WARNING: There will be spoilers.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that. I always find it difficult not to leak some spoilers into movie reviews, especially if I already posted a review of the book.

Just got back from seeing The Hunger Games  and I must admit it wasn’t terrible. I had constantly seen previews the rare times I watch television and that usually means one thing: the movie is going to suck. But it didn’t, which made me happy.

The other vibe I had been getting from the trailers was a kind of ‘This movie is going to be similar to the Twilight movies’ vibe. Don’t get me wrong. I will admit that I liked the Twilight books, but when I saw the first movie I was mortified, because it was horrendous. Really didn’t want that happening to The Hunger Games. Again, I will happily admit that that didn’t happen.

Now before I go any further, I’m going to put this out there: people die. Correction, children and teenagers die. They kill each other, in fact. In case you didn’t know. Cause for some reason it seemed like people didn’t really know what the plot of this movie was about. I did notice a few smaller children in the theater, which kind of confused me cause it’s not really a kid friendly movie. The Lorax is playing in theater 4, in cause you didn’t catch that.

The movie was very similar to the book, so if you read the book there aren’t going to be any creative license surprises. My problem is if you haven’t read the book you might be a bit confused.

In the beginning, after Katniss volunteers as tribute for her sister, the entire District 12 holds up three fingers to her. In the book this was described as a tribute, but they don’t really explain that in the movie, so if you don’t know it’s kind of like, “Oh… ok…”. Second, they don’t really explain how Katniss’s father dies. You know that he’s dead, but the closest they get to explaining it is through a hallucination that Katniss has after the tracker jacker attack. Then the problem disappears forever and is never revisited. These are, of course, only minor flaws