Posted by Kromey at 6:39pm Mar 26 '12*Madge: The fuck?? How in the hell does Katniss get the mockingjay pin then? Oh, I see... suck... (Not too worried about getting Katniss to overhear the mayor's TV, that can be worked in easily enough without Madge, but still...)
*Katniss buying the pin: I disagree that she wouldn't have gotten it for Prim, if she had expressed an interest in it, but Prim wouldn't have. She wasn't as practical as her older sister, but still much too so to want something so wasteful. Do Prim's cat and goat at least make an appearance?
*The Hob: Yeah, I expected as much. It was pretty important in the books, but at the same time it's actually disposable. Ditto the legality of Katniss' hunting.
*Katniss' dad: I expected this, too. Almost all of what we know of her dad comes from internal exposition, which is almost impossible to get into a movie unless you do cheesy-as-all-fuck voiceovers; given a choice between cutting him out entirely and going with a voiceover, I'd take cutting him any day. Glad they worked him in anyway, though.
*Relationship with Gale: In all honesty, it was underdeveloped in the first book, too; it wasn't until the second that we really began to see him as more than just her hunting buddy.
*Exposition: See "internal exposition" comments above. Again, expected.
*Trackerjackers: My expectations were in line with yours, and I'm pleased to see they're actually explained! Disappointed that the jabberjays aren't, but maybe they'll get a similar treatment during the second movie's Quarter Quell. How are the mockingjays explained without that, though? Or are they not?
*Rue: Well, fuck. I really hope there's enough of her to really feel how significant her death is on Katniss. I was actually afraid they'd cut her out entirely, and am really glad she wasn't. Her death was a hugely important turning point for Katniss, and remained a milestone event in her life for the entire rest of the trilogy -- it had better mean something in the movie as well.
*The pacing: I'll have to wait until I actually see the movie to comment, I think. If they screwed it up in this one, though, then I fear greatly for the second movie, because the pacing in the second book was already bad!
*The forcefields: Shit. They're so important in the later books (well, mostly just the second, but still), but their mere presence in the first ensures that you really feel like they belong in the world, instead of just some hackneyed plot device tossed in at the last moment by a desperate writer. My fears for the second are growing...
*Katniss' ear: Not really too worried about this one, honestly. Yeah, the second book made a big deal about her being able to "hear" the forcefields, but really that didn't quite sit right with me anyway (yes, I know she couldn't really hear them, but the Capitol, being such heavy users of them, really has no reason not to know already that the "chinks" can be seen). If anything, it's a sign of Katniss' naivete (or more likely, Collins just not thinking it through), and I'm not all that bothered if they took it out.
Peeta's leg is even less significant.
*The mutts: I'll have to see them for myself before I can really comment, but I really have a hard time faulting them over that. The way they were described in the book, I simply could not picture them at all, except as bipedal wolves with hair colors matching the dead tributes. Fitting such easily recognizable human faces onto those things never worked in my head.
*Lionsgate breaking the last movie into two: Goddammit. If any book needs to be stretched and split into two, it's the second (only because fitting the Victory Tour and the Quarter Quell into one book just feels like a squeeze, although it really can't make two), but really none of them need that treatment! That being said, though, it won't be too terrible to split that one up, as there's still plenty of stuff to go into two movies. Besides, splitting up one work isn't always a bad thing -- that's how we got the Lord of the Rings trilogy (he wrote it as one book, his publishers forced him to break it into 3) and Kill Bill Parts 1 and 2 (again, 1 movie originally, broken up because it was "too long").
*Katniss buying the pin: I disagree that she wouldn't have gotten it for Prim, if she had expressed an interest in it, but Prim wouldn't have. She wasn't as practical as her older sister, but still much too so to want something so wasteful. Do Prim's cat and goat at least make an appearance?
*The Hob: Yeah, I expected as much. It was pretty important in the books, but at the same time it's actually disposable. Ditto the legality of Katniss' hunting.
*Katniss' dad: I expected this, too. Almost all of what we know of her dad comes from internal exposition, which is almost impossible to get into a movie unless you do cheesy-as-all-fuck voiceovers; given a choice between cutting him out entirely and going with a voiceover, I'd take cutting him any day. Glad they worked him in anyway, though.
*Relationship with Gale: In all honesty, it was underdeveloped in the first book, too; it wasn't until the second that we really began to see him as more than just her hunting buddy.
*Exposition: See "internal exposition" comments above. Again, expected.
*Trackerjackers: My expectations were in line with yours, and I'm pleased to see they're actually explained! Disappointed that the jabberjays aren't, but maybe they'll get a similar treatment during the second movie's Quarter Quell. How are the mockingjays explained without that, though? Or are they not?
*Rue: Well, fuck. I really hope there's enough of her to really feel how significant her death is on Katniss. I was actually afraid they'd cut her out entirely, and am really glad she wasn't. Her death was a hugely important turning point for Katniss, and remained a milestone event in her life for the entire rest of the trilogy -- it had better mean something in the movie as well.
*The pacing: I'll have to wait until I actually see the movie to comment, I think. If they screwed it up in this one, though, then I fear greatly for the second movie, because the pacing in the second book was already bad!
*The forcefields: Shit. They're so important in the later books (well, mostly just the second, but still), but their mere presence in the first ensures that you really feel like they belong in the world, instead of just some hackneyed plot device tossed in at the last moment by a desperate writer. My fears for the second are growing...
*Katniss' ear: Not really too worried about this one, honestly. Yeah, the second book made a big deal about her being able to "hear" the forcefields, but really that didn't quite sit right with me anyway (yes, I know she couldn't really hear them, but the Capitol, being such heavy users of them, really has no reason not to know already that the "chinks" can be seen). If anything, it's a sign of Katniss' naivete (or more likely, Collins just not thinking it through), and I'm not all that bothered if they took it out.
Peeta's leg is even less significant.
*The mutts: I'll have to see them for myself before I can really comment, but I really have a hard time faulting them over that. The way they were described in the book, I simply could not picture them at all, except as bipedal wolves with hair colors matching the dead tributes. Fitting such easily recognizable human faces onto those things never worked in my head.
*Lionsgate breaking the last movie into two: Goddammit. If any book needs to be stretched and split into two, it's the second (only because fitting the Victory Tour and the Quarter Quell into one book just feels like a squeeze, although it really can't make two), but really none of them need that treatment! That being said, though, it won't be too terrible to split that one up, as there's still plenty of stuff to go into two movies. Besides, splitting up one work isn't always a bad thing -- that's how we got the Lord of the Rings trilogy (he wrote it as one book, his publishers forced him to break it into 3) and Kill Bill Parts 1 and 2 (again, 1 movie originally, broken up because it was "too long").
My not-yet-seen-the-movie thoughts (spoilers) - Kromey