Spoiler Alert: This piece discusses key plot points of both the novel and the movie "The Hunger Games."
Katniss Everdeen is deep in the woods, surrounded by greenery that in any other circumstance would be considered beautiful, but in the novel and new film "The Hunger Games" is only menacing. She's just watched her only ally die and has subsequently shot an arrow straight through the killer's chest. She sits on the ground in a pile of leaves, holds her head in her hands and sobs. It's a devastating moment, but as I sat in the theater screening the film, which premieres March 23rd, all I could think was: "This isn't the Katniss I know."
From the minute I flipped open the novel "The Hunger Games," the first installment in Suzanne Collins best selling three-book young adult series, I was absorbed into its post-apocalyptic world. The setting is the totalitarian state of Panem (what was once North America), where 24 boys and girls compete to the death on national television each year, and between the poverty-stricken Districts, the anxiety-filled battle scenes, the stirrings of adolescent love -- it's not surprising that the book was hard to put down. But more than the dystopian landscape or any of the plot points, what hooked me was the series' protagonist, Katniss Everdeen.
Reading "The Hunger Games" I kept wishing it had been around when I was 12. Katniss is someone I hope I would have admired and related to, a diversion from the almost uniformly bubbly, bland female characters I encountered in "The Babysitters Club," "Sweet Valley High" and "The Saddle Club." Katniss Everdeen is an imperfect heroine, which makes her all the more compelling to me now. She's conflicted and often selfish; she loves but resents her mother; she has reservations about marriage and children due to the harsh reality of the world around her; she has complicated feelings for the men in her life; she makes rash decisions and sometimes they're the wrong ones. In short, she's a human being. And thus, as Katie Roiphe put it in her review of the novel in The New York Times, this character who is "both murderer and victim, somehow representing female strength and female vulnerability all mingled and entwined," is "mesmerizing" and "sweepingly sympathetic."
While Gary Ross' film was a highly enjoyable distillation of detail-packed source material -- and one that I believe won't disappoint even the most hardcore fans -- some of Katniss' complexity gets lost here. She's warmer, more overtly emotional, even a bit maternal -- all in all more conventionally likeable, but it made me like her less. I kept wishing that she would be a little more manipulative, a little more callous with others' feelings, a little more unsure of what the right and "good" decisions were. In the novels, you're forced to wonder -- along with Katniss herself -- what her motivations are for an act of apparent compassion in the end, and for a split second you wonder whether she'll go through with it. The film doesn't raise those questions.
When I was discussing the movie with a colleague, she mentioned that at the end of the film, you feel that Katniss won the games because of her innate goodness;in the book, she won because her will to live in the face of systemic terror and cruelty had pushed her to become a ruthless warrior. Though Jennifer Lawrence still delivers on the promise of an on-screen woman who trades on her skills more than her looks, ranks romance below other concerns in her life, and pushes the boundaries of traditional femininity, she falls short of really challenging the audience. This isn't her fault -- she didn't write the screenplay and did a generally fabulous job in the role -- but rather a byproduct of turning a beloved series into a mega-franchise, which requires a lead character the masses will love.
Questionably likeable on-screen protagonists are few and far between in Hollywood -- especially if they're female. Three recent examples that spring to mind are Charlize Theron's character in 2011's "Young Adult," the women of Leslye Headland's upcoming "Bachelorette," and Lisbeth Salander of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo." Neither "Bachelorette" nor "Young Adult" were intended to have the widespread appeal that "The Hunger Games" trilogy does, while "Dragon Tattoo" was a financial disappointment. This film is expected to make over $100 million at the box office in one weekend, potentially outpacing "Twilight: Breaking Dawn." And to do that, Katniss has to be universally palatable -- you don't take chances with a 100 million-dollar payday. After all, she's following in the footsteps of Hermione Granger, who's annoying know-it-all personality and conventionally unattractive buck teeth were considerably toned down in Emma Watson's on-screen embodiment of the character.
Leslye Headland directly addressed the issue of female likeability in feature films in an interview with IndieWire in January:
In my experience in the studio work for the very first time, I was really surprised about how intense they were about likeable female characters. I never thought of my characters as unlikeable. Ever. I thought I was writing women and that was that, you know? And then it just became this thing where they would say, "It makes her unlikeable if she does blank." I don't understand that.
