Review of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) by Preston L — 29 Nov 2015

The Harry Potter series launched an explosion of movies based on books for children and young adults. These all attempted to capture the critical and commercial success that the Potter series had attained. There had been hits and misses but Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy seems to be emerging as the top contender in the hunt to be Potter's successor.

The Hunger Games premise is fairly simple. 74 years after a large country shattering civil war. The capitol of Panem, formerly North America, forces each of its 12 outlying districts to offer up both a male and female tribute between 13 and 18 years old. These tributes go to an arena in the capitol and are forced to fight to the death in what is known as the Hunger Games.

The first one results in our main character Katniss Everdeen going to the hunger games and by faking a love story with her fellow district 12 member Peeta Mellark and shocking the world by refusing to kill each other when they are the last two left resulting in the first time two tributes were both declared the victors of the Hunger Games.

Now that I've filled you in on what you may have missed lets get into the film we are actually talking about.

I was able to read all Three Hunger Games books and Catching Fire was by far my favorite. It takes all the themes I enjoyed in the first one and blows them up both literally and figuratively.

The story begins a few months after the events in the first Hunger Games movie. Katniss and Peeta are now living in the Victors Village in District 12 and are rewarded very nicely for their victory. However President Snow comes to Katniss and expresses his disdain for her victory and tells her that she must be a representative of the Capitol and quell any uprisings that he feels her action in the Hunger Games causes. After they go on the Victory tour which they see firsthand how the districts are attempting to start uprisings they return to district 12 and find it under martial law. On top of that they are entering the 75th Hunger Games which is part of a special Hunger Games called the Quarter Quell. The Quarter Quell is essentially the Capitol throwing a wrench in the way the Hunger Games operate by adding another rule to "keep things interesting". The previous one, which Katniss and Peeta's mentor Haymitch had been the victor of had 4 instead of 2 tributes so there were 48 people in the Hunger Games. There rule is announced that this years tributes will be pooled from the previous victors of the Hunger Games. And with that you can see where it is more exciting as Katniss, being the only female victor from district 12, is not only going back to the arena but also returning to face trained killers who all managed to come out of the last games on top.

The story then adds a new arena loaded with traps and concerns that result in Katniss fighting the arena itself more than the other tributes. She makes some allies along the way and the final act results in a plan for Katniss and her allies to take out the remaining opposing tributes, which would leave only the five of them who have survived to duke it out. There is a large twist that I won't reveal here because it so unforeseeable that I was stunned when I read it and the movie makes a really excellent representation of it.

Overall I find the plot to be a step up and very well crafted. It keeps your interest and tells its story well. The movie cuts the story from the book down a bit without losing anything important and makes it simple and understandable yet gripping and interesting.

The characters of this are mostly returning players. That allows the movie to not waste too much time introducing us to them and just moves into the action. I am a fan of good sequels for this reason. And this is a good sequel. Katniss, Peeta and all the others return and we spend maybe a moment getting used to them and how they interact with each other having to be reminded of the previous events. I found each character had added drama and weight that kept them interesting throughout the book. Jennifer Lawrence steals the show however as the lead character of Katniss. If you read the book you get an insight into Katniss' mind and what Lawrence does is shows you those thoughts. On her face you can see her thinking and every thought is clear and it makes her stand out not just because she is the lead but because she is on a level that I can't even begin to describe.

Overall Catching Fire does what a good sequel should, it takes everything you liked about the first one and makes it better. I can only hope that Mockingjay will be on the level that Catching Fire brought these films to.

Overall rating 3 1/2 out of 5.