S01E02 — Catching Fire

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.

The family chats (for a while, whoops) about the most significant changes between The Hunger Games: Catching Fire book and movie adaptation.

We also discuss the various fan-developed maps of how the districts are laid out and share some interesting facts about the film’s production.

Listen to the other episodes on works in The Hunger Games:

• The Hunger Games
• The Hunger Games: Mockingjay
• A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

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!)

In this case, we were slightly divided but determined, overall, that the book for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire was still (a tiny bit) better than the film.

However, we agreed that this film was better in many ways than its predecessor. It’s not only the best-rated of the four movies by critics, but also the most engaging in the visual medium (in our humble opinions).

Tim: The book is better

Donna: The book is better

Rebekah: The book is better

Josiah: The film 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.

[00:00:27] Rebekah: All right. Well, welcome to the book is better. We are discussing the second book today in the hunger game series, catching fire. So just a big FYI, there will be. Spoilers. There are probably going to be spoilers for everything in the Hunger Games franchise, with the exception of Songbirds and Snakes, which we will actually cover when it comes out, but I have not even read it yet.

I think only one of us is even really familiar with the book, maybe, maybe two of us. So, my name is Rebecca. I am the daughter. Slash sister of the family. And as you probably can already tell, my thing is that I’m pretty much always going to prefer the book over the movie and I will die on that hill most of the time.

Anyway, I’m going to share my fun fact of the day. Today’s theme is going to be our weird film viewing habits. So if you do anything that’s a little quirky or different that’s what we’re talking about. So my, Quirky viewing habit is that I cannot watch movies or television without English subtitles on.

Now, if I go to the theater and they don’t have a subtitles thing that’s easy, like, to access, I’m okay with it. But legitimately, I don’t turn them on on YouTube because they’re so bad, but when we’re watching TV or movies. I obsessively turn them on, and if other people at other people’s houses watch movies without subtitles, I will awkwardly request subtitles until they say yes, because it is that important to me.

That’s true. It’s very awkward. Oh, thanks. I remember I was watching the first two Harry Potter movies with my friend that had a little bit of a hearing issue, so she had always used subtitles, and I’d never seen anybody do that, and I was young, I was, I think I was in middle school or something, and from then on, I just…

Like, it stuck. I never wanted to do anything different. You didn’t do it because of Josh? That’s why I do it. No, I did it because when I was in middle school, I watched the first two Harry Potter movies. Is 

[00:02:23] Josiah: Josh’s name a 

[00:02:24] Rebekah: secret? Josh is my husband. He’s our producer. He is in the room, but he’s not mic’d which is unfortunate.

But he tells me that so that he can add his own little things in post production and not tell us until after the episode comes 

[00:02:36] Josiah: out. And so he can play Diablo. 

[00:02:38] Rebekah: Well, that’s probably the more important 

[00:02:40] Josiah: reason so you can play video games. Is that the clean version? Diablo is dirty. We’re 

[00:02:44] Rebekah: allowed to talk about video games we play just because it’s clean doesn’t mean we don’t do anything interesting.

[00:02:49] Donna: Don’t divert. I was saying Josh convinced me the subtitles are that you need them. 

[00:02:55] Rebekah: Well, I mean, what an interesting tidbit is it that we found each other and ended up married and both loved to watch movies with 

[00:03:03] Donna: subtitles. Yeah. Well, that’s another reason for people to get married because you like subtitles.

That’s 

[00:03:09] Josiah: great. Add it to the list. I’m Josiah. I’m the son slash brother of the fam. I uh, my quirk is what we’re doing. My quirk is that I do not like watching movies outside the movie theater, which has been tough recently. Not super recently, but a couple, you know, a few years ago, it’s tough to keep up with the movies.

Back in 2020, 2021, stuff like that, but it’s hard for me to watch a movie at home. I just feel like I’m wasting time. I need to be doing something else. So I usually get on my phone or I get my switch and play games or, or scroll through social media or news or something. And I miss a lot of the movie or whenever someone puts on a movie at like a party, a gathering.

Everyone goes to sleep. They’re not watching the movie. And so, you know, maybe there’s a lullaby There’s something to be said for you know, just put something on and everyone can fall asleep to it But that’s not why I would want to watch a movie I don’t want to put a movie on for that purpose. So I just haven’t had a lot of I don’t have positive experiences with watching movies outside the theater.

I usually don’t, 

[00:04:20] Donna: so I, I almost questioned why anybody that grew in my womb could not watch movies at home. But then while you were talking, I think I know why I’m Donna and I’m the wife, mom of these two amazing children. And. husband. I just don’t know when, when you were young, I came across the first matrix movie when it came out.

And watched it all daily for quite some time, I would just play it and do other things and walk around the house. I was so mesmerized with the movie because one of my things is finding why people do things and understanding and looking for profound profound principles in movies. And I found so many in there and every time I would watch it.

I would find something else in there to be amazed by and so I, you guys grew up with repeat movies like that. So maybe that’s why you’re. Turned against them and I still do it. I don’t know what in the world. I would do what I would have time to clean the house 

[00:05:39] Rebekah: I will say like I am more what you described in both ways actually, like I will put a lot of movies on and like work or You know, do other things, but only if I’m rewatching if I’m watching something for the first time.

I try really hard not to, but I will not do 

[00:05:58] Donna: that. So I would say my quirk is I do rewatch. 

[00:06:02] Rebekah: You’re a super 

[00:06:04] Donna: because there’s so many things. I think 1. I’m not a super observant person, so watching it once, I know I’ve missed things. Yeah. Even focused as I can be. So yeah, I’m a re watcher. And what’s your most recent rewatch?

The Pitch two Pitch Perfects. The third one is, I don’t even consider it a movie. Godfather One and two. Diehard one, die Hard four. 

[00:06:28] Josiah: These are all recent, 

[00:06:30] Donna: within the last three months. Okay. For the millionth time. Hunger Games. Right. The Hunger Games series. I watched that two or three weeks ago and thought, oh good.

I’ll have time to watch it one more time before we do the podcast. Cast for it. Okay. I, I, that gives you enough, 

[00:06:46] Tim: I’m sure. And Harry Potter. My name’s Tim. I am the husband and the dad. And. When Donna puts movies on just to watch in the background, I stop. She, if she doesn’t want me to clean the house or doesn’t want me to do my chores or any of that stuff, turn on a movie.

She turns it on for background. Here’s one of my quirks. If I’m going to sit down and watch a movie, I want to sit down and watch the movie. I don’t want to discuss it. Put it on pause if we’re going to discuss. I prefer that we watch. 

[00:07:25] Josiah: You know it’s a whole experience that we’ve really lost. VHS, where you put it in and then you’d see these like four or five previews coming soon to theaters, coming soon to VHS and DVD.

That was an experience we kind of 

[00:07:41] Tim: lost. When you got the DVD, that was gone. And then Blu ray. Was even faster and had more content. You could watch a lot of the extras and things. And I’ve watched a lot of Blu ray and DVD extras for a lot of the movies that I 

[00:07:55] Rebekah: like. I do not. I don’t think, I can’t remember the last time I watched an extra on anything like that, but I 

[00:08:02] Tim: will say.

You can just watch it on, 

[00:08:03] Josiah: on YouTube or whatever. Most likely. They probably don’t make them very much anymore besides maybe director commentary for a few things. 

[00:08:10] Rebekah: That’s fair. We we will randomly look up movie previews. on like the previews app on Apple TV or just on YouTube and We’re huge nerds. So we will seek out the previews despite the fact that they are not in front of us on the VHS What are we talking about today?

All right today we are going to be going over the catching fire book and film, which is the second in the trilogy of books in the Hunger Games series. It is the second of four movies. And just like a quick recap, we did this for the first one as well. The book Catching Fire starts with Katniss about six months after she and Peta have finished their Hunger Games.

She’s dealing with a lot of different things from her struggles with the way Gale feels about her and the way Peta feels about her to her confusing, confusing feelings that she has. And It picks up with them, her and Peta, going on the Victory Tour with Haymitch, during which time they basically visit all 12 districts and the Capitol.

Before they leave for the Victory Tour, Snow visits Katniss in 12, which is highly irregular, tells her that they need to convince him of their love. They fail. And in the midst of their victory tour not only do they fail to prove their love, they also become aware of some uprising and rebellion going on in the districts.

And so, basically, they do the victory tour, find out they have not impressed Snow, and that they’re kind of doomed, get back home, and Essentially Katniss tries to convince people to run away. Let’s get out of 12 momentarily. No one agrees basically in time and the district 12 peacekeeping unit is replaced with new peacekeepers.

District 12 is oppressed, much more like the other districts in the in Panem are oppressed. They have even more problems with food, even more problems with poverty. And Katniss mother, who’s essentially she and Prim act as nurse, nurses and doctors in 12 they are just seen with a bunch of people constantly through.

In the midst of Katniss and Peeta still trying to live up to this whole wedding thing that happened on the Victory Tour where Peeta proposed to her the day in the books, it’s a little less It’s clear, but in the books, the day that Katniss’s wedding dress shoot is shown on television, they find out that for the quarter quell, which is the third one of its kind, every 25 years, the hunger games has a special game called a quell.

And in this quarter quell, the tributes will be reaped from the existing pool of victors. Oh, that was absolutely a twist I did not see coming. So essentially. Katniss is the only living female victor in 12. Haymitch and Peta are the only living male victors. And so, at the reaping, which happens another, you know, four, three, I think three months after that announcement, something around those lines At the reaping, after which the three of them have put in a bunch of time to gain weight and get healthy and work out, train like careers.

They then find Haymitch’s name pulled from the two names essentially in the big ol bowl. I don’t know what the name of that is. What is the big bowl? 

[00:11:26] Josiah: The Reap Bowl. The 

[00:11:27] Rebekah: Reap Bowl! I don’t think that’s what it’s called. So, there probably is. But anyway, they pick Haymitch’s name out, PETA volunteers.

He and Katniss go to the capital and meet the other tributes who again are victors. So they find that they are in a pool of people who are all in some ways killers, but many of whom are old or so strung out on drugs that they’re not really much of a threat. But there are several tributes in the ring that are now Let’s just say much bigger of a threat than they would have been in the past.

