Movie Review Rant : Catching Fire (2013)
As I write this sentence, Catching Fire (2013), the sequel to The Hunger Games (2012), is encroaching upon the $700mil box office mark. It’s a huge film, and there are a lot of things to love about it. Before I get to my rant/review, here are a couple quick notes: I hadn’t read the book when I saw the movie, so the reactions below will jump back and forth between placing the film in relation to the book and treating the film on its own terms. There are spoilers. Nothing is in any sort of order here. Like my post on Riddick (2013), I’ll cover everything I feel like talking about as they come to me. I’ve discussed some of these things in the Shoot the WISB episode on Catching Fire over at The Skiffy and Fanty Show. The World and POV Shifts In the first film, there were a handful of cuts away from the central action to the characters involved behind the scenes: the gamekeepers, the president, Haymitch, the folks at home, etc. These served to give us a sense of the world in which these games are a centerpiece. The problem with The Hunger Games was its inability to rationalize the system of oppression that made the games possible. There were certainly attempts, but in the end you either had to accept the status quo or give up any possibility of immersion. Catching Fire does a decent job rectifying this problem. For one, it centralizes President Snow as the actual and real villain. In the first film, the Capitol and the other players in the game were all potential villains, but here, Snow is never anything but. From his first interactions with Katniss to the cut scenes showing him planning her torture and eventual defeat, Snow is the adversary the film has always needed: he’s the face of all that is wrong with the Capitol. For me, Snow provided the rationalization for the world that I needed. His interest in oppression is partly about power, but it is also about his own myths about what revolution entails, such that preserving those myths and power structures becomes more important than considering the implications of one’s actions. Snow, as such, continues to exert his authority — a largely dictatorial and malignant one — to preserve the system and to make sure nobody has the means or the will to challenge it. The Hunger Games are simply a means to an end: they’re a reminder of the past and a reminder of the power Snow/the Capitol wields. A lot of the scenes that best express Snow’s justifications for his brutality are in his interactions with his granddaughter, who appears to become entranced by the symbolic rebellion of Katniss. Presumably, she doesn’t understand what is happening in Panem, but the threat is there for Snow nonetheless: if his own family can be turned against him, his ability to maintain order will be permanently compromised. It’s a nice touch, as it would be too easy just to make Snow a vile, disgusting bag of skin, as he appears to be in the books. Here, there are little hints of humanity in play, and so he becomes even more horrifying as a villain the more we realize how human he really is. Likewise, the POV shifts are generally a good thing. They give us an impression of the world, its logic, etc. They also show us things we otherwise don’t get to see in the book, which helps the film avoid the problem of having no viable method to display Katniss’ internal struggles. The problem with these shifts, however, is in their unnecessary ability to trick us as viewers, which I’ll get into in the next section. WANTED: Clues That Logically Lead to X There are two main issues with the structure of the film. The second of these I’ll discuss in the section below on endings; the first I’ll cover here. One of the new central characters is gamekeeper Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman). At the end of Catching Fire, it is revealed to us that he, Haymitch, and several of the tributes have been conspiring to extricate Katniss from the games so she can remain the symbol for the upcoming revolution. But unlike the book, which leaves a great number of clues as to Plutarch’s true allegiances, the film simply discards most of those clues for a shocking reveal. This works in the book for one reason: we’re in Katniss’ head the whole time. But the book gives us plenty of clues. It makes it clear that there’s something fishy going on, even if Katniss hasn’t quite figured it out yet. The shock in the book, as such, is measured by revelation: so that’s what all those clues are about. In the film, most of those clues are gone. For all intents and purposes, we’re supposed to believe Plutarch is just like everyone else in the Capitol, albeit perhaps more macabre than the average flashy Capitol-ite. But almost every scene involving Plutarch doesn’t give us the impression that he’s actually one of the good guys, as he spends most of his time trying to convince President Snow that X method is the best way to destroy Katniss as person and revolutionary image. His ideas are, in retrospect, not terribly good, but they are, in the moment, convincing in their brutality. The shocking reveal, however, doesn’t have the benefit of proper foreshadowing or retrospective revelation, despite a good chunk of the film taking place outside of Katniss’ perspective. And without that benefit, Plutarch’s apparent heroism is incomprehensible as a consequence of the plot, and, thus, neutered. Were we supposed to hate Plutarch in the end as Katniss does, or find something redeemable in him? Thankfully, this issue doesn’t affect the allied tributes. There are enough moments where Finnick and Johanna hint that something else is going on, giving Katniss and the audience a moment to consider what that something might be. If only the