeah. That would be satisfactory for her. She
[00:54:09] Rebekah: wishes when things go wrong in the second movie book, whatever, that like she had just eaten the berries and died because at least things would have gone, quote, back to normal. Like I think that just speaks to who her character is. Her character wanted to do the best with what she had, but she didn’t have aspirations to do more until people basically, I mean, honestly forced her into it.
And Jennifer
[00:54:30] Tim: Lawrence, I agree, does a good job of portraying that. I agree. Pushed into the
[00:54:36] Josiah: limelight. Definitely. I will refrain from making a Jon Snow joke, because none of you know Jon Snow. But the joke would have been uh, Katniss is very Jon Snow esque in that I don’t want it. I’m so sorry. Yeah, that’s for no one.
None of you cut that. But, instead
[00:54:56] Rebekah: of cutting it, we could just put in some fake laughter, like a laugh track [00:55:00] in a comedy. I don’t think it’s members that know anything about Game of Thrones. It’s
[00:55:04] Josiah: a good idea. About the mutts, I have heard in watching some videos, listening to some people talk about the mutts, changing, are they digimutts in both book and movie?
I
[00:55:20] Rebekah: mean, yeah, I don’t think they were digital in the book at all. I think that was completely
[00:55:25] Josiah: movie. Factured. Yes. So the mutts. I think they did what was necessary for the movie. I think it could have been a little more scary than they were in the movie. But I don’t think you could have put people’s faces on those dogs.
No,
[00:55:45] Tim: in the book they were put. They were recognizable faces, and she even said, I think those are their
[00:55:50] Josiah: eyes. I don’t think, I’ve heard some people say that it was because they didn’t want an R rating. That might have been horrific, but it would have [00:56:00] looked dumb. It would have looked silly.
[00:56:03] Donna: You would have also had to have seen…
Probably
[00:56:05] Tim: looked sillier than the camouflage thing that Hutcherson himself says makes him laugh because he thinks it looks silly. Yeah,
[00:56:12] Rebekah: I think my only complaint was that the mutts, I remember reading the book and thinking like when I knew they were going to do a movie, how on earth would you do this?
Like it’s so, it’s obviously something that like her internal processing of it is so much more intense than you could portray it on screen. I agree. But the mutts in the movie, I think just look weird. They just look like. Weird short haired dog creature things like at least make them look more like more werewolfy like kind of Scary because they in the movie they just didn’t look terrifying at all and I felt like the violence that they had already shown Like you could have definitely gotten away with making them a little more human looking or scary looking in some other way without like I just felt like they [00:57:00] It felt like an afterthought, the way that the mutts looked, felt like an
[00:57:03] Josiah: afterthought.
I think it did feel like an afterthought. I think it was good that they didn’t do it was in the books for that. Sure. But I don’t think what they did was ideal.
[00:57:12] Tim: I saw some of the some of the artist’s rendering of some of the rejected mutt versions and I think some of them would have been. scarier and odder, which would have fit without having to put human
[00:57:26] Josiah: faces on them.
Alright, you got some, you got some facts? I do. I have a few facts.
[00:57:33] Tim: It, it’s interesting to me, the book was first released in 2008 and the movie in 2012. The book gets a 4. 8 rating and I’m assuming 4.
[00:57:46] Rebekah: I think, yeah.
[00:57:48] Tim: And Rotten Tomatoes gave the movie an 84, which is,
[00:57:52] Rebekah: which is pretty good. Hey, fun, fun little trivia question.
Of the four movies, where does this fall in how [00:58:00] high its Rotten Tomatoes scores? I would guess second.
[00:58:02] Josiah: Oh,
[00:58:02] Tim: I don’t know that for a fact. I would, I would probably go with Josiah and say second.
[00:58:11] Josiah: I assume that the rating, the Rotten Tomatoes, is the same order as the box office gross total.
[00:58:21] Donna: That is
[00:58:22] Rebekah: also correct.
Both of those things are correct, actually. The Rotten Tomatoes ratings go in that
[00:58:27] Josiah: order. 2 1 4 3 or 2
[00:58:31] Rebekah: 1 3 4? I think it’s 3.
[00:58:33] Tim: It is amazing to me, it was a 90 million budget. Now in 2012, which at the date of this recording is 11 years ago But a 90 million dollar budget doesn’t sound massive considering there was, there were special effects involved.
[00:58:53] Josiah: Based on my limited understanding of Hollywood, I feel like I remember 2012 being around the time that it was the height [00:59:00] of budget. Okay. Where you got a lot of 300 million movies getting made around that time. Gotcha. And we’ve dropped off since then. All of
[00:59:10] Tim: the Marvel movies would have been in that same time frame.