They go into the arena, which is a beachy kind of ocean themed arena almost. It’s very hot and tropical where Katniss and Peta, who had not planned on this, end up teaming up with multiple other victors, including Finnick and his District 4 counterpart, Old Mags. They also team up with Joanna, and she’s from District 5, I want to say.

And then Wyrus and BD from District 3, who are very, very smart. Wyrus, though, is a little unable to kind of, hang normally. Did you say Joanna Mason? Yeah, Joanna Mason. Is she from District 7? District 7 is Lumber. I’m so sorry. So they team up kind of in different ways and essentially, they don’t really know what’s going on.

Katniss and Peeta were left in the dark. You find out at the end of the games, which don’t end normally, that BD had had this whole plan where they destroy the arena because there was an uprising that was planned with the help of District 13. And so Katniss at the end of the movie and book essentially destroys the arena.

She kind of figures out enough of the plan to move forward with that destruction. She and Finnick are rescued from the arena by Plutarch Heavensby, the game maker who is actually undercover working with District 13 to help begin the rebellion. He’s on the Hovercraft with Haymitch and Finnick and unfortunately Peta and Joanna Mason are captured and go back to the capital.

And so the, the book, final pages of the book end and the movie with her waking up talking to Gale, finding out that district 12 was bombed shortly after the games ended so unceremoniously and that her mother and sister made it, but that they are now in underground district 13. So that was a really long explanation.

A lot happens. There’s a lot in this movie. Actually one of the fun little trivia facts that wrote down somewhere is that this is the longest runtime of all four movies. So this one I believe is two hours and 26 minutes and the next one down is like two Oh eight or something along those lines. So they’re all over two hours, but this one was significantly longer.

So, yeah. Nice. Why don’t we talk about some of the things that were different. 

[00:14:21] Tim: Different. From the book to the movie. From the book to the movie. Yeah. Well, first 

[00:14:26] Josiah: of all, they are called Reaping Bowls on the Fandom website. 

[00:14:30] Rebekah: So, Reaping Bowl was so close. Yeah. I’m very proud of you, Justin. Thank you very 

[00:14:34] Donna: much.

I’m really glad because Reapbowl is really awkward and 

[00:14:38] Rebekah: hard to say. Someone who writes stage plays and author’s books and the other person who edits content for a living that one of us would have come up with something that wasn’t horribly hard to say out loud. But you know what? Or maybe they came up 

[00:14:52] Josiah: with it on purpose to make it all funny.

Oh, maybe it 

[00:14:55] Donna: was funny on purpose. We’re very funny. I don’t 

[00:14:57] Rebekah: know if you’ve noticed. Dear. In this depressing dystopian novel 

[00:15:01] Donna: we’re 

[00:15:02] Tim: discussing. To start on a slightly different, different tack I had a friend that was reading along with the book series about the same time we originally read the book series and discovered that there was going to be a series of movies as well.

And her response to this book was, wow, they’re making a movie about it? There, there’s an awful lot of people in this book that are naked a lot of the time. So how will they handle that part? Yeah, that’s, that’s one of the things for me that was different between the book and the movie. They took they tried to utilize partial nudity or or things where the camera cuts away in a lot of places.

But in the book there was quite a lot of, of nudity as in, you know, how they, how they were strutting around Finnick was one of those people. And Joanna was one of those people basically because they’d come to either not care or they had accepted different lot in life, 

[00:16:08] Rebekah: fun trivia, who is the last person that they mention being naked in catching fire?

Oh, well, 

[00:16:16] Josiah: Is it surprising? Yes, I’m going to guess why rest 

[00:16:22] Rebekah: anybody else? Got to guess.

Wow. It is in the arena. If that helps, it’s in the arena. The correct answer is, yeah, the correct answer is Beatie because when he’s injured, at some point, Katniss, and I think Joanna have to strip him down, like, and she says something about him being naked, but it doesn’t really affect her at this point.

She’s seen so many people naked Beatie, which is funny. Yeah, no, in the book. Mm-Hmm. , it’s in the book. It’s on the movie. 

[00:16:57] Tim: Is this clean? It’s definitely not in the movie. 

[00:16:59] Rebekah: Yeah, I think clean just just for the record I think when I say this is a clean podcast I mean, we don’t like make sexual jokes or swear and stuff like 

[00:17:10] Josiah: that.

Cut my question. 

[00:17:13] Rebekah: But I’m pretty sure that that happens because he gets injured Like it’s after I don’t remember which injury it is, but anyway, I don’t want to get stuck on that. But yeah, 

[00:17:22] Tim: that I mentioned that that I brought that stuff up is I think it is indicative of the fact that so many of the people who’ve been through the games and these are the the victors that they’re chosen from understand themselves to simply be you know, Object pieces of meat.

They’re, they’re objects. Yes. They’re definitely, they’ve been objectified. And so it just doesn’t seem to matter 

[00:17:49] Rebekah: anymore in the following book when Finnick is talking like he does a, a propo. He does mention, he literally uses the words, President Snow used to sell me. And so there’s, it’s indicated later on that a lot of victors, although they technically live in extraordinary wealth and all this stuff, that in reality they were kind of prostituted in a way after winning, they always belonged to the Capitol.

That’s a great way to say it. And I think 

[00:18:16] Donna: one going back to the different people, however, being naked, I think one of the things they, one way they utilize that in the second movie is they made jokes of things to the, the second movie was a lot lighter. I felt like. As far as little bits of comic relief in it, then the first one, I don’t know how much more, I don’t know how much comic relief you could really put in the first one and it’d be believable, but the second one lightened 

[00:18:51] Josiah: up.

I think it lightened up because all of the characters. We’re more similar to Haymitch right where they knew yeah, there’s no getting out of this so might as well Yeah, have some fun. Have 

[00:19:05] Rebekah: some fun That kind of like when he’s given her the sugarcubes 

[00:19:09] Donna: and The scene the the way the four of them played the scene in the elevator with Joanna.

Their chemistry was so great there. 

[00:19:18] Rebekah: I laughed a lot. I laugh a lot every time I see that scene. She is the perfect cast for Joanna Mason. Yes. Like, it is so funny. Okay, another fun little trivia fact about that scene. Joanna Mason, who’s Played by Jenna Malone. They had to film that scene in a hotel with a glass window in the elevator in a real hotel with people actually staying and working there.

So they did not like get the whole hotel empty to do all the filming. So she had to strip down. So there was an interview with MTV where she said something like, I had to leave one thing on. So we, I don’t know if that’s, you know, what it was. It doesn’t matter. But she was naked. Like at least from the waist up from what we could see.

And so they, she did the scene stripped down and they tried to do it as few times as possible. I don’t know if they only filmed at once or if it was multiple times. And so she walks out of the elevator and she shared this on an interview, turns to one side and immediately sees this guy driving a coffee cart.

And she’s like, I was just stark naked. And so I just laughed and walked past 

[00:20:19] Donna: him. She seems 

[00:20:21] Josiah: to have taken it like a champ, but Boy, that seems like… Ill preparation on the part of the production. 

[00:20:32] Donna: I agree. But in all of those situations, those and like the one where Oh, it’s Hamish’s friend and he says, Nah, be careful, he’ll drink all your liquor.

Yeah, chaff. And he chaff, he kisses her. All of those little pieces with the sugar cube and then Joanna. Then chaff and cedar, all of those exchanges drive home the point that of Peta’s joke to her. We weren’t making fun of you. You’re just so pure. Yeah. She has this self deprecation thing that goes on.

And I think trying to pull that out of her, I thought that was very useful because you keep realizing, Oh, that’s right. Katniss, she hasn’t had time to be bad. She’s been trying to. Help her family survive as 

[00:21:24] Tim: she’s a young teenager, she’s been helping her family to survive. Yeah. And it’s taken everything to do 

[00:21:30] Rebekah: that.

J Law played it really well too in the elevator. She really looked like annoyed, but like also confused as to why no one else was as annoyed as her, you know, cause it was just such a shock. 

[00:21:43] Josiah: Hey, what about the, they trained in the book? 

[00:21:48] Rebekah: I hated that they left this out. Okay. 

[00:21:51] Donna: That was and that they did not.

I’m so glad you said it. That wasn’t going to be. Well, that was my weird thing that they left out. That was so 

[00:21:57] Josiah: cool. It’s so logical and helpful and such an interesting look into other people, especially when. They are they watch videos of past victors, right? Yes They examine their their opponents. 

[00:22:11] Rebekah: Yeah, which was Peter’s idea and he had to request the videos from Effie.

They requested videos of all Living victors previous games. He had a notebook like a binder that he used to keep notes of everything. They were so prepared and I think One of the things that it also takes out, which I think is just a character development miss, which I understand why. Again, it’s like, this movie, like I said, was the longest runtime.

It was already very long. But Haymitch, at the beginning of this whole thing, when they find out what the quell is, PETA throws away Haymitch’s liquor, and Haymitch literally has to sober up, which took a little while, they describe. And then they, yeah, he went through all of his withdrawal. Then they start training.

And when he starts training, she mentions like, he couldn’t throw a knife to hit the side of a house the first couple of weeks. And so Haymitch goes through this like process, they fatten up, they eat more food, make sure they’re like ready to be able, they have a little bit more fat for their body to feed on when they get starving and all this stuff.

And. Even when they’re on the train and they know that PETA is going to be in the arena, not Hamish. In the book, it’s also mentioned that like Effie ordered wine with her dinner, but because she saw Hamish not drinking, she asked the waiter to take it back. And so Hamish literally sobers for over half a year into when they get to the games, which I think like.

The idea that he became that person from the, the guy he started at, which in the books fell off the stage drunk during the first reaping. I don’t know if you remember that they cut it from the movie, but like to go from that to a man who would give up his vice with essentially, I mean, it’s not like they had rehab.

So essentially with no help other than them saying you can’t drink anymore, he’d give up his vice and then. Stay off of it just to help these two kids that he loves at this point so much, man, that was like powerful to me in the books. There was also a 

[00:24:04] Donna: point and maybe that’s why they took this chunk out.

I don’t know, but another reason. There’s also a point where they’d watched all the others and Peter had been studying them. Katniss wakes up. She can’t sleep. She comes out. She’s like, what are you watching? And the only one they hadn’t seen was Hamish’s games. And he said, I just didn’t know if it would be awkward or weird for him.

