Movie Moments XXVII: May 2020 (Hunger Games edition)

A dystopian action series that features a collection of uber-competent people and focuses almost entirely on rhetoric? It is, one might say, the entirety of my jam. I have many thoughts.

I did mean to watch the Aliens series next, but I’d forgotten the Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, came out on the 19th!

(Yes, I did read it. I had completely forgotten how clunky Suzanne Collins’s writing is. Like, she’s a decent storyteller, but that prose just thuds onto the ground. I also, like many others, felt pretty skeptical about having something told from the point of view of the villain of the trilogy, Corialonus Snow, because who cares? But I think Collins managed to give us a decent psychological exploration of him--short version: PTSD and a ton of thwarted privilege--and play a little bit with the origin of the Games themselves. I was actually impressed she resisted the urge to throw in tons of Easter eggs--there are a few, but largely they make sense. Anyway: Worth reading, but set your bar appropriately.)


The Hunger Games, 22 May 2020, Blu-ray
Having Snow’s background does make his reactions in the films a bit more complex--this is a dude that reshaped the Games into what they are now, and he has strong opinions on the folks who followed after him. That is: Snow is a micromanager, and it must be horrifying to work for him.

• Where would the internet be without this gif, I ask you? Also, I usually hate the use of shaky-cam in movies, but using handheld cameras for the Reaping and other media events, especially--and with minimal (or even no, I think) music cues--is perfect.
• The contrast between Katniss’s dignified/defiant interiority with Peeta’s sincere/cynical effusiveness makes for a pretty fascinating watch. No wonder they got so popular so quickly. That, and Cinna being frickin’ brilliant at visual rhetoric. (Being that District 12 is the last one also means that they get to be the final and lasting impression at each event. I assume the number wasn’t assigned for that reason in the text, but for a visual medium, it’s perfect.)
• I wish Peeta hadn’t come pre-loaded with a crush on Katniss. It puts way too much of an emphasis on the romantic angle in the books, and that is, as we all know, the least interesting/most annoying part of the series. I mean, it’s a canny press strategy, but it would be way more interesting if both of them had grown into the narrative instead.
• That the up-and-ups in the balcony don’t have any screen between them and the heavily armed contestants down in the pit says a LOT about how disgustingly cowed they believe the districts to be. (That Katniss tags them with an arrow is pretty delightful. And, ha, waaaaaaay foreshadowy.)
• So Haymitch and Effie have a thing, right? Like, there’s no way they don’t have a weird and spite-filled romp every time the Games roll around.
• I love that they have so much footage of the control room--the emphasis on the artificiality of a very real fight to the death is just…*shiver.* It’s distancing in the same way, like, The Bachelor is distancing--taking something that’s fully heart-breaking and pretending that it’s not. (I mean, I know most of the folks participating are fully in on the gig, but every once in a while it seems like something real happens, and then you remember it’s awful.)
• When you think about it, Katniss and Peeta seriously lucked out in getting a Game that was designed to echo the forests of their district. If they’d gotten almost anything else, they would have been completely screwed immediately.
• I love Rue so much. She’s like a tiny little Katniss--at least in terms of strategy. Actually, she’s a little more impressive, in that she was able to 1) drag Katniss to a place safe enough for two whole days of shelter, and 2) clock most of the competitors without being noticed. (Also, Foxface, who I also dig, canny thing. Although I guess since she was from District 8--the hydroelectricity people--I suppose she just assumed Peeta of the forestlands would know his poisonous berries already.) And that riot in District 11 is amazing. Pretty much any glimpse of these outride riots will bring me to tears, honestly.
• Peeta’s little twitch of Katniss’s braid before they eat the berries has slain me. I am slain.
• Snow just putting Seneca in a room with a bowl of those poison berries is the most stylish execution imaginable. Also, wait, Snow is 18 years old in the 10th Hunger Games, and Katniss is in the 74th? HOW OLD IS SNOW? WTF, math?