It's this narrow definition of what makes a woman "appealing" and "likeable" that limits the range of women we see in Hollywood films, and that's unfortunate. As an audience, we're not always innately good or kind or selfless, so why should our heroines be?
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I also wanted to point out that in the book, Katniss moves on after Rue's death and breaks down into sobs later after she sets up camp for the night. It is part of who she is to mourn her friend and taking a life. But when you add that into all the other changes i get why you say she was changed.
I lejoyed the movie on some levels. It was well-made but the characters fell flat from the outset. It was so sad to see that the life of the story could not be replicated into this movie. They could have made a trilogy of short movies just from the first book. The first movie could have been about her early life. The second movie about Her and Gale and the Reaping and the 3rd movie about the Games. It would have given them more time to develop the characters and explore the whys of the government.
I only wish that we could hold out hope that the other movies will stand up better, but I am sure that they will be no better.
Women, on the other hand, are either sympathetically written or they are without redemption. Apparently Hollywood has a great need (and fear) to portray their heroines as likable. I wonder why? IMO, I think women are much more complicated then men.
eborah Beck Commented 21 hours ago
"I don't care if they made Katniss into Shirley Temple. There
is an important message in this trilogy for young people and I
felt the film was on point and did what it had to do to get the
message across. For 74-years the 'sins of the fathers' were
paid for by the children, there is poverty, want, need,
ignorance, political repression, the many laboring for the
benefit of a few (rather the realization of Ayn Rand's
disgusting utopia) and the cynical use of children to drive a
political message across in order to maintain that status quo.
You completely miss the point of the story and that is to
awaken, provoke thought and awareness."
Too likeable, you say.
Are Beavis and Butt-Head too likeable?
How is a Katniss that's crying over Rue's death an unrecognizable one? Rue reminded her of Prim, so there's a pretty palpable reason why she'd mourn the fatality of such a pure soul.
In the movie, we don't have the benefit of internal monologue and must depend upon facial expressions and gestures to convey nuance. The book Katniss doesn't give away much on the outside; that won't work on film - she would just seem cold. This will present real problems in the sequels, where her decisions often are manipulative because she sees clearly how the Capitol and the rebels are both manipulating her. How are they going to do the vote scene, where only Haymitch can follow her Machiavellian thought process?
Also missing is any sense of how traumatized all Games survivors are, how they have to come up with coping strategies for PTSD. This becomes immensely important in 'Catching Fire,' when Katniss must ally with Finnick, Beetee and Johanna. Personally, I think that toning down the violence to get a PG-13 rating diluted the story's message. It's meant to be a dark, disturbing, political cautionary tale; instead they gave us a heroic adventure.
I think it's almost inevitable that the intellectual content of a good book is submerged in the film adaptation. My complaint about the LotR film was that Jackson reduced the story to the D&D adventure many took it to be. It made for a good film, but no replacement for the depth and breadth of the books. Experiencing a film is different from reading a book: faster, more physical and visceral, and in some ways constraining to the imagination. Gandalf is not Ian McKellen, Ahab is not Gregory Peck or Patrick Stewart, Medea is not Maria Callas. I don't expect Jennifer Lawrence to be MY Katniss (or Collins'); but I'm willing to consider hers.
Exactly. She's a hunter by nature, and she wins by her cleverness. The only argument that it has to do with goodness is that she teams with Rue, but even then she is doing that not just out of inherent goodness but because Rue can climb better than anyone.
Years ago, my sister and I were discussing her favorite book, which was Gone With The Wind. Her favorite character was Scarlett, because she was a woman ahead of her time, a woman who got what she wanted no matter what, a woman who was willing to break every rule in the book, who was physically brave and who always got up again when she got knocked down. This, to my sister, was what a woman should be. My favorite character was Melanie, whom my sister despised as weak and girly. But to my mind, Melanie actually saw the reality of every situation and acted in the context of her core belief system. She had faith and purpose in the context of her life. And while she was the supposed stereotypical wife and mother, that did not take away the fact that she had a spine of steel, and when it was absolutely necessary, she could and did do violence. And her surface softness--so anathema to "strong women"--somehow mirrored the strength and depth of her character.
It's not always a bad thing to be a girl. I'm not sure the relentlessly bad-assed Katniss being mourned here would be sympathetic enough to garner great ratings for her dystopian reality show.