And so I haven’t watched them. And so they sit down and start watching them and they see. The reaping and they see Katniss’s mother and my just mom and my just twin sister or her mom’s twin sister and realize Katniss is like, Oh my God, that’s my mom. And they see, you know, these different things happen and then see Haymitch.

Team up with the, the, the other mazily with mazily for a little bit and then make the choice, you know, should we stay together? And he realized, no, we can’t and all those things. And it is how it led him to win the game. 

[00:25:07] Rebekah: But remember, similar to what Katniss did with Rue in that, in that portrayal of the second quarter, well, the image one.

Maisley and he split and very shortly after he hears her scream, which he could ignore fairly because they’ve split up, but he goes back to her and he holds her as she dies, which is again something that not a lot of people did, but they also. I don’t know if you’re going to say this, but like the whole thing that they kind of come to the conclusion of in the book is that Hamich himself was kind of a rebel because he used the force field in his games as a way to kill the, I think the person that he threw a weapon and the last person he was fighting, the weapon came up and killed that last kid.

That was the only person left and they didn’t want the force field to be part of the games, like around the edge of the arena. And so. They recount like they’ve never seen his games on TV and how weird that is because they have replays of Hunger Games all the time. So it was definitely a weird, they also cut that but then also used the force field of the arena as a weapon or like to cook nuts and like different things in the movie and in the book.

But in the movie you don’t really, like there’s not this connection of like they learned that that could happen because of Haymitch’s games. 

[00:26:24] Tim: Right. Yeah. There’s a lot they had to leave out. From the second book because they left out the beginning of the story in the first book. Yeah, when, when they dropped some of those characters and some of those storylines, you know, The pen and all of, all of the stuff, all the significance with that, they had to drop that from subsequent storylines as well, even though it’s a very, very deep and interesting and broad 

[00:26:51] Josiah: part.

Here’s something I think I’m okay with them cutting from The movie there’s a little more AVOX stuff left out from the book to movie again. Okay, so maybe I’m dumb. In the books, by the third book, do the AVOXs have a big payoff? Is there any plot point where it’s like, oh, I’m, oh, the AVOXs are so important, or is it just kind of a background thing about the capitals?

[00:27:20] Rebekah: It’s, it’s more, it’s more background. I would say the closest thing to payoff you get is knowing, and this isn’t a payoff, but the, the only resolution is in, we don’t know in the first book if her, if Katniss avox was chosen on purpose or if it was totally by mistake, cause she doesn’t know that anyone ever saw her see the girl be taken away.

In the second, Haymitch and Katniss are both very friendly with Darius. One of the peacekeepers that gets replaced because he tries to protect Gail when Gail like in interrupts the peacekeepers when he gets whipped and so the Everyone from district 12 knew him, but specifically the two Katniss and Haymitch knew him Well, and so he was placed there to essentially torture them mentally So, I mean it’s not a payoff but it’s just kind of a it’s a way to like you said underline 

[00:28:11] Josiah: I think it’s okay to have it in the book, especially because it only takes a few sentences and in the grand scheme of things, that’s not much, but to have to dedicate, just to grind the movie to a halt, I think it would have been too much to really go into all the AVOC stuff.

I think that’s a good 

[00:28:27] Tim: change. So it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t come to a satisfactory ending for them. It’s just 

[00:28:32] Rebekah: there. It adds interest in the book. I agree. It adds interest in the book, but I think adding it to the movie would have just wasted time. I think it was more, it felt like it was missing more in the first film because that kind of, That was one of the things that actually showed that Katniss knew that like people did run away from their districts and the capital would capture that.

Like, there was just something in it that kind of developed a little more world building stuff versus, oh, President Snow is a really mean guy, you know. In the second movie it was kind of, that was the only thing you missed. Yeah. 

[00:29:05] Josiah: Okay, what about this? I don’t know if I like this or not. Okay. Katniss went at the reaping in the second movie.

Gives the hand signal. That’s the three finger salute, right? Which is not 

[00:29:22] Rebekah: in the books that is not in the books, which I think it was very much It was very clear in the book that Katniss and Peeta had no intention of an uprising or rebellion outside of the one time she thought about trying to ask people to run away or to like do an uprising shortly after that when The Peacekeepers took over but like by this time They, like, neither of them wanted to be a face of anything, obviously, we talked about that, but, like, it was, I think in the books, if it had happened, that you would have seen something similar to what happened in Eleven when someone raised their hand as Katniss honored Rue, and so I think that, like, it, it didn’t feel consistent, but, like, I understand why they did it, it’s kind of It’s for a trailer.

Yeah, it makes more sense in the trailer, but, But yeah, it didn’t feel consistent with the other experiences. 

[00:30:17] Josiah: I think that Cadmus character is so strong as the put upon, I don’t want to be in charge of any sort of rebellion, I just want to live my life. But I, and I think that her, it’s almost like open rebellion and yeah, I do.

I think there’s a consistency problem with it. Not immediately sparking a riot in district 

[00:30:38] Donna: 12, 

[00:30:39] Rebekah: a man in the head, like when he did it in district 11, but, 

[00:30:46] Donna: but in the case of, of any hero. Harry Potter, John McClane, Katniss Everdeen, they don’t want anybody else to be around them because they don’t want to get hurt.

They might get hurt. And they’re so driven to solely save the world, that character pops up in so many, you know, in literature everywhere. Common trope. That, that, that trope, yeah. It’s weird. I mean, I say that it’s noble, but so few people, I think, really have that part of them. I think there are people out there like that, but it’s just not in our everyday nature.

Do we want people to get hurt? No. Do we want to protect the ones around us? The ones we love? Yes, but they have these characters. It stretches beyond that. It’s everybody that even it even ends up people. They don’t know people. They’re not comfortable with whatever. They still want to try to save somehow.

And I think getting a lot of the stuff in her head that you get from the books, that’s so, so clear they do. I think they do a decent job in the movie of, of you seeing it, but I think in the movie 

[00:32:14] Tim: they take, they take the tack of really, Pitting Katniss against President Snow that they, they make that that conflict very vivid when in the book, Snow is coming after her when she would really just like to fade into the background.

If you just let me fade into the background and leave my family alone, I would be good with that. Yeah. 

[00:32:40] Donna: Either, either fade into the background or she says to him in that same conversation, why don’t you just kill me now? Yeah. 

[00:32:48] Rebekah: And it was an honest, like, it’s an honest question. 

[00:32:54] Josiah: Wow. Hey do we have any opinions on the following 

[00:33:00] Tim: changes?

I can pretty well guarantee. 

[00:33:02] Josiah: Okay. There were more kisses in the movie. I… 

[00:33:09] Rebekah: Okay, I have such… I’m going to talk about this. I’m, I’m, I have a very strong opinion. Okay. In the movie. Okay. Well, okay. Sorry. I’m trying to think about how I want to say this. 

[00:33:20] Josiah: Go through a list of what I thought was lightning around, but I’m, I’m so glad you have.

[00:33:25] Rebekah: Yes. This is one I wanted to talk about. I will just tell you. My now 17 year old son was watching the movie with us when Katniss goes back and forth and she kisses Gale, and then she kisses Gale again, but then it’s like she’s kissing Peeta, and then now she’s kissing Gale, and we were watching all the movies together.

I’m not gonna repeat the word that he said, but he said, Is she a… and said a word that suggests that she is not particularly faithful to one person. I don’t think that that was… I think that his perception is what happened in the movie because they added more with Gale where Katniss went out of her way to be romantically affectionate to him, but then went back to Peeta.

In the book, there’s just this internal struggle, a lot. And obviously she does kiss Peeta. But she mentions at the beginning of Catching Fire that two weeks or something after they got back from the games, the first time she and Gale went out to hunt, Gale grabbed her by surprise and kissed her and I think he said, I had to do that just once.

And then they never talk about it again. So then it’s not until he’s whipped that she kisses him again. And in the book realizes he’s the person she loves. He’s the person she’d want to be with. Then when the quell announcement happens, they’ve had no more. Romantic interaction whatsoever, the quell announcement in the book happens, then she’s like, okay, well, I’m going to die.

It doesn’t matter. So they cut off all romance, Gail and Peta train together, like Gail helps them train PETA. She specifically says PETA literally stops treating her in any way like he likes her. And then they go to the games and the next thing they have to do is act for the Capitol. But in the movie, they also add in this extra scene where she kisses Gail again.

And it just, honestly, I think it takes away. From like her characters, not integrity, but like it just felt like too much and it, I didn’t like it. 

[00:35:19] Tim: I think they were probably playing to the love triangle aspect, primarily for those who just really love to see, Oh, is she going to choose him? Is she going to choose this other and go back and forth when the movie was a little less, less involved with that.

That’s a trope 

[00:35:39] Josiah: in books too. And sure it is right in there. 

[00:35:43] Rebekah: There was a love triangle, but not in that way. 

[00:35:45] Josiah: I can see what you’re saying. I can see why the filmmakers did that. Again, it’s one of those things like for the trailers. I have recently learned the value of shipping readers love to ship.

Different characters together and 

[00:36:02] Rebekah: I do too. I will admit that I actually wanted Katniss when I was reading the books like before I had finished them. I wanted Katniss to pick Gale like overwhelmingly. I knew Peeta was like quote unquote a better person like as she displays him but Gale to me just seemed like a better match and so I was rooting for them.

Honestly, I just didn’t like the way it was portrayed in the movie. 

[00:36:24] Josiah: Okay, what about this Plutarch who is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the movie who I think by Gives Plutarch kind of more gravitas than he might have had in the book. I agree. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s great. He, I agree. He gives less foreshadowing.

To Katniss before the quarter quell 

[00:36:45] Rebekah: happens Yeah, cuz at the party where Katniss and Peeta get engaged He shows her his watch with a Mockingjay symbol on it he says it starts at midnight and then says that he has to go and to a late night planning session. That’s what starts at midnight. That’s his cover, whatever.

In the movie, he calls her an inspiration. They dance, but like they, I felt like it was. Maybe a bigger surprise that he ended up being part of the rebellion at that point. I did think it was an odd choice. I didn’t hate it, but I liked in the book that like you could look back on that the second read through and go, Oh, he was trying to like say that she had his support.

