Movie Review: "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"

"The Hunger Games: Catching Fire": B-.  The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (referred to herein as Catching Fire) is the second movie in The Hunger Games trilogy.  If you did not see the first movie, The Hunger Games (reviewed here on April 10, 2012, B+), you probably should not see Catching Fire, nor should you read this review, until viewing the 2012 film.  Although I enjoyed The Hunger Games, one of my beefs was that the central government of the fictitious country Panem changed the rules in the eleventh hour, thereby opening the door for the possibility of a happier ending than what otherwise may have been the case. In Catching Fire, there is yet another rule change, this one explained near the movie's beginning and without which there would probably have been no second installment in the trilogy.  The change is that instead of all survivors from previous Hunger Games thereafter getting a lifetime pass, Panem's powers-that-be, led by evil President Snow (wonderfully played by Donald Sutherland), decide that the Games occurring every twenty-fifth year will include winners from previous years.  Since Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and her fellow District 12 survivor Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) won in year 74 (as we saw in The Hunger Games), they must "play" again in this year's fight to the finish.

As a result of the aforementioned hankie-pankie rules bending by the government, Catching Fire turns into pretty much the same story as The Hunger Games.  Katniss must figure out a way to withstand the cold-blooded attempts on her life by her fellow competitors, while she does what she can to keep Peeta alive.  I have heard that most of the critics, in their infinite wisdom, have declared Catching Fire to be the better movie.  As we like to say on my favorite website, ND Nation, "Disagreeance!"

The evaluation of this new movie when comparing its merits to its predecessor comes down to two basic questions.  First, is the prelude (i.e., the buildup) to the game action itself better in the first movie or the second?  Secondly, once the prelude is concluded, which of the two movies has better game action?  On my scorecard, The Hunger Games gets a higher mark on both counts, particularly with respect to the prelude. The running time of The Hunger Games was 142 minutes, almost two and a-half hours long.  That longer-than-average duration was acceptable because, before the game action started, the filmmakers had to explain to the viewers the history of Panem, why its central government felt the need to conduct the Hunger Games, and how the participants -- euphemistically called "tributes" -- were selected, trained and feted. Simultaneously occurring in The Hunger Games' prelude was the development of Katniss' personal story, including her family life in woeful District 12, and her love interests.

On the other hand, Catching Fire assumes that you have either seen The Hunger Games or have read the related books.  Little time is spent explaining the backgrounds of either the Games or of Katniss.  I am okay with that decision, but the running time of Catching Fire is actually four minutes longer than The Hunger Games.  If anything, it should have been considerably shorter, because without a rehashing of the background, there was less story to tell and therefore no need to make the prelude of the second movie as long as the first.  Consequently, there are times throughout Catching Fire when the movie drags.  Other than a quick explanation of the reasoning behind the rule change requiring the participation of previous Games' winners such as Katniss, the prelude of Catching Fire includes a lot of repetition of things we already saw in The Hunger Games (skills training, a parade, a televised interview featuring Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci), etc.).  Been there, done that, to coin a phrase.

Attending The Hunger Games and Catching Fire reminded me of going to see Jurassic Park in 1993.  The development of the characters and the background stories which got the characters into the theme park was all fine and dandy, but it was the dinosaurs that drew people in.  In both The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, we can't wait for the actual game action to commence, and once it does we are all in.

Finally, a couple of non-spoiling points about the ending to Catching Fire.  In the final scene there is a combination of a surprise twist and an explanation of immediately preceding events given to one of the main characters.  The surprise twist was fairly successful as a storytelling device, but the explanation is filled with holes.  We are supposed to believe that some characters were made privy to certain important information long ago but, inexplicably, the character to whom the explanation is being given was left out of the loop.  I say, "Nonsense!"