Awesome post. Ok, I'm not posting anything else until I finish with this, so anything that falls between your post and this one, I never saw.
I am going to start addressing your last post point by point, before you get a chance to respond. I am guessing you will have a response before I get through with mine.
So far you're 0-1.
Overview: the only similarity HG has to BR, big picture, is that it is kids deathmatching each other in an arena.
I thought we weren't doing the HG-BR comparison? By the way, qualifying it with "big picture" is immediately a red flag.
BR did it because TEENS ARE BAD NOW, and may have done it before HG, but the ancient Romans had gladiatorial combat before BR. HG1 was, indeed, about the game, and the game was to keep the outlying districts clearly under the boot of the capitol. "Look, we can kill your children whenever we want and put it on TV and gamble on the winners and not even give a shit. We can make shit a whole lot worse than this, too. You have no hope of ever rising up against us." As far as I know BR had nothing to do with that kind of political maneuvering, it was, as I said, just a lesson to those goddam kids to stay out of trouble, or else. It was business as usual in D12, just another annual reaping, and just another day where they try to scrape together enough food to not starve and they know they never win so it all really sucks.
I honestly didn't want to continue the HG vs. BR discussion, but since you went on in length about it, let's clear things up. From the BR wiki:
Battle Royale takes place in 1997 in an alternate timeline—Japan is a member region of an authoritarian state known as the Republic of Greater East Asia (大東亜共和国?, Dai Tōa Kyōwakoku). Under the guise of a "study trip", a group of students from Shiroiwa Junior High School (城岩中学校 Shiroiwa Chūgakkō?) in the fictional town of Shiroiwa, in Kagawa Prefecture, are gassed on a bus. They awaken in the Okishima Island School on Okishima, an isolated, evacuated island southwest of Shodoshima (modeled after the island of Ogijima). They learn that they have been placed in an event called the Program. Officially a military research project, it is a means of terrorizing the population, of creating enough paranoia to make organized insurgency impossible.
The first Program was held in 1947. Fifty third-year junior high school classes are selected (prior to 1950, forty-seven classes were selected) annually to participate in the Program for research purposes. The students from a single class are isolated and are required to fight the other members of their class to the death. The Program ends when only one student remains, with that student being declared the winner and receiving a government funded pension.
So yeah, she even stole the big picture from BR...
It's interesting though because you're not the only person I've seen make that defense of HG. I've seen many other folks claim the overall theme is different. I wonder if there was a concentrated effort to misinform folks to try and deflect that criticism.
Anyway, combine that with the link I posted before that displays many of the smaller "similarities" and I think it gets very difficult to argue that HG isn't a direct rip off of BR.
But, Katniss volunteered for her little sister, a first for District 12 which never had a volunteer before, and that got everyones attention. Then she got assigned to Lenny Kravitz as her stylist, probably randomly but possibly on purpose, and he turned her into a symbol, the Girl on Fire, probably accidentally but possibly on purpose. Still probably going to get killed in the arena, but whatev. Peeps like an underdog. She is probably going to die but he did well by her.
Actually, I'll make the argument for the author that the rebellion assigned her Kravitz. She's the only one who showed any spark of life, and so they used him to make her into a statement. Nobody knew what she'd become, but their initial objective was to instill a concept of dissent.
She unknowingly sparks riots when she showed kindness to the little girl from D11.
This part bugged me a lot. I think it's where a lot of the logic behind this concept falls apart. This is the 74th year and nobody has ever helped another out in the games before? Really? Also, an act of kindness from one child to another is what sparks riots? Meanwhile, nobody bats an eye as the government takes their children away to certain death?
At one point in CF, Thor's little brother says to Cat that they should just run off into the woods together. Why the fuck wouldn't every single person with a child do the same for the past 74 years? People do not just sit back and relax while their children are murdered. Who the fuck wants to life their life knowing they were too cowardly to even speak up to try and save their child's life.
I apply the same criticism to BR, but at least they had the sense to make the abductions occur outside of the parents' vision.
And Woody Harrelson, her mentor,
The drunk who didn't give a fuck about either of them.
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This part is another huge complaint of mine. This concept was not fleshed out at all, and the fact that only she gets help is ridiculous. If the games were such a big deal then every player should have been getting help. Hell, even if the help was only coming from gamblers!
Those 2 get to the end, they pull their suicide stunt, she calls the Game Master's bluff, they both get declared the winner (a first), and the Game Master gets to fall on his sword for it.
This is actually another win for BR. Their game has rules in place to prevent such defiance. They have no problem killing all participants, and declaring that nobody won.
The population of the capitol love Katniss and Peta, and districts are starting to riot over her, so he can't just have them shot without hurting his approval ratings, or whatever he thinks his problem would be. We don't know his motivations for keeping them alive, but the final shot of the movie you can clearly see he isn't happy about it and the gears are turning.
Yep. No issue there. How they deal with it in the sequel...
K&P are in the Victor's Village, but they still have to do victory tours, so they need to keep up the act.
Why do they "need" to do victory tours? Here's a little bitch who is becoming a symbol of freedom. You go get her mom and her sister, and whomever Peeta loves and you put them at gunpoint. Then you tell the two "love birds" to stage a very public breakup. Cancel the tour, and have one of them "commit suicide" over the breakup. Or you could make them act like complete jackasses or their families die horrible deaths.
My point is for someone in charge of maintaining power, Jack Bauer's dad sure does suck at his job.
Oh, and shame on you for making this your kid's only exposure to Donald Sutherland.
Now, at this time there is a new Game Master, supposedly pulled out of retirement to replace the one who died last movie. We know by the end of the movie he is a rebel from the beginning, he is truly for keeping Katniss alive and a symbol of the rebellion. He straight-up tell Katniss early on that she inspired him to come out of retirement.
