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I saw Catching Fire this past weekend. You saw Catching Fire this past weekend. We all saw Catching Fire this past weekend. Here are five-ish things off the top of my head that I feel worth saying.
1. I think maybe now that I'm further removed from having read the books (I read the first one probably a couple months after it came out, and then I read each successive sequel on the day they were released) I feel better inclined to look at the movies slightly less clouded by my fannish enthusiasm. In retrospect I've downgraded my opinion of the first movie since the excitement wore off - I think there was a lot of good casting going on, which went a long way (praise be the person who decided Jennifer Lawrence was it), but the film's strangely timid for what it is. Catching Fire, on the other hand, well there's the thrumming of a real passion underneath it all. Director Francis Lawrence really made this feel like a world about to split at the seams. (The first stop on their Victory Tour, the one at Rue's District, is heart-rending.)
2. But why should anybody ever listen to what I have to say when I initially doubted the casting of Jennifer Lawrence way back when? Stupid, stupid, stoopid. She anchors these things with tremendous flair - Katniss is a big old bundle of contradictions, and Lawrence gets them all across with astonishing ease. Watching her face we feel it all churning right there under those apple cheeks, and effortlessly so.
3. Similarly (like Joe Reid, who apologized to her in this most delightful piece today) I had my doubts when Jena Malone was cast as the character of Johanna Mason. Johanna wasn't my favorite character in the books like she was Joe's (and I think he understates Finnick's role - there's more to him than just a swimmer's build), but she's a firecracker and definitely integral to the success of what's to come from here on out. Jena Malone, once upon a time - read: Donnie Darko - I was all over that. I thought she gave a marvelously underrated, surprising performance in The Ruins, too. Then she gave some dumb annoying interview, I can't really even remember its contents so much anymore, but it was so irritating and pretentious and awful that my opinion swerved on a dime. Never doubt my fickleness, y'all. Thankfully though we can put that behind us now, because she is top notch marvelous in Catching Fire. More than anybody up there she makes you feel the rage that the victors are experiencing over the betrayal that this Quarter Quell represents, and the "fuck this shit we're done" that it snaps in pretty much all of them. I knew what was up with Johanna, I read the books, but watching the movie Jena Malone made me feel like I had no idea what this girl was gonna do next. She was thrilling. That scene in the elevator is electric, popping in a dozen different directions at once.
4. Back to Finnick. Sam Claflin is not as horrible as I was afraid he'd be - I actually think he hits a couple of the emotional notes really well. He and Jennifer Lawrence play off of each other fantastically; maybe that's how he got the job. Their relationship is immediately more interesting than the one between Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth, for instance - it's a good thing Hemsworth's pretty blue eyes glow bright enough that you don't care what he's saying, since he apparently doesn't either. Still Claflin just never sold me on Finnick's supposed eye-popping charisma, which is crucial. Jena Malone, that little pinch-faced ragamuffin, pranced him right out of the place.
5. Weirdly the first half of the film works better than pretty much anything once we're inside the Game. Once we're inside the dome, it becomes an hour of running away from CG things, and the tension gets stretched thin. (Although I did get to see a baboon underwater, which is one to check off the "Things I Never Expected To See In My Life" list.) But the build-up to the dome, the interactions between the characters (holla Elizabeth Banks getting stuff to really do this time, and being absolutely ace at it) and the introduction of the new characters, that all pretty much works like gangbusters. That said, I tweeted this right after seeing the film but I stand by it - I really really had to hold myself down in my seat to keep myself from cheering at the end, when... well you know, Katniss does what she does. A moment of triumph that feels earned, and spectacular. And scary and horrible too, since what it forebodes is all that. Anyway the film sticks the landing. Bring on the Mockingjays!
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5 comments:
Guess you'd make a lousy casting director :-P. Having said that, I can't agree more with you.
Mostly agreed.
I thought the setup was terrific. Heartwrenching. Gritty. Cinna!
The quell was the quell. Happens really fast and I still for the life of me can't figure out the whole thing with the lightning tree. It was a muddle in the book and it felt muddly in this one too. But maybe I have the dumb and can't figure out YA science fiction like the rest of humanity.
Then it's like... SURPRISE KATNISS... we are all in on this rebellion thing and you are our pawn ... then Kantiss' angry eyes (which JLaw does to perfection) and then... over.
With all the deception going on around the quell, I felt like a little more of a meal could have been made of Katniss' realization that she'd been deceived. Maybe through flashing back on events of the movie (the dance with Plutarch, talks with Gale, Joanna saving Peeta) as Katniss views them through a new lens. They were in on it. They didn't tell her. She's been used without her consent. I don't think people who haven't read the book would have picked up on all of that from what we see.
Now they make two movies out of my least favorite book, so I'm hoping they change like everything.
TrG - While I agree that a lot of the third book's kind of clunky (I think Collins' should've taken more time writing it; she was on such an accelerated schedule with them) I really do think there are a TON of interesting ideas in there and directions that she took, and I'm really excited to see them realized on-screen. She did not go the way I thought she was gonna go, at all, and I liked that she really just went for it. I think there's a chance, with two films, they might be able to smooth it out some, connect the A to the B to the Z a little more clearly, or I hope at least.
Good point.
KE's first person anti-authority teen whining was tough to take in Book 3 when the stakes were high, but I think if JLaw's performance is any indication of what's in store, then all should be well.
It is still amazing to me what Collins pulled off.
She not only created a brutal critique of modern politics, media, and the military complex. She also created a brutal critique of all of us - the ADD over-stimulated consumers of modern entertainment who tune out the harsh realities of the world.
She plopped our collective noses into our own collective shit and then wrapped it up in irresistible page turning YA literature. We couldn't pull our noses away.
She's a scolding dominatrix, making us pay her for the privilege of being called out on our bullshit.
And after 3 bestselling books and two blockbuster movies, no one is ready to yell out the safe word yet.
We like it.
We need it.
It's time to wallow in the mess we've made.
That her confrontational themes are powerfully delivered in the big budget Hollywood interpretation of her work is further proof of her genius.
Maybe she didn't break the matrix, but she certainly shot an arrow into it.
I just watched The Hunger Games the other night and it was ok. Ok, I was drinking the first night I watched it so I watched it again sober and I had the same reaction. I haven't read the book, would that have made a difference?
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