What Could Make Hunger Games: Catching Fire Better

   Hunger Games: Catching Fire is superior than it's predecessor, but every movie has its flaws. How could Hunger Games: Catching Fire be better? There's two biggies.

WARNING! SPOILERS!

1.   Narrow the Scope of Themes and Story

     There was too much happening in this film. Katniss had post traumatic stress disorder for half of the film, then it just disappeared in the other half. There was the love story between Gale and Katniss, then the love story between Katniss and Peeta. There was the rebellion and the big twist ending that was never foreshadowed. To top it all off, none of the story lines finished. I would have been okay the story if all the story arcs wrapped up at the end of the film, but they never did. There were certain aspects of the film that were unneeded. I could have done without the PTSD Katniss suffered. I would have also been okay with getting rid of the Gale/Katniss love story and the dictatorship that District 12 had become. If any of it had to be there then the film makers should have expanded on it. It felt like the film makers were pushing everything about the book, into the film. I have no doubt that most, if not all, these story arcs were completed in the book, but in the film they just become a convoluted mess.

2.   The Ending

   It just ended. I know there's a third book and two more films to come, but this was a crappy ending. As a movie-goer and not a book reader, there should have been more of a conclusion. Film makers either ruin a book by not making the film like the book, or ruin the film by making it too much like the book. Catching Fire was the latter. I would have been okay if the film took another five or ten minutes to wrap up, but it didn't. It felt like a cheat. The twist ending where we discover that Philip Seymour Hoffman's character, Plutarch Heavensbee, is working with the rebellion was horrible. And then learning that half of the Hunger Game competitors were in on making sure Katniss stayed alive was an even larger outlandish plot point I was meant to believe in. The twist with Plutarch would have been okay, and possibly mind-blowing if there were foreshadowing elements. Suffice it to say, there weren't any. A friend, and reader of the Hunger Games book series, said that there was foreshadowing in the books. I would have enjoyed to see that in this film.


Here is the link to my Hunger Games: Catching Fire movie review:

Hunger Games: Catching Fire Review