Pretty convenient, but that's ok for story telling. However, how do you keep someone alive by sticking them into a hostile environment with 20+ other people who want to kill you?
He convinces President Jerkface to trust him completely in this matter.... the new GM sold him. President Jerkface, however, wants to send a message that even victors can be killed, because an incident during the clampdown on D12 showed victors standing up to the government on live TV. So, he straight-up alters the Quarter Quell.... a special year of the games that happen every 25 years, where some message is sent (Haymitch won the last QQ). One year had double tributes, for example, 4 from each district. I forget what I read in the book. But they QQs were designed from the beginning, but President Jerkface altered this one to get Katniss back into the arena and killed.
Again, more stuff that any competent dictator would have handled.
You know for a dictator desperately trying to maintain his grip on power, he sure is lax in dealing with his biggest threat.
He might as well have been stroking a white cat and explained his schemes to Catness before sticking her into the arena.
The Game Master put her in, but if you watch he keeps her alive. He also surrounded her with allies who were in on the escape plan.
I'll point out that her and her allies only survived the mist because she happened to wake up just in time, and the old woman sacrificed herself. So the GM must have made saving her a secondary priority.
Why didn't that mist hurt any other organic material?
Onto the point-counterpoint...
I explained the Quarter Quell, but it certainly did backfire on President Jerkface, didn't it. I honestly just think he hated Katniss so much.... and wanted her dead in the arena.... that he didn't see it coming. His closest adviser may have seen it coming, the new Game Master, but we now know that he was working for the other team the entire time and giving bad advice.
I covered this above.
And really, "I'm just sad because of the baby" really was a stroke of genius. It turned the population of the capitol against the games.
Again, this just painted Sutherland as a moron. He had the power to immediately stop things. Declare that he didn't know, and pull Catness out. Everyone's happy! Meanwhile, he could tell Catness that she's going to sit in solitary and watch Peeta die in the games or he'll announce that the person replacing her will be the last name picked for an HG event, which was her sister's. Boom! Peeta's brilliant stroke just got him killed, and made Catness a permanent puppet.
Well, that's what they did. President Jerkface had her, period. She would never be able to escape, basically, the jail she was in. Maybe there was a plan to snag her for the resistance before D12 got locked down, but then she got snagged for the QQ and they had to change plans. They put a tracker in her arm in the arena, but they had a plan to remove it right before the big escape.
Covered this earlier.
They didn't get Peta in time.
This guy is a Clark Kent without powers level of pussy.
The government has the power but isn't all powerful. Rebellion in the districts means goods and electricity are not flowing. Capitol can not stand alone. They put her on tour because victors go on tour, it's what they do. The GM, of course, was guiding that decision. He had President Jerkface foxed from the beginning. Then he had to go and OD on drugs... dumbass.
Lots of logic flaws going on in the story at this point. And in one person's personal life...
They can pull her from tour using the examples I mentioned.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman's role is easily one of the most convenient I've ever seen. A retired GM who just happens to be the one they brought back (because nobody was training for the job?), who just happens to be a rebel, and who just happens to be able to quickly concoct a scheme that fools the president and all of his advisers. And they had a fucking year to plan the 75th games!
Beyond that, Rebellion in the districts does mean goods and electricity not flowing. Each specializes in something. So why would you wipe out one of them? You just lost whatever it was they provided. In the case of D12, that's coal.
We only ever see Kat's point of view in either movie. We don't know the others didn't get care packages or not.
Fair point.
This is absolutely correct, and insightful. She was just an accidental symbol of rebellion, and then she was made into an official symbol of the rebellion. The next movie is very different from the others, and we will probably see her "put in her place" as just a symbol, and she is supposed to just speak when spoken to. But we know how stubborn she is, don't we.
And that's fine because nobody puts baby in a corner.
I honestly wonder what they are going to do for power now that they destroyed their coal supply chain. One assumes they still needed it.
Ha! I just read this. See? Stupid writing. This is not how good leaders maintain power!
As for the people of D11, they rebelled in the first movie after Rue died. That wasn't just a minor thing... full on rebellion. You notice how Effie (their peahen PR manager) was surprised at how much like a prison it was when they got off the train? Direct result of the riot. Capitol locked their asses down, and had zero tolerance for any act of sedition. They were probably specifically told to not do the salute, but then grandpa did anyway because FUCK YOU CAPITOL, and he took a bullet in the grape for it.
Fair point.
And not all districts are rebelling, which we will see in the next movies. Some are less oppressed than others, which is a small spoiler, but should seem obvious.
Why oppress any unless you're trying to get overthrown?
It is so much easier to give people some freedom, and let them use it to imprison themselves.
I don't know what to say about Peta. He is milquetoast, and I never cared for him much as a character, but there he is. His only redeeming quality seems to be that he honestly is in love with our symbol, and will give his own life if it means saving hers. I guess that makes him good or something. I dunno.
I will say this for him: The guy playing him looks genuinely unhappy. I don't blame him.
The books actually spend very little time on Kat's thought processes regarding boys and romance, which makes them so nice to read. She grew up with hunky Gale, they have a lot in common, and if left to their own devices, would have gotten married. But then she got reaped, and had to stay alive with Peta who actually had a crush on her. I liked the friend zone analogy in the video above, pretty much accurate. But, Gale didn't like all the fake kissy face which kept them alive, so obviously he is going to focus his attention elsewhere, which we should see more of in the next movie.
What bugs me is the half-baked romance that was marketed to the people. Why the fuck would they give a shit if they're banging or not? That was a genuinely female concept and story line.
“Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.” - Dr Thomas Sowell
