Hunger Games

There's a new movie out, The Hunger Games, based on a young adult novel. Tweenagers in the indeterminate future are recruited to fight to the death on a reality TV show. This is intended as a metaphor for the wars the US is in and for reality TV.

It's been done before. There was the Japanese movie, Battle Royale, where a class of 14-year-olds is forced to fight to the death on an island. They have kill each other. If more than one is still alive when time runs out, the collars bolted to their necks will explode and kill them all. I was shocked to learn that the director was about 70 when the film was made in 2000. He had been a teenager during World War Two working in a munitions factory which was a target of U.S. bombing. The teenagers who worked there had to remove the bodies of the kids who had been killed. When they were bombed they would try to take cover behind each other. He said he understood the limits of friendship.

Now we got this which sounds rather pale by comparison. For one thing, Hunger Games, being based on a young adult novel, is aimed at a tweenage audience. They had to keep the violence toned down to get a PG-13 rating. It's from the director of Pleasantville and Seabiscuit.

I haven't seen and I'm not going to. I could imagine it turning out very badly.