I think it works 

[00:37:29] Josiah: for movies being a visual medium, because I just think it would be so. obvious because you’re not from Katniss’s point of view anymore. You have the camera that is directly showing the audience what Plutarch is, is doing and saying and how he’s saying it. Whereas in the book, Katniss is assuming like, Oh, I don’t know why he correct me if I’m wrong.

She’s like, Oh, I don’t know why he’s showing me any of this or she doesn’t even think of an anything of it because she’s so oblivious. And 

[00:37:59] Rebekah: so she just hates him because of what he represents. Yeah. So she’s kind of stuck on that. Makes sense. 

[00:38:03] Tim: A lot of movies where where the foreshadowing, we, we can really see it because we do.

We rewatch movies a lot. We don’t just watch it once and say, yay, I’ve watched it, I’m done. We go back and watch it again. And because we know what has happened, we say, that’s where that started or that’s where that started. It’s, it’s really a masterful thing to be able. to include foreshadowing in a way that isn’t obvious, that doesn’t just kind of glare in your face in a movie.

But when you watch it a second time, you’re like, yes, that’s where that, that’s what that was. And that’s why. And I think maybe if they weren’t as masterful at doing that simply leaving it out. It’s like, I don’t know if we can do this subtly enough. So we just won’t do it. Yeah. 

[00:38:54] Rebekah: One, and I know, I want you to go through the rest of the smaller stuff.

There was one plot thing that was taken out that I thought was weird, which was she doesn’t run out into the woods when the wedding dresses arrive for her to try on. She doesn’t, in the movie, run into the woods and meet Twill and Bonnie. So they had run away from another district. I wanna, it’s the one that makes clothing.

But they had run away, and they were trying to find District 13, and it’s like the first mention of 13 I believe, in the books, where it’s kind of, it’s more than just passing sentence. And I thought it was so interesting because they baked the Mockingjay into a piece of bread, and it was like a symbol of the fact that they were with her, even though she didn’t even know what it meant, and kind of up against the whole, you know, Plutarch and his watch.

It was really, really interesting. And then later in Mockingjay, you know, she asks about Twill and Bonnie and as far as they know, never made it there to 13. So we’re assumed that, you know, to, we’re, we’re to assume that they died or just didn’t make it for some other reason. But I thought it was such an interesting thing that.

Like that they cut, they also cut, you know, the whole wedding dress shoot was cut. The fact that the Capitol voted on a dress, like they just kind of get to the interviews and Senna tells her Snow said she had to wear her wedding dress and here it is, but she’s seen it before in the books, you know? So that was one thing I thought was off.

At 

[00:40:20] Tim: some point, I suppose the filmmakers have to say, which parts of this push the plot forward and which parts are just window dressing. For 

[00:40:31] Josiah: this particular plot point, the fandom website for Hunker Games says, without a source, but it says that the filmmakers did not want to spoil the ending of the movie.

And I, I, I think what they mean by that is that they don’t want to mention 13, that they wanted that to be a reveal for the end of. Catching fire. 

[00:40:59] Rebekah: Okay. I can see that. Translating. And in the, in 

[00:41:02] Josiah: the book you know, you have, it takes longer to read a book for most people. I know you’re a speed reader. I am.

But it takes most people longer to read a book. It’s easier for them to forget things like that and then remember, Oh yeah, that thing. But when you’re sitting down to watch a movie. I 

[00:41:17] Tim: think it’s just a few minutes ago. That’s a lot easier to remember. 

[00:41:20] Donna: Yeah. Yeah. Another thing you get from her and Plutarch in the movie, it just seems like it makes her more angry with him that they had this brief exchange, right?

Where because you see more depth of what’s going on in the book and I didn’t understand why they didn’t take a few seconds for him to point out something on his watch a little more clearly, you have to pick and choose what you put on the screen and I can, I can appreciate that and I think they did a good job.

I really think they did a good job of 

[00:41:56] Rebekah: that. Yeah, I loved this movie. I’m not, it’s not a big complaint. I just, I, I want everything to be seasons long television, 

[00:42:07] Tim: multi season. 

[00:42:08] Rebekah: Well, I mean, the best thing that I think I heard this year was that HBO max is planning. Yes. You know, this is a Harry Potter television show.

They’re doing it over. Full seasons, like each book is a season now. Oh, it’s just called Max. I’m sorry. Max is doing this Harry Potter show. And I’m so excited. Like, because I love the Harry Potter movies. We, I’m sure one day we’ll review the book to movie adaptations, but that’s the kind of thing that I want because like, The tidbits for me that were missed, like I know they don’t move the plot forward.

I know that if they’re in a movie, they just make it feel long, whatever. I get the point. I don’t love it. Like it feels like a television show is a better way to adapt most 

[00:42:54] Tim: books. You have six to 12 hours. To tell the story, you can include some of those little tidbits in it and make those connections, though they don’t necessarily move the plot forward.

But, but it’s a great cliffhanger for, you know, the next one and things like that. So, yeah, I can understand that. 

[00:43:13] Rebekah: Alright, lightning round, more differences, tell us. 

[00:43:16] Josiah: Well, of course, this is not, the movie is not only from Katniss point of view. So you get extra little scenes like Snow and his granddaughter.

Love. You love Gail in the, in the minds looking at, is it Katniss and Peeta getting 

[00:43:31] Rebekah: engaged? Getting engaged. She’s like looking upset. He doesn’t say anything. Yeah. 

[00:43:35] Josiah: Plutarch and Snow talking like, kind of like snow and sand. They talk a 

[00:43:40] Rebekah: lot back and forth. I really liked that. 

[00:43:42] Josiah: Snow and Seneca had their thing last 

[00:43:43] Rebekah: movie.

The payoff of that was cool too because at the very end of the movie, when Snow thinks Katniss is going to shoot Finnick and instead she shoots the force field, Snow gets mad and he calls out for Plutarch and Plutarch doesn’t answer. And it’s like very powerful that suddenly he realizes something happened.

[00:44:02] Tim: Didn’t realize he disappeared. Yeah, 

[00:44:05] Josiah: there’s not a lot outside of Katniss’s perspective, which is one of the best things about the movies I think is that they’re able to go outside Katniss’s perspective, and we’ll talk about it next episode I think everything that added in the next movie was basically good, but that’ll be a spoiler But that’s kind of all the scenes they added outside of Katniss’s perspective That we could think of so did it 

[00:44:28] Tim: seem like there were fewer things outside of her perspective this time or more?

I front than the previous movie. 

[00:44:36] Rebekah: I would say like fewer. Yeah, I think compared to the first one 

[00:44:41] Josiah: Snows mouth does not bleed in the book, but it doesn’t he coughed up a bit I love I love that part 

[00:44:51] Tim: I think it makes 

[00:44:54] Josiah: a 

[00:44:55] Tim: connection for later. And it also caused me before the Ballad of Songbirds 

[00:45:03] Donna: and Snakes, 

[00:45:04] Tim: Just before we read anything about that, I wondered if he was the one who created the games and he’s, you know, a hundred years old cause this is the 75th one.

If he was actually involved in creating the games and he’s not just old, he’s enormously old for them, you know, that, that kind of. Started that thought process for me. 

[00:45:30] Josiah: What about Prim? I think this is a great translation where in the book, Katniss has in her monologue, I believe, about Prim having healing 

[00:45:41] Rebekah: capabilities.

She watches her take care of people alongside her mother and realizes how good she is. Yes. 

[00:45:47] Josiah: Where there’s a little extended scene in the movie with Prim helping… Mrs. Everdeen with, is it shaking 

[00:45:56] Rebekah: hands? She’s trying to get morphling out of a syringe and her hand won’t stop shaking. Yes. Which is odd because in the books, like, her mother’s always very steady with patients.

But you’re right. It was a way to show this inner monologue 

[00:46:08] Donna: way to show, but this remember, okay, going to be at the point and you wouldn’t know if you didn’t read the book at the point that happened when they took Gail in the house is when Hamish says new gamekeeper and in the book, he, they make some reference or some inference new piece, new head peacekeeper.

Yeah. Sorry. New head peacekeeper. They make some reference or a glance or something to suggest it’s going to, it’s, it’s like it was, they remember how bad I remember like it was, was when she lost. One of her best friends and so it, I can see where knowing that I can see why she would shake not having read the book, you would just think nervous that she’s frail, but really she’s not frail.

Now that that whole area. We haven’t really touched on that at all that Katniss we touched on the fact that Katniss was frustrated with her mom and you can’t leave prim in the last book and you can’t. And her mom says, you know, if I’d had medicine, if I’d had what I had before in the book, this wouldn’t have happened and I’m, I’m, I’m, I’ve got it and, and she is stronger in the books and I think that was just an arc they didn’t have time to cover well 

[00:47:34] Josiah: enough, 

[00:47:35] Tim: but her zoning out when her husband died.

As opposed to being able to handle it with taking care of all sorts of people in all of their problems. My mother was a nurse and my mother did all sorts of things that I can’t imagine people having to do day in and day out and deal with certain kinds of things. But when my sister That’s right.

And so I had a mom that fell and clipped off the tip of her finger and she bled a lot. My mother completely froze because it was somebody that she was so close to. She completely froze and my dad had to take care of it. And so I C, I see a little bit of that with a caregiver that’s used to Maybe separating themselves from it and just being able to do what needs to be done at the moment I’ve even done that myself been able to deal with some things but when when our daughter You know turn was running and turned and hit a tree and was bleeding on her face It was a tiny pinprick.

Lots 

[00:48:37] Josiah: of blood and 

[00:48:39] Donna: I had, 

[00:48:40] Rebekah: I had blood running down my face. It looked like a horror movie. We will actually talk about the shining at one point and apparently it was very like all of the 

[00:48:48] Donna: shining, but 

[00:48:49] Tim: I had taken care of teenagers. You know, one teenager came to me once and said, Hey, I had these stitches done and they popped out.

And so I had to take care of them. And just did it. It wasn’t 

[00:49:01] Donna: when it’s the closest people. 

[00:49:03] Tim: So there’s, there is something to that whole plot line because when I first saw that, I thought, how could she be so frozen in this moment? And so common cool and effective in this moment. But then I thought that’s my mom.

And I’ve experienced some of that myself as well. Yeah. Sorry. 