I think Iron Man was
[00:59:14] Josiah: 2008. Avengers. Avengers
[00:59:15] Tim: was 2012. And then you get… Oh wow. Yeah. So, for their gross, USA was over 400 million. And add to that the worldwide, which I found interesting, worldwide usually increases, usually is more than the U. S. gross. At least close to the same, it’s a little under 300 million.
So yeah,
[00:59:41] Rebekah: well, one of the, one of the interesting parts about this is Vietnam, China and a few other countries banned the movie from theaters for a while because of the portrayal that it gave that felt a little too close to home. I mean, I’m not, there’s no country in the world that does The Hunger Games that I’m aware of, but like it was [01:00:00] banned at least temporarily in a lot of those.
So I wonder if the worldwide. Is different because in the second movie, I’m pretty sure the numbers are closer to being about the same. Are
[01:00:08] Josiah: you saying like they were authoritarian regimes? Yeah. Oh, and they didn’t like
[01:00:13] Rebekah: places that banned them. Been very
[01:00:16] Tim: oppressed. Right. Okay. So they banned them, banned the movie.
[01:00:20] Donna: Because that part of the storyline is a very logical. thing. She didn’t even, she didn’t see it as rebelling against the Capitol, but what she did just spit in their face. And, and I could see where if you’re, you know, we don’t, we don’t understand that life.
[01:00:45] Tim: It’s funny that, that Peeta’s character is the one that talks about that just before they go into the games.
I don’t want the games to change me. I still want to be who I am. I want the Capitol to know they don’t own me. And her response is basically, well, they do own us, and [01:01:00] all of that kind of stuff, but her… She thought it was absurd. Her actions later are, I’m going to be me, and do what I want to do. And it’s not an act of rebellion so much as it is an act of, this is who I am, and I’m going to be
[01:01:14] Donna: this way.
Well, in the book she says, I can’t afford… To think that way, because of my, because of print, right? I can’t afford to think of how they see me or what they see. I just, I have to be focused on her and trying to win for her. So, and it’s interesting because all of those things. Would actually be exactly what he was saying.
I don’t want I don’t want to be a tool I want if I have to die
[01:01:43] Josiah: and in the
[01:01:43] Tim: book She says at some point during the games and I can’t remember where it’s at She says now I understand what Peter was that’s right
[01:01:51] Rebekah: And I think there’s one of the other criticisms of the movie was that it removed a lot of the political and social commentary [01:02:00] that was kind of underlying in a lot of the thought processes where you heard how she thought about these things.
So, this goes into like another thing I had written down that I thought was interesting that I remember reading, honestly, early on, that Suzanne Collins was inspired to write The Hunger Games when she was flipping channels and she was flipping back and forth between war coverage and reality TV. And it just like clicked and she said Katniss was the first character that popped up in her mind that she like she didn’t know her name right away, but like in like pretty immediately understood what that looks like and she just had that she was trying to come up with book ideas.
She had just finished a trilogy or some other series that I’m not actually familiar with, but she basically came up with the televised battle to the death between going through those two things.
[01:02:47] Tim: Isn’t that an amazing thing? What causes people to write books? The whole Chronicles of Narnia was written because the author saw the lamppost in the middle of the [01:03:00] snow in the forest.
That was his picture. That was the very beginning of the book for him in his mind. Yeah. He wrote the whole thing. from that. It’s, it’s strange to me. Amazing.
[01:03:14] Rebekah: I also loved to find out. I did not know this until I was kind of researching for this episode, but the place in North Carolina where they filmed district 12 specifically, which by the way, this was the only of the four movies that used a single filming like location in general.
So they shot out in North Carolina. Everything was done there. And every movie kind of adds on more locations, but the place where they filmed. actually can be toured. Now it is a tourist attraction which is kind of weird in some way, but children up to 17. Yes, that’s true. It is the same way.
Children up to 17 attend for free, which I think is kind of funny because it’s like the poor children, at least we’ll let them come see it for free. It’s like, I know that’s not it, but it does. It did make me laugh to see that [01:04:00]
[01:04:00] Tim: if the kids can come for free, somebody has to bring them. I think that may be the the capitalistic version of that story.
[01:04:08] Josiah: Well, I don’t know how close to the end we are, but I, I feel like, you know, I feel like we’ve been critical of some of these things, and I want to say that basically all of the portrayals in the movie are kind of awesome. Kind of, kind of amazing. And either true to, to book or, or an appropriate adaptation to the screen form of those characters.
I really… I love Effie Trinket. She’s so fun to watch and look at her. She’s very well done. Makeup and wig and costumes.
[01:04:49] Rebekah: She was perfect compared to the book. Oh my gosh. I loved her casting.
[01:04:53] Josiah: Didn’t you say that took like four hours of prep?