The Catching Fire, 23 May 2020, Blu-ray

• I 100% believe Haymitch, Peeta, and Katniss had weekly drinking sessions in Victors’ Village--it was Peeta’s idea, obviously--until Gale pitched a fit. (Peeta has tea almost every day with Prim and her mom, no doubt. He’s very careful to avoid Gale, and only sees Katniss for a quick moment before she turns her shoulder to him.) That is: Shut UP, Gale, nobody cares about your manpain.
• The glimpses we get from the other Districts are always, always stunning. I almost always get teary-eyed during them.
• It’s fascinating how Katniss’s resistance to anything with Peeta reads not as reluctance about him, but rather an intense revulsion of having anything real about her exposed. The relationship with Peeta began in public, so by default, she can’t let it become part of her interior life. Meanwhile, Peeta never developed a real capacity to compartmentalize his emotions, poor thing.
• I find myself grinning as an example at Katniss whenever she won’t do it for the cameras, because I’m Effie Trinket, apparently.
• I’d forgotten how much I love Finnick and Johanna, those arrogant, delightful assholes.
• I can’t imagine anything more guaranteed to foment rebellion than doubling down on punishments in the Districts, then presenting them with twenty-four extremely angry and venerated representatives of said Districts.
• This revolution is surprisingly organized, given that they had less than a year since Katniss became their It Girl. Oh, and since Seneca died, I guess--giving sleeper agent Heavensbee an opportunity to take control. But yeah, if rescuing Peeta wasn’t on the agenda, I suspect Katniss would have settled for putting an arrow through Snow and then escaping into the wilderness. She only fights they make her, when she has her people to protect.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, 24 May 2020, Blu-ray

• Oh dang, I forgot Mahershala Ali was in this.
• That District 13 has been living--militarily--underground for 75 years illuminates a lot about how ruthless the revolutionaries are. “The war never ended for us.” I guess they forgot the real enemy was made of humans, too. Katniss hates the Capitol, but she also had Cinna and Effie and the rest of her team--she can’t dehumanize the enemy.
• Snow’s obsession with Katniss is petty and pretty dumb, which is apparently a hallmark of fascists?
• Effie Trinket is a goddess and nobody in Panem deserves her.
• Katniss being a horrible, horrible actor is one of the best things in this entire film series. Of course, that then leads to the higher-ups deciding to repeatedly re-traumatize her, so, uh.
• The fight in District 7--the loggers--was frickin’ awesome. Just glimpses of seeing those dudes shimmy up those trees like nothing, WHEW.
• The choice to have Peeta appear in increasingly binding, pointy-collared clothing is well-done, because it makes me think I’m choking.
• Every single thing about the “Hanging Tree” scene is perfect. And then having it flow into all those folks in District 5 sacrificing themselves to blow up the hydroelectric dam, with an orchestral version of the song? It gives me goosebumps every time. It gives me goosebumps to even think about it, honestly.
• Can you imagine the faces of the pilots detailed to drape District 13 in white roses? Like, at what point do all the folks in the government and military start to realize that Snow has gone just, like, completely unhinged? There’s no way, at this point, that they don’t think so. And yet, they continue to support a petty (though, admittedly but perhaps formerly, competent) leader in order to secure their own positions in power. It would be GREAT if these commentaries could stop being relevant to Our Grievous Times.
• At least they didn’t go the Manchurian Candidate route with Peeta? Though if he was still struggling enough to warn District 13 about the bombing, I suppose they weren’t getting too far in the brainwashing regime in that way. Weaponizing Peeta against Katniss was effective but, once again, a really petty move made to torment a teenage girl instead of, say, clamping down on a rebellion.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, 25 May 2020, Blu-ray

• There’s something fairly unsettling about the fact that these folks who have been military for at least a century need Katniss and Peeta to lay out actionable strategies. And they're usually right? Not all fighting can be boiled down to hunting deer, people!
• Katniss and Peeta will always be a little bit afraid of each other, no matter what happens in the future, which is awful.
• It’s hilarious that they bothered to name all the redshirts in Squad 451. We all know those poor folks are toast. (Finnick grinning under machine gun fire is all we need to know about the Victors in actual combat situations.)
• Caesar Flickerman anchoring wartime updates is like Ryan Seacrest on a homicide beat.
• NO NOT FINNICK YOU BASTARDS NOOOOOOOOOOOO
• Oh man, knowing Tigris is actually Snow’s cousin makes that entire quick encounter in the shop pretty horrifying. “Until Snow decided I wasn’t pretty anymore.” WTF happened in the past fifty years with those two?
• The rebels opening fire on a crowd of civilian refugees is pretty war crimey, y’all. And then bombing the crowd along with their own medics. The rebellion is trash.
• Katniss, Peeta, Haymitch, Johanna, Annie, Beetee, and one random person that I do not recognize at all. (The fandom wiki tells me it’s Enobaria, so, okay sure.)
• Executing Coin is a quite...direct...way to object to her plan, Katniss. Though, if you just wanted to get out of being a figurehead for the government, you’ve accomplished it pretty effectively.
• I mean, Effie and Haymitch are CLEARLY going to continue their annual affair.
• It’s kind of ghoulish to just send Katniss, Peeta, and Haymitch back to the obliterated District 12 all alone, but I suppose they would really not like to be around people for a while.

Side note: In the run-up to the 2016 election, Stephen Colbert did a delightful running bit, “the Hungry for Power Games,” wherein he played Caesar Flickerman announcing presidential candidates as they dropped out of the race. I loved it so much.