[00:49:24] Josiah: No, don’t be sorry. I love that. I 

[00:49:27] Tim: go down memory lane too in some of these things. 

[00:49:31] Josiah: I think one of the biggest differences, we already talked about the training, so much of the training being cut. I think that a lot of District 12’s subjugation was cut for the film.

Yeah. I think that narratively it serves. Main, it’s main purpose is a red herring for what this book slash movie is about. That’s fair. While the audience still doesn’t realize that a whole new Hunger Games is gonna happen what the quarterquill is about. The district 12 subjugation feels like a setup for the beginning of Katniss leading a 

[00:50:04] Rebekah: rebellion.

Yeah. My first read through, that’s what I assumed was going to happen 

[00:50:08] Donna: at this point. The book really 

[00:50:10] Tim: wants us to, to understand the depression and oppression and really pushes that where the movie probably decided enough is enough. We need to get to. 

[00:50:23] Rebekah: Again, it doesn’t move the plot forward to stick on it too long.

I thought it was interesting that, and I mean, this might’ve been just a shooting thing that the setting didn’t allow for it or budget. I don’t know. But in the book, there’s a three day. Snowstorm that starts the day that Gail is whipped and the new peacekeeper comes in and all this stuff. And so Katniss spends three days, she said she sent Pete a home.

Their homes are literally like 50 feet apart. And she calls him on the little phones that they have between their homes. to make sure he makes it home. Okay, that’s how bad the snowstorm was. And so they’re basically trapped in their homes for three days. And in that three days, the entire new peacekeeping force has put up stocks in the center, in front of the justice building.

And they’ve burned down the hob, which in the book happens in the background and all these other things happen. And then obviously that leads into just so much horrible subjugation. It was not like, it’s hard to read. It’s 

[00:51:22] Tim: things like that are difficult. For me to watch, I struggle, you know, we’ve, you know, whether it’s John wicker, John McClain or Rocky or any of those kinds of things, I, there’s a point at which I say, okay, enough is enough.

Cause one of the tropes is that the hero has to be battered down to this point where they almost lose and then they begin to rise again.

It gets to a point for me a lot where it’s like, okay, enough is enough. It feels all you. Yeah. Darkest hour. 

[00:52:00] Josiah: Yeah. All, all Is that? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, it is a movie, but I’m talking about the, the trope. It, it, it’s, oh, I see every story. The hero a lot. Darkest hour. Yeah. Their lowest low. Well, 

[00:52:11] Tim: that, that feeling of satisfaction that, that.

They conquered this is supposed to be greater because of the depth of, of how dark it got. But for me as a watcher, as a viewer there’s only so much of that I can take before I have to kind of disengage from it. The 

[00:52:34] Donna: hopelessness can 

[00:52:34] Rebekah: get really overwhelmed. 

[00:52:35] Donna: Should you have another aspect? I love hopelessness.

There’s 

[00:52:39] Rebekah: another in film and books. I, we don’t. Okay. I just want to. 

[00:52:44] Donna: Okay. So you have another aspect that’s shown in contrast between Katniss and Gail where Gail is like, I want to fight. I want to put this together. I will, I will head it up. I’m ready. Yeah. Katniss is the other side. I don’t want to do this.

I just want to go back to what we were doing. And of course, that’s repulsive to him. What are we doing? We’re slaves. He’s offended by this. But then you realize in a bigger scale, she sees District 8 on the television when she goes by the The door there on the train at one point, she sees in the book, she’s in 

[00:53:20] Rebekah: the book, she’s at the party at the mayor’s house because she’s at Matt’s house.

It’s playing on the mayor’s television and that’s why it’s playing. She’s not supposed to see it, but it’s only in the movie. It’s on 

[00:53:30] Donna: the train. It’s on the train. She sees it. She sees the people fighting and it’s intriguing to her, but frightening and then the end of the whole, the, the end of that or the, well, not the end, it’s ongoing, but one of the outcomes is they realize that the people in district eight are ready.

They were there, they put it together. They, they wanted to stand up. The people in district twelve weren’t there yet. And one of the differences was. The peacekeepers in district 12 had been pretty tolerant of the people where when they went into ruse district and when they went into a couple of other places, it was much more militant and much more hardcore on the people, but where they had gotten into this life of.

The peacekeepers were happy to trade at the 

[00:54:23] Rebekah: hob and they were some of their best customers for the fresh meat, even, even 

[00:54:28] Donna: old Cray being kind of perverted with some of the young girls and, but he would get people passes on, on punishments and things. And what did it do? It caused them to accept this new normal.

That’s really that was 

[00:54:45] Rebekah: really horrible. It was less obvious how enslaved in some ways they were because it was like, just good enough. 

[00:54:53] Donna: And that’s one of those huge principles that I, it’s probably one of the reasons I love the trilogy so much. It’s one of those huge principles that you realize we’re, we’re our nature.

If we’re pushed, we will respond away. If we’re not pushed and we’re, we’re comfortable, comfortable, just 

[00:55:13] Tim: comfortable enough, we’ll 

[00:55:15] Donna: live in the comfort. Yeah. But if we’re, but if we’re pushed, we find that there’s that, that inner fight, that inner drive, this could be better. And, and I think I’m, that fascinates me all the way through this because.

It’s handled. So I think it’s a 

[00:55:32] Josiah: so well, just to finish out the lightning round before I guess we’ll give our verdicts. We 

[00:55:39] Donna: have things to talk about. Oh, 

[00:55:41] Josiah: yes. He’s in the movie a little more than she is in the book a little bit. And I’m always a fan of. Swim in the movie whereas he specifically can’t 

[00:55:52] Rebekah: in the books probably in the movie partly because not only Did he have no occasion to swim Katniss mentions?

She learned with her father out in the woods He took her to a lake out in the woods, but in the books he also has a prosthetic leg, which would make it even harder 

[00:56:07] Josiah: the sequences where Katniss is Katniss is kind of learning about The weaknesses in the force field is portrayed a little differently in the film just to make it more for a Visual medium instead of a book and the acid smoke in the arena does some different stuff 

[00:56:27] Rebekah: That was that would have been hard to communicate I think in the visual medium, but in the book the acid does not only give them these awful painful boils It also causes like nerve disruption, and so they, the reason that Mags has to essentially sacrifice herself so that Finnick can carry Peeta down the hill is, it is so sad.

But the reason that happens is, number one, Peeta has a prosthetic leg, but number two, because he can’t run as fast, he’d gotten hit with more smoke, and his legs literally stopped working, like, he could not physically run anymore. Which I just think isn’t interesting. I get why they changed it, though.

[00:57:04] Josiah: I don’t think we have time, but I would like, I kind of want all of us to say who our favorite new character is in this movie and book. I think mine’s Finnick. 

[00:57:18] Rebekah: Like, he’s just, he charms me. I like who he ends up being, too. 

[00:57:22] Tim: I love characters that grab your heart, just do it without a whole lot of stuff. Mags is that for me.

That was going to be… She never spoke a word. All of it had to be translated, but there’s something, the look on her face and all of those things, you, you really believed that she was this amazing woman. Yeah. That 

[00:57:48] Josiah: was gonna be my surprise answer, but you stole, oh, sorry. I love, I really like how ma, how mags, megs, how mags is in the book and in the movie portrayed through without words and it’s just so.

[00:58:07] Donna: I think mine would be some of the tributes that you only get bits and pieces of them. You see a cameo, no more than a cameo, really. But you begin to pick up what damage different people have suffered and what it’s made them. The morphlings, the girl that filed her teeth to sharp points and then you see more of Joanne.

You see more Fennec, but chaff and cedar and you, you you just get glimpses of how all these different people were affected. And they can’t fully explore it. I understand that. But I think that’s interesting. Correct. 

[00:58:50] Tim: That’s right. Even at the quarter quill. Yes. And 

[00:58:52] Donna: that would have been district 11 because he was right beside Gatnuff.

And then I don’t know how we haven’t already said this, but maybe I’ll have to throw it. I can’t let us go by until I say it. I said in the previous episode, I’m not a mushy love story, gushy person. I think they’re wonderful and I think they can add a lot, but. The scene on the, the scene in the water when Peter and Katniss sit down and he’s trying to tell her.

She has people that need her. He has no one. He can, he’s dispensable. 

[00:59:33] Rebekah: There’s no one that needs him. 

[00:59:35] Donna: That’s right. And then when she says, what about me? 

[00:59:40] Rebekah: She says, I 

[00:59:41] Donna: need you. Oh my gosh. I hate myself right 

[00:59:44] Rebekah: now. I cried. I can’t get through the 

[00:59:47] Donna: scene. And that’s one of those places where I’m reminded Josh, Gail and Katniss could not have had that conversation.

Right. It had to be, it had to be a PETA person that, that kind of, it had to be, it had to be someone with the gentle, like, yeah, because he, his life, because that’s what they built his life as where Gail’s a little too much like Katniss, they’re both caught, they’re both keeping their families alive because their dads died in the same, you know, that kind of too much similarity there, but that whole scene, putting that together It advances you already.

You’ve already seen that Katniss is invested in Peter. Her heart’s invested in him. You’ve already seen it at this point, but to see her have this moment of this isn’t planned and I think in the book, she makes a comment. Where she knows they finished for the cameras, she’s still trying to kind of convince herself that there’s a lot of acting going on, but you feel this, this 

[01:01:02] Rebekah: realness in the book, she specifically says that it was the second time that kissing Pita made her feel something like where it sparked something that was beyond just acting or beyond just friendship.

So, and 

[01:01:15] Donna: to your point earlier. She never had that with Gail the closest she ever got the closest she ever got was noticing his lips were warmer and they had a smoky, 

[01:01:26] Rebekah: like a, you know, I think the closest moment was when she kissed Gail after his whipping. But again, they do make a thing. One of her flaws is that.

She’s drawn to the, either of them, like, once they basically all, you know, she gets to know Peta, and she’s close to him, and he’s not a stranger, she’s drawn to the one that she feels like is in more need, as if she’s trying to fulfill something for them, not necessarily her. 

[01:01:53] Tim: been taking care of her mother and she’s had 

[01:01:55] Josiah: to be the father and the mother of the household.

