Books vs. Movies “Hunger Games”

The book series, “The Hunger Games” is by Suzanne Collins, and is a three book, four movie series. The books, in order, go “The Hunger Games”, “Catching Fire”, and then “Mockingjay” (the 3rd and 4th movies both cover “Mockingjay”). “The Hunger Games” books are Sci-Fi/Dystopian Novels. The book mainly follows the life of 16-year old Katniss Everdeen. Each year, during the “Reaping”, the 12 districts each pick 1 boy and 1 girl from the age of 12 to 18 to become tributes in the blood-bath of an event called “the Hunger Games”. The 24 tributes enter the Hunger Games, but since only 1 can leave everyone else must die either by the tributes hands or by starvation/disease. Everyone in District 12, Katniss’s district, dreads the reaping that leads to the awful Hunger Games, but when Katniss’s 12-year old sister Prim gets chosen for the games she does the unthinkable and volunteers to take her sisters place. As you read the book or watch the movie you follow everything that happens to Katniss Everdeen as she lives through the hardships of “The Hunger Games”.

— Before you read know there WILL be spoilers! —

Compared to the rest of the book/movie combinations, this one is by far the best. After reading the book and watching the movie I really don’t have much to say. The one thing about the movie is that it is so pressed together that I’d guess the first 10 chapters of the book happened in like 5–10 minutes of the movie, but otherwise I give major credit to the directors and crew who put this together. The three thing that I remember being different are that…

1. ) There was a completely new and random character
2. ) The book portrayed Katniss’s hearing loss more than the movie did, almost as if it skipped over it completely.
3. ) The ending was just a little mixed up compared to the book.

I don’t even know how to describe him, but there was a character, Seneca, who acted as a leader of the Hunger Games themselves. He got to decide what to show on tv, he got to decide when to move people together, and he came up with the dog/wolves idea that you’ll hear more about later on. He was never mentioned in the book, and as I sit here writing this, I wonder why he was even placed in the movie.

Also in the book, Katniss set off a major explosion which gave her hearing loss in her left ear. Yet, in the movie when the explosion happened, there was a ringing noise for about a minute or two, but then it went away. So they didn’t portray her loss of hearing correctly, if even at all.

The ending of the movie was good, but it was just a little different compared to the book. In the ending of the book Cato, Katniss, and Peeta are left in the arena and every source of water is dried out except the lake. So, with the dried water showing where the final battle is meant to be Katniss and Peeta go to the lake ready to fight Cato, but next thing you know there are ginormous dog/wolves (resembling every person who had died in the games previously in the book) are viciously chasing after Cato. This is one bigger “wrong” thing, because in the movie the water sources never dried out and the dog/wolves are chasing after Peeta and Katniss, not Cato. After the final battle, the victors, Katniss and Peeta get taken into the jet to be “fixed” and in the book you find out that one of Peeta’s legs has to be amputated, but yet again this is a non-existent thing is the movie.

I really did enjoy reading this book. It’s descriptions gave such good visuals, and for a book I didn’t know I’d necessarily like, it scored very well with me. Overall this is BY FAR, the best movie I’ve seen that resembles the book, but we’ll have to see wether they keep up the good work in the next books/movies.