[01:04:56] Donna: It was about four hours of makeup. She couldn’t go to the
[01:04:59] Rebekah: [01:05:00] bathroom on her own because of how many layers she was wearing.
[01:05:03] Josiah: And I mean, how much is President Snow in the book
[01:05:08] Tim: in the first part is larger
[01:05:10] Rebekah: in the definitely expands later on, which
[01:05:13] Josiah: I think is another benefit of Katniss is POV not being the only lens for the movie, which I also
[01:05:19] Donna: Sutherland wanted to do that. He he desperately wanted to do this part. Right. I think he’s the one that.
He, he read the books and was like, I
[01:05:30] Rebekah: want to do this. He said, he, I think it was after he read the script, like he wrote a letter and was so compelled. But by the time he came into film, after being cast, he had like read the books, all three of, or I think at this point, two of them were available, maybe.
Maybe all three, but he had read them to like prepare for filming. Yeah. But I agree. I will echo Josiah’s point that I think that we’re being critical because we’re kind of talking about how things are so different. But in general, like I was talking to a friend today who literally said right before we got off the [01:06:00] phone, my hot take is she’s like, I think the books actually weren’t as good as the movies.
Like she preferred the physical. Or the, sorry, the visual, like, representation. Some of
[01:06:10] Tim: us, some of us are visual people. I’m a visual person. So when I read a book, I, I make a vision in my own mind of what I think it should be. And so for me, sometimes the movie doesn’t hit that, but then once I’ve seen the movie, I can’t read the words and get a different vision anymore.
I think overall, their choices, their changes. And their adaptation was good for the, the whole, you know, specifics, yeah, but the whole was, was
[01:06:44] Josiah: really good.
[01:06:45] Rebekah: So before we close out, what was your, like, favorite scene from the movie? And was it your favorite scene in the book, if you had to pick one? What I
[01:06:57] Tim: thought in the book would have [01:07:00] been my favorite scene was the camouflage thing.
It, it wasn’t.
[01:07:06] Rebekah: Josh Hutcherson,
[01:07:07] Donna: that’s the one you mentioned.
[01:07:08] Tim: It was such an amazing kind of thing, the way they put it. The way they wrote it in the book, and that was a, a favorite of mine. But I, I think, I don’t know, in the, in the movie, when, when Katniss finally realizes maybe that Peeta actually does love her.
Mm hmm. Her portrayal was wonderful. She’s one of those actors. That I think you see micro expressions on their face and how they change from one thing to the other. And you can see it. And I love that.
[01:07:41] Rebekah: I think my favorite scene in the book and movie are not the same. I would say in the book, it’s a toss up between Katniss telling Peta the story about Prim’s goat, which I just thought was like, it’s just this really cool picture into who she is and she’s not vulnerable much.
But. They mentioned when they watched the recap after the [01:08:00] games that the way they end was getting on the hovercraft where Katniss was beating on the door, PETA, PETA, and she was so upset because he was like near death and they actually said they had to like revive him and it was a very serious thing.
And I just thought that was like so moving because you realize like that was. Something that she didn’t act, even though the rest of that was acting. That was my favorite scene in the book. I think in the movie, like watching her mourn Rue was like more poignant to me in the movie.
[01:08:31] Josiah: Yeah, visual medium, man.
[01:08:34] Tim: The visual of that was beautiful.
[01:08:38] Josiah: I think that in the movie my, my scenes are not different, but in the movie. I, the Reaping Day is so iconic visually, you see any, and it’s kind of a meme at this point, but you see any image from Reaping Day, and you not only [01:09:00] recognize, oh that’s Reaping Day from Hunger Games 1, but it still evokes emotions in me of Katniss, Sacra, Volunteering as Tribute.
For her sister, the innocence of prim, the oppression of the capital, the sacrifice of Katniss, the colors, the framing, all of that is visually very iconic. But from the book. I remember when I was reading, you know, ten, what, ten, twelve years ago, how smart it made me feel. The scene where, are they in the cave when Hamitch sends Katniss a sleeping pill or a sleeping drug to get Peeta to fall asleep so that he doesn’t…
Endanger himself so that she can go get medicine from him or for him
[01:09:52] Donna: in the cave. He sends sleep syrup because Peter is like hanging on to her. You
[01:09:58] Josiah: can’t leave. [01:10:00] Exactly. And as a reader, especially a young reader who is still figuring things out. I’m a pretty gullible reader. I felt very smart that I, I fully understood what Hamish was saying before Katniss could really process it.
And I also think it was just such a poignant thing to say, Yeah, I’m not sending you water. I’m not sending you food. I’m sending you a way to get him asleep so that you can save him. Another way. And I thought that was like a complex little puzzle box that I got to unravel as a reader. Nice. That made me feel really smart.
[01:10:40] Rebekah: I
[01:10:40] Donna: like that. So mine would be probably the, it’s the same in a book and movie. I like the progression or the development.