[01:01:57] Rebekah: Has to take care of people. But because of that being so big, a part of her life, she lets it become kind of a flaw that she doesn’t just say like, if I’m going to love someone, I want to pick someone to love or if I want to love someone, I want to pick the one that’s right for me or whatever. She doesn’t want to choose because They go back and forth between who’s hurt the worst.

All right, what’s next? I wanted to talk about a couple random things, basic trivia things about the movie and the books. This was the highest grossing 

[01:02:27] Josiah: one. 

[01:02:28] Rebekah: This was the highest grossing movie worldwide of the four. Do you know, yes, the order. 

[01:02:34] Tim: It was higher worldwide than U. S. Yes. Which I found interesting.

Because you noted that yesterday. Because yesterday, because the last one was not. It didn’t hit the American number, 

[01:02:45] Rebekah: but this was . It wasn’t even, yeah, I think it was like, it wasn’t even half of it. It was half. Oh yeah. Close. But, so yeah, this was highest grossing. If you had to order them without looking what order do the next films come?

Like what’s the next highest grossing? 

[01:03:00] Tim: I would have to say that the. That the last movie had to be the high, the highest, the next highest. If this was the highest, the next, the last one, the conclusion had to be for me. 

[01:03:13] Rebekah: Anybody else have a 

[01:03:14] Josiah: guess? I think I gave my guess last round, last episode, but I’ll give it again after mom.

Well, 

[01:03:20] Rebekah: we talked, that was when we talked about Rotten Tomatoes ratings because the Rotten Tomatoes was, it’s a two, one. Three, four from highest to lowest? Oh, 

[01:03:31] Donna: I don’t know. I think, I almost don’t know how four could be less than three because three leaves you in a it. Mm-Hmm. it. You can’t. I would love to know the number of people that didn’t go back in C four.

How could you leave him thrashing in that bed? I don’t really care. Yeah. How can you leave him thrashing in the bed and her standing there watching him? Mm-Hmm. . How do you Not at least, even if you hate it by that point. How do y’all go back and at least see how it can conclude 

[01:04:05] Josiah: 2143 

[01:04:07] Rebekah: correct answer is two, then three, which is logging J part one, then one, then four, four made the least worldwide of all four movies, the conclusion, the conclusion, which is fascinating to me.

It was, it was under, it was under number one. It is a dark by like. 30, 000 or 30, 000, 000 it was like 690 something for the first Hunger Games. The very last one was 650 something. I 

[01:04:37] Josiah: think. Wow. I mean, spoiler alert for the third one, but tops 860. I think the assassination of president coin and. The death of prim are tough pills to swallow for casual audiences.

It gets 

[01:04:52] Rebekah: darker the longer it goes. So oh, go ahead, sir. I was just going to say this, like I said yesterday, sorry, in our last episode, spoiler, we recorded these in a batch. But the first movie had the second highest Rotten Tomatoes scored. This one has the highest, this is actually a 90%. with an 89 percent audience rating from Flixster, which I thought was really interesting.

Honestly, re watching them, I agree. This was the movie that like, the whole time, I am glued to the screen. And I had read the book. Like, it wasn’t just glued to the screen because I needed to know what happened next. I thought a lot of what they did was just really excellent. And I noticed watching the later movies, how some things drag or just some of the story becomes a little less engaging.

So I, I loved it. Yeah. Yeah. I also, one of the things that I like to find out about, like, I was re listening to the audio book and I really like that the books define the other quarter quells because the quells are these special ones and just interestingly, the one Haymitch was in, I think we already may have mentioned this, but that quarter quell required them to read double the number of tributes.

And so there were four tributes per district rather than two. Does anybody remember what the first quarter quell was? 

[01:06:09] Tim: Nope. Oh, I do 

[01:06:10] Josiah: not. I just read it today. Oh, it’s 

[01:06:15] Rebekah: very brutal. The districts had to vote for the tributes that go, so they had to pick the children that went to die. Yeah. Which is brutal. You know, anything else interesting that went on during the filming or anything?

[01:06:30] Donna: The water was cold. 

[01:06:32] Rebekah: Yes. Which is weird because they’re in a tropical arena and 

[01:06:36] Tim: a lot of it was filmed in Hawaii. Yeah, but 

[01:06:39] Rebekah: not the parts in the water, like in the water in 

[01:06:44] Josiah: the 

[01:06:44] Tim: forest that the part filmed in New 

[01:06:46] Rebekah: Jersey. I, it might. Well, no. So part of it was in, the Atlanta, there was a water park that they did some of them in and the water was cold enough.

It was around 50 Fahrenheit, which is just a little over 10 degrees Celsius. And so, Lin Cohen, the actress who did Mags, was actually forbidden by the director from getting in the water because he was afraid for her safety. So, first off scene, and I think the first take Finnick’s character, Sam Claflin, er, Finnick, Sam Claflin was the actor.

He picks up the actress on his back, and they’re doing this scene where they’re running out of the water. He immediately trips and falls and drops her in the water, which apparently, like, he laughed, he thought it was terrible, but she laughed and, and said it was funny. She had, she was very good natured 

[01:07:31] Josiah: about it.

Another good trooper. Well, I’m glad that on set it seemed like there were good spirits. 

[01:07:37] Rebekah: This movie also saw a change in director, so the original director of the first Hunger Games, the only one he directed was the first movie. He has now directed the other three movies, and I believe is the director for Songbirds and Snakes.

So he 

[01:07:53] Tim: didn’t direct the first one, but he did direct the rest of them, did I 

[01:07:56] Josiah: get that correct? Yes. So. Was that, his name is also Lawrence, 

[01:08:01] Rebekah: but he’s not related to Jennifer Lawrence. Was 

[01:08:03] Tim: that a, was that a, a conflict with Suzanne Collins? 

[01:08:08] Rebekah: No, the original, do you know this? Sorry, I don’t. 

[01:08:11] Josiah: Oh, well, I assume that they say scheduling conflicts, but it was probably the shaky cam.

They 

[01:08:17] Rebekah: asked him to direct a movie and he refused. Like he declined. Apparently the director himself was the one who said no. 

[01:08:23] Donna: Hmm. Hmm. I mean that sounds 

[01:08:26] Josiah: like. Sounds like under sometimes. Sounds like a prop 

[01:08:28] Tim: o to me. But you wonder sometimes if, if people don’t realize what they’re, what they’re passing up on.

Eh, I did that. I’ve already done that thing. You know, it’s not completed, but I did 

[01:08:40] Rebekah: it. Like it was a success. It wasn’t small, but I mean, it doesn’t mean you loved doing it or had vision to do the rest. The new director, what was his first name? Can you look that 

[01:08:48] Josiah: up? The new director, Francis, isn’t it?

Right. Francis. 

[01:08:52] Rebekah: Francis Lawrence. Francis Lawrence. Is that right? So he basically consulted with Suzanne Collins while writing the screenplay of the second movie when he, you know, was slated to direct, asked her if there was anything that she wanted to change that was like portrayed in a way she didn’t like.

And does anyone know what she requested that was really her only primary request? It’s very small. 

[01:09:13] Donna: Oh, 

[01:09:14] Josiah: I think I do. 

[01:09:16] Rebekah: Dad. Suzanne. Suzanne. Suzanne. Meow. Yes. It was the cat. Buttercup was the wrong. Buttercup shouldn’t have been black and white. Yeah. She was the wrong color in the first movie. And so I guess if you’re paying close attention to the movies but didn’t read the book, you might not even realize it’s the same cat because I don’t know if they like call him Buttercup explicitly like in one movie in the next, but yeah, they changed it to a an orange tabbyish cat for the second movie.

And that. Was the I don’t think it was the same cat that was used in all of the rest of the movies, but the same, like, visual of the cat was changed. 

[01:09:50] Donna: Well, I’m so glad they kept that ugly cat. I mean, he is kind of scruffy and ugly looking. That’s the point is great. I’m glad, but I’m glad they kept him because he’s so pivotal and we won’t spoil that far ahead, but he’s so pivotal at the end that

I’m just like, and I didn’t, that’s another thing I didn’t see coming and it’s not a huge surprise. Oh, wow. But another thing I didn’t see coming is the way he was used and. And rap things. So, but 

[01:10:23] Rebekah: anyway one, the only other thing I thought was just really interesting and wanted to mention was this in this movie.

And I believe they did it starting with catching fire. And there were some parts of the others that did this, maybe, but the arena scenes were filmed with IMAX cameras for catching fire. So if you’re watching the movie, the aspect ratio changes when they enter the arena, yeah. 

[01:10:47] Tim: Wow. I’ve never actually noticed that.

[01:10:51] Rebekah: It caught my eye. The last time I watched Catching Fire was just a few days ago. It caught my eye when it switched and I thought, Oh, it’s probably just me. And then I was like doing research and I found that they actually, they filmed specific scenes, like the ones in the arena were filmed with IMAX cameras and that it really does change, which I thought was really fascinating.

Now that you 

[01:11:09] Josiah: say that, I feel it in my memory. Yeah. It was fascinating. 

[01:11:14] Tim: One of the things that I like this kind of just little things that people do that are subtle but they’re probably very purposeful. I was looking at the covers of the books and the first book is a black cover. The second book is kind of a rusty, a rusty color, but lighter, but a lighter color than, than the other.

And then the last book is blue. Now in the movies, they there was a. I can’t remember which, which of the last two movies, they used a lot of white in the posters and things like that. That was the mockingjay. Yeah. The covers and the movie posters, I think there, there’s a subtle, um, dark depression. It gets a little better and it.

And it continues to get a little better because as the movie goes toward its climax, you know, you’ve gone from this horrible depression. There has been a rebellion and things are going to change. The blue sky on, on the last cover and the white in the movie posters as well. Kind of speak of, of a hope.

That’s what I’m left with. At the end of the last book and I love the ending of the last book, even more than the, than the movie. But there’s just, there’s just a hopefulness. It’s a guarded hopefulness because you can’t simply negate all the things that have happened 

[01:12:38] Rebekah: before that. There’s a lot that happens to get there.

Yeah. You take 

[01:12:42] Tim: all that past with you. But there’s still a hope. 

[01:12:45] Rebekah: It’s almost like as the world is offered the opportunity to hope again, like at that same time, the people primarily responsible for like bringing that into motion, they’re the ones that like it’s taken from, you know, like Katniss’s hope was I’ll get older and I won’t have a family, but like I’ll be okay.

And so like while she’s given a lot of those opportunities. Like what ends up happening in the books is she’s traumatized over and over and over and over and so 

[01:13:17] Tim: in reading the history of like the American Revolution and other things like that, a lot of times the things that the the people had to go through were terrible, but what came out of it was a hopefulness.

And so even reading some of the biographies of, of early leaders, those, those who saw some of the things who witnessed some of what happened and even some of the earliest heroes who gave their life in those kinds of things in different kinds of struggles, you read that. You know, through the Civil War, through the Underground Railroad and different kinds of things like that.

In order to bring hope, somebody goes through that terrible time. But hope is part of the result. 

[01:14:02] Donna: Yeah. So you mentioned something there about oh, oh, why didn’t I just say it out loud? I should have spoken out. 

There is a, a, a part in when in the book, it’s not the movie, the part where she mentions.

The girl she met and then they captured the girl out in the woods that became her a box from the first book that suggests and we haven’t we haven’t touched on this at all that suggests that they knew Katniss saw the girl when they picked her up in the woods. And they use the girl against her and that we know they did.

Darius. Okay. We got that part about 

[01:14:49] Tim: president snow. The more we look back and say, he probably knew exactly. 

[01:14:56] Donna: And we get hints that it’s not unlikely. It’s very likely actually that in some situations in some districts, the people are already pre chosen. Maybe not every time, but in some, in some situations, and I can’t remember now where this comes 

[01:15:12] Rebekah: up.

She mentions it because Victor’s children, she said something about how they’re not exempted, and Victor’s children still have to enter the reaping, and she said they end up in the games more often than is like statistically reasonable at this time. And so 

[01:15:27] Donna: when you think that is a level of depravity and torture and madness On the part of the president that that Collins captures really well as she goes through these, you just every time you think that that’s his lowest moment, there’s something there’s something else and I’m really hoping that they’ll get there in songbird that they’ll that they’ll really show us.

I’m hoping so hoping that they’ll really show us that. How that began or, or at least the seeds or whatever. 

[01:16:04] Rebekah: So something I wanted to do for this episode was because they went on a victory tour and you get to meet tributes from so many other districts. I wanted to talk about some of the stuff I was like contemplating reading in terms of how Panem is made up, where things are.

Because at first I, I actually had this conversation with Josh. I had forgotten that they mentioned early in the first book that this is in the remains of what was once North America. Okay. So we know it’s a dystopian future, but in a way we were talking through this. And the first idea we had was, is this just on a completely different planet for lack of better word, like Lord of the Rings is not on earth, right?

Like it is different. And so I think it’s really interesting, first of all, before we get into the districts, to think about if Panama is on North America, which most maps that people have tried to come up with span from Canada all the way down through some of Mexico if that’s the case, it is really weird to me that there’s never a mention of Like left over roads or like anything about the huge metropolis, metropolis, metropolitan.

That’s the word I’m looking for. There’s no mention of the huge metropolitan areas that are currently in the United States, like Toronto, New York, LA, like these are massive cities. And it’s interesting to me that there’s literally never mentioned of any like leftover anything. This 

[01:17:31] Tim: dystopian future might, might be.

And the reason for that might be the fact that it was a, a nuclear type event. 

[01:17:41] Donna: That was something 

[01:17:42] Rebekah: Josh’s brother mentioned could be 

[01:17:43] Tim: part of it. That destroyed those metropolitan centers and cut them off from the world. Yeah. Because there’s no mention in the books of any world outside of Panem at all.

Right, 

[01:17:55] Rebekah: you’re basically left to think that either they’ve done a really great job of making it clear that there’s nobody else in there like hiding it, or this is literally the only thing that’s left after. Wars or whatever she meant they mentioned I think Katniss specifically mentions that they were taught it was like wars and famine Were what caused the world to end but I just think it’s interesting because like we were driving out the other day we were driving from our home in East, Tennessee up to Ohio to visit my husband’s family and Basically, I was just, we were just kind of out in the middle of an interstate that’s kind of in the middle of nowhere.

There’s no reason to bomb something around that. But it made me realize, they mention like roads that you walk down, but in Pennam, there’s no mention of cars. Like they ride horse drawn carriages even in the Capitol to show off what they’re doing. But, and there’s hovercraft, but there’s never mentioned of like a vehicle.

Now in the movies there are, the train is that kind of vehicle that would go on tracks, but there’s never, I don’t know. It just like struck me as odd, but maybe again, it’s. It’s unnecessary. 

[01:19:04] Tim: Well, personal freedom is equated with something like a vehicle. The hovercraft would be a military thing owned by the military or the government.

Right. So. So not having, not having vehicles would be a restriction of personal freedom. Sure. 

[01:19:24] Josiah: Yeah. Very interesting point. 

[01:19:26] Rebekah: So the capital in general, can everybody see the map that I, like one of the ones I pulled or if you can turn that around and show her. So Yeah. Cool. This was just one of them. A lot of the maps look very similar to this.

If they’re not exactly the same, essentially the capital is described as being up probably around the Denver ish area somewhere in Colorado. It is, it’s well protected. So it’s in the middle of a lot of mountains, kind of in a basin area. The map that we’re looking at shows districts one and two, kind of one to the north, Two to the south.

And it shows district four over in what would essentially be mostly California. I did see something that said, especially because of the way they talk about the ocean part of it, that district four would be more likely to have, like, be around where San Francisco and kind of, kind of the really, the most beautiful parts of the ocean on the, the West coast of the United States.

District five is a little below them. Now, I thought. Correct me if I’m wrong. I thought district three. Let’s see. District three is the electronics one. Oh, five is power. So, five is one of the ones where it’s inconsistent because some of them have five more close to where they have a lot of power plants in the Midwest area.

Currently, 

[01:20:42] Tim: that would be the Boulder Dam, the Hoover Dam. Oh, 

[01:20:45] Rebekah: because they do mention dam power. That is actually brought up in the third book. So, that makes 

[01:20:49] Tim: sense. That would be the location for 

[01:20:51] Rebekah: that. Yeah. And so, district 12. In almost everything is, is shown as being in it. They mentioned something about Appalachia or whatever in the book.

And so what we saw, and we mentioned this in the last episode was, it looks very much like West Virginia. I think that it’s most likely that 12 took play like 12 was located. somewhere in modern day West Virginia. That seems like the most likely part of Appalachia because of the, the coal mining stuff.

And that is probably the most significant area in the United States where we still mine coal. I think I’m not positive. 

[01:21:24] Tim: One of the things about all of the maps in, in the panium and all of that is how small the districts appear to be in the movies. I have a huge, that’s a big problem. They are. When you think geographically, because Appalachia covers an area from part of Pennsylvania all the way down to Georgia.

So you’ve got all of that area included. And District 10 here appears to be part of Texas and most of Mexico. That kind of thing. And yet in the movies, the appearance is almost like a very small town with a fence all the way around it. In the book, it talks about the seam and it talks about the, the nicer part of town and then the victor’s village, which it’s never more 

[01:22:15] Rebekah: separated.

It’s never more than a town. Like they actually say, so this is in the third book, does anybody know the population of district 12 as stated in the books or in 10, 000, 10, 000. Because not a thousand of them got out to 13, 10, 000 people. That’s a small town, like a very small town. 

[01:22:36] Tim: We lived in a town of 3, 000 people, but it was right across the river from a town of about 15, 000 people.

[01:22:42] Josiah: I saw the Capitol’s official numbers for the population of all Panem is under 5 million people, which is about that of South Carolina nowadays. 

[01:22:54] Rebekah: And I mean, even if you think about that, in 5 million people, how do you make 10, 000 significant? It seems wrong. Like it doesn’t, the scale of it has always seemed weird to me, which is why I always wondered, was it not, like, is it possible that Panem?

And I mean, again, Susan Collins had this in her mind. It could have just been something that in her world building wasn’t as important to define. But is it possible that Panem was mostly just, like, the Midwest and East Coast of the United States? Because there’s ocean in there, you’ve got, like, You know, you’ve got dams, you’ve got mountain ranges, you’ve got coal mining.

Now it doesn’t make sense for some of the other things. I do think she intended for it to be spread out, but like, what does that mean for how spread the districts are from one another? 

[01:23:45] Tim: It would almost be like in the center of each of these districts is a town of 10 to 15, 000 people. Yeah. And hundreds of months and hundreds of miles to the next place to the next district.

That could 

[01:24:00] Josiah: totally make sense. That’s true. 

[01:24:02] Rebekah: Yes it is. You’re very isolated. If you keep them very isolated. That’s true. And I think one of the location ones that’s really a toss up is five and three five on the one map I’m showing you is over, it covers Silicon Valley, but that’s where three is in some other estimates.

And then five is up around different sources. Three 

[01:24:21] Tim: in this map that you’re showing covers Indiana, Ohio, right. And Pennsylvania. Rust Belt that, yeah, which would be the Rust Belt, Michigan. Those kind of parts. 

[01:24:32] Rebekah: Anyway, I just thought that was all really interesting. And I also thought the, the added world building of each district has the thing essentially that it provides for the capital and for the other districts, but really more importantly for the capital.

I thought that was such a good way. And she kind of Katniss. talks about how, you know, 12 is one of the only districts where by the time you’re 18, you haven’t learned any useful skills. Like even in three, or sorry, no, in four, they learn how to swim and fish and use tridents and all these things that could be useful.

And in 12, you don’t go into the mines until after you’re not eligible for the games. So you can’t learn anything early, but I think it’s. It’s another thing that just really underlines the way the Capitol oppresses the people. Because you one of the things I think 1984 talks about this too. One of the ways that you can oppress people is by limiting the knowledge that any particular group has to the only the necessary parts so that no one has too much knowledge because with too much knowledge you could potentially be more of a threat.

[01:25:35] Tim: And that plays into what we were talking about a little while ago about the comfort part. Just enough comfort. to be satisfied, at least moderate, moderately satisfied, not enough, enough comfort to gain knowledge and be sitting around and thinking, well, I read books and I gather knowledge just enough to keep you, you know, 

[01:25:57] Josiah: we’re, it’s not bad enough.

It’s 

[01:25:59] Tim: not bad. Yeah. It’s not bad enough to wipe it all out. Which is often what rebellion does, you wipe it out first and, and recreate. So there’s a period of, you know, a horrible thing, you know, the, the Soviet Union went through that when you know, that freedom was followed by this period of where it was very difficult to rebuild this, this map is a reminder though, that that would be a massive reduction in the whole population.

To, I mean, 

[01:26:35] Rebekah: I reduce the population, reduce the population of an entire, I mean, it’s not just our country because you were not even including Canada and Mexico, but they are in the Pan Am map. You reduce it down to the size of one state at the most and you’re assuming the capital is being honest, you know, 

[01:26:50] Tim: and not a large state particularly, you know, 

[01:26:53] Josiah: that’s a huge 

[01:26:54] Donna: assumption.

Yeah, that’s true. 

[01:26:57] Rebekah: The capital would be honest population and we’re 13. 13 is up above where 12 is, up going, like, maybe Maine, up into some of Canada. I think it’s unclear, 

[01:27:07] Josiah: but that’s the general consensus. But it would 

[01:27:09] Rebekah: make sense that it’s close to 12, in that people, like, have gone through trying to escape at 13, they went through the woods outside of 12, so.

Okay, so. So why don’t we each give a little mini review of what we thought and what’s your verdict? Like, what’s your little review? You can take a minute to do that. And was the book better or did you prefer the movie? 

[01:27:31] Tim: I think the book obviously had a lot more detail in it. And a lot of that detail is wonderful to read, especially I read much slower than you do.

So, so it takes me a while to read through a book and it’s nice to have all that detail. I would say that, that. In this case, I really liked the visual to be reminded of all of that visual. But I still, I still like the nuance and the depth in the book better. So. And I was, I was always fascinated in both of the movies so far and in the books that technology is available, but it is very limited to what you’re allowed to use it for, which to me says, and I heard someone else say this too, and I agree with them that if the Capitol had spent as much effort in oppressing the people.

If they had spent that much effort in the technologies to help the people, the whole, all of Panem could be so much better. Yeah. 

[01:28:45] Josiah: Unpopular opinion. You know, I have a suspension of disbelief, but I do believe that logically. the rebellion would not have happened if they had just stopped doing the hunger game.

[01:29:00] Rebekah: Yeah. I think it was meant to keep you under its thumb, but like, but at 

[01:29:03] Tim: some point that becomes the spark. Yeah. 

[01:29:07] Rebekah: I think if you had literally just like taking your thumb off of it and gone, you know what, it’s been a long time. We feel like the districts understand how much they rely on the Capitol. You take the hunger games away.

And like, I think people, most people are more on the Katniss end of it where they’re like, I just want, yeah, what I can, I just want like stability of some kind, whatever I know. Yeah, I agree with that. That’s really 

[01:29:31] Tim: interesting. I think there’ve actually been historical examples, plenty of them, of oppressive regimes that initially kept the people down, but that continued.

Oppression led to the rebellion. Yeah. Yeah. 

[01:29:49] Donna: Mom. Well, I agree that the book, I agree the book is better in this case. Because of the, some of the backstories, it provides backstories that I would love to see fleshed out in some fan fiction writing, even if, even if they didn’t become Cannon. But on the similar line of the way, like the Star Trek franchise, where people over the years have written books that would go into paperback and, and some considered more legit than others.

But there’s just a lot of stories out there that fill in all these time periods. Okay. So I. I think the second book was full of that kind of history, but I also believe the movie ramped up the emotion one another level of torture happened where you had to see these people, not just Katniss and Peeta and Haymitch, but you have to see mags and you have to see Finnick and you see mags.

Step in for Annie and Annie’s this, this tortured little girl and you see Joanna say, I don’t care what I say and there’s no, they can’t hurt 

[01:31:04] Rebekah: me anymore. 

[01:31:05] Donna: There’s no one that left. I love and you and you realize that Haymitch is right there. That’s where he is. It doesn’t. He just, I think he comes to realize I’ve masked all this and covered it up with, you know alcohol, but I think the more he comes out and begins to fight for them and help them, he realizes to what, what does it matter?

There’s nobody left. I love 

[01:31:32] Rebekah: that’s mentioned in the book that he, he did at one point have a family and a girl he loved and, and 

[01:31:38] Donna: can I say, as I know, we’re wrapping this up we didn’t say anything about, Santa getting whipped up and killed. I was gonna mention that in mine. Oh, so sorry. You can cut that out Josh 

[01:31:49] Josiah: cuz I They 

[01:31:54] Rebekah: do mention in the book that he was not killed in that spot he was tortured they think and killed in the Capitol, but I’ll give my review next just cuz it, you brought up Sinnah.

So this is my favorite of the four movies. I think the fact that it’s rated high makes a lot of sense. There were actually things I thought that they did a lot better in the movie, or like you said, brought the emotion out. The change of remember who the real enemy is instead of remember who the enemy is.

Because in the book, the word real is not in that quote. And remember who the real enemy is. So excellent. Being able to see Sina like, and just the impact that that has on Katniss, but like, you’ve come to love this character, even though you barely see him. The victors holding hands, like I got actual chills, like when I was rewatching the movie again and again, I’ve seen this again.

The. In the book and in the movie, Katniss says something about like, you know, I can’t think about that when Gail kisses her or says something about romance. And she’s like, I can’t think about that. All I can think about every single day since I heard my sister’s name being called is how afraid I am.

And like, I thought in the movie, you see that like the jabber Jays go off and Katniss, I mean, she and Finnick. acted so well, like it was excellent the way that they portrayed just how awful that had to feel to hear their loved ones screaming and like all of this stuff, even knowing it wasn’t real. Yeah.

And I, I think in general, I was pretty okay with a lot of the stuff that they changed, which we’ve discussed. I think the only two things that really bugged me in this, we don’t need to discuss them. I just wanted to mention BD’s explanation for why Katniss. and Joanna have to go down to the ocean or go down to the water, but Peeta and Finnick have to stay up and protect him.

In the book, make a ton of sense. It has more to do with Peeta’s leg, having, he has a prosthetic leg and he can’t run as fast and they’re on a really, really tight time crunch. In the movie, it felt really weird. We watched that scene again today and it didn’t work. And then I didn’t like the ending.

Mostly, Just a little addition of, there is, Katniss, there is no District 12, which is how the book ends. And then he says, Gale kind of throws away the line and then says, It’s all gone. And it just, like, took away from it. But overall, this was a freaking excellent movie. I loved it. I love the nuance of the book, but this is, like, my favorite one of these to rewatch.

Seriously, the book is better. Yeah, I, I mean, I, I’m always going to say that. 

[01:34:16] Josiah: Well, I think that long story short, the second book, I don’t know if it’s better than the first book. First book is iconic. 

[01:34:29] Rebekah: True. Second is really a bridge only. 

[01:34:32] Josiah: Second movie is better than the first movie. So that’s one of the reasons I’m going to say the movie is better.

All right. 

[01:34:38] Rebekah: I’ll, I have to love you cause you’re my brother. So I’ll let it slide. 

[01:34:42] Josiah: Another reason is I think that it’s an excellent adaptation. Because I was thinking about when does the quarter quell get announced and in the book it’s about at the halfway point and I think in the book it works and in a movie they have to have this three act structure they move it to the one third So they have to delete some of the District 12 oppression stuff from the movie.

And, and the training in the beginning of Act 2, if you will. And I think that that was all an excellent choice for the movie. And I’m glad it was in the book and I’m glad it wasn’t in the movie, kind of. I am a very visual person and so putting, Faces with these names of all the new characters. Yes. As a reader, it was a little tough for me.

I’m kind of a dummy. When it comes to reading, it was tough for me to really know what all of these people were about. But as soon as you see Joanna Mason, come on. Screen as soon as you see mags and finnick and all of these people you you know what they’re about You they’re their own unique character the movie was able to tell this story in an excellent way that May be superior to the book in some ways But it was certainly an excellent Adaptation that improved that took what wouldn’t have worked if you had directly adapted it and they made it Yeah.

Into an actual movie instead of a filmed book. 

[01:36:18] Tim: I’m very grateful for the, for those who take these kinds of works, these books and adapt them because adapting has to take a lot of thought because you, you have to take a whole concept and try to translate it because it’s really easy to say word for word what this is.

It’s a whole different thing to, to take a concept and we’ve learned that recently in, in multi series thing that we’ve, that we’ve all watched. It’s not a verbatim word for word translation. Yeah. It is. A concept to take a feeling or a thought and be able to adapt it. So I’m, I really like the fact that people adapt books.

I could do it. 

[01:37:10] Donna: Okay. So, okay. So just, just, just the name. 

[01:37:15] Tim: If I were trying to do it, I would probably copy it more. I’d 

[01:37:19] Donna: go. Same. I would be more on that end. I would struggle. Just state the movie name. That you first think of that’s a horrific adaptation from a book 

[01:37:28] Josiah: David Lynch’s dune I don’t even know if I have 

[01:37:32] Tim: one the first one the first two 

[01:37:37] Donna: to me and to me I’m thinking of a few different ones that will probably cover and I don’t want to get in ruin I mean, we’ll probably do that one too for sure.

But I say that because Everybody can’t do it. Yeah, it just like casting can destroy a really good adaptation in the same way. If a person is writing it and they don’t have it. I mean, some people have it and some people don’t. 

[01:38:02] Tim: Cloud Atlas was was Terrible adaptation. The first Twilight. I 

[01:38:08] Josiah: would say crippled the movies.

[01:38:11] Tim: Eddie Redmayne was the villain in a Jupiter Ascending. That was 

[01:38:15] Josiah: another one. Oh, that was a bummer. Is that an adaptation? 

[01:38:18] Tim: I think it is. I’m pretty 

[01:38:19] Rebekah: sure it is, yeah. Well, if you are still listening, thanks, because we love having you, random dear listener, that I can’t see your face, but I like to think of your face as smiling and laughing with us.

So you can find us pretty much everywhere @bookisbetterpod. You can also email us if you have feedback for future episodes. or just want to tell us something we got wrong, you can email us bookisbetterpod@gmail.com.

Our next episode will come out in two weeks and we were gonna, we’re gonna cover Mockingjay, including the book and both movies. So we will see you then. Thanks for listening!