Because for some reason of all the people she encountered, once she got on the train to get to the [01:11:00] Capitol, he was the only person that she found that she could trust. And, and it was an immediate connection there. He walked in, she thought before she met him, he was just going to use her and set her on fire or put her in a cold outfit, whatever.
Well, as soon as he walked in, she felt this comfort with him or this safety with him and the way they handled the movie, I thought was amazing. He was honest. She said, most people are just congratulating me. And he said, I’m not going to
[01:11:37] Rebekah: do that. He said, I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m sorry
[01:11:39] Donna: this happened to you.
Oh, most people congratulate me. The only person that says that. And then he says, I’m not going to do that.
[01:11:46] Rebekah: I think he says that in the book and in the movie. I think that’s an excellent line. And their,
[01:11:49] Donna: that progression for me is really amazing. And then later on, she’s got her interview outfit. [01:12:00] And he talks to her.
She said, I don’t, I, I can’t do this. In the book, you know that she’s already had these grueling sessions with Peta and, with Effie and Hamish. And, you know, I can’t befriend people. I can’t warm up to people. I don’t know how to do that. And he said, okay, well, just, why don’t you just start talking to me?
You’re just talking to me. And he gives her that out that allows her to get up on stage and actually talk and sound okay and not drip with disdain toward these people, that kind of thing. And then. You know, at the end and he, he looks at her and he just takes his finger, you know, twirl. Those things happen.
I love the progression of their friend, the development and the progression of their
[01:12:50] Rebekah: friendship. I think it’s amazing. And he’s
[01:12:52] Donna: so well cast. Lenny Kravitz is one of the people you would least think would be in this cast and he was one of the [01:13:00] best choices. Oh yeah. That gold under his eye. Like I was, if Tim were more pale skinned, if he wasn’t as pale skinned as he is.
He’s not pale, but if he were darker skinned, man, I’d be like, get the gold, get the gold under
[01:13:13] Rebekah: your eye. Okay, so final verdict, was the book better or was the movie better? And we’re just, in this case, talking about the first Hunger Games, not considering the rest of the series. Did you prefer watching the movie or reading the book?
Book.
[01:13:28] Josiah: Really? Yeah, the movie was great. The shaky cam was tough. Oh, it was a lot. And honestly, you saying that one location, the filming on one location, I think that made a difference. It didn’t feel as expansive.
[01:13:45] Rebekah: Interesting. I mean, I think I also prefer the book, but I mean, there, there are going to be very few movies where I’m going to say I prefer the movie personally, but I think that the backstories of Madge, we didn’t even talk about this and don’t have time, but [01:14:00] even like Katniss’s father isn’t in the movies at all.
Like they don’t, they show him, you know, obviously in her like weird tracker Jack or flashbacks and stuff, but they don’t develop that. I felt like Haymitch didn’t really have a lot of depth. There was just a lot that I felt like the depth thing for me makes the book better
on the
[01:14:22] Donna: just off the cuff I would say I enjoyed the book better but I do have to give kudos to seeing the movie and putting faces with names and and having Satisfying cast choices that I could really identify because there’s a lot of other movies out there where even though I like the movie I’m okay with the movie.
That person in the movie just didn’t come from the book like I wanted. So I liked the movie for that reason. But if I had to give one answer, it would be the book.
[01:14:56] Rebekah: You’ve also enjoyed the movie more times. You [01:15:00] literally put the movie on in the background all the time. You’ve listened to the audio book several, but not as
[01:15:04] Donna: much.
Yeah, I’ve probably only listened to the audio books. 30 or 40 times. I’ve seen the movie more than that. I’m sure I’ve seen the movie more than that. That’s amazing.
[01:15:13] Tim: Multitudinous is the right word. For you? I, I would say, and it is hard to choose because there are two, there are two different things. I love the depth of the book.
I enjoy the visuals of, of the movie. But I, I think, I think I have to lean on, on the book because I create a world in my head and it was so much more expansive because of the different locations, the different characters that were, had to be left out. Sure. I mean you take, you take what is in essence, how many multiple hours is the book, the audio book?
Twelve hours? Twelve, something like that. Twelve hours and you have to condense it to a two hour movie. I think you’re always going to sacrifice something. Sure. Hopefully what you don’t [01:16:00] sacrifice is the feel, the overall feel. And I don’t think they sacrifice the overall feel, but I do like the book better.
[01:16:07] Rebekah: Awesome. Well, I think we’re gonna call it there. We can be found on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok @bookisbetterpod. If you have feedback on what you’d like us to review or any questions you may have, you can email us bookisbetterpod@gmail.com. And our next episode is going to be on Catching Fire, the book and the movie.
So we’ll see you then. And until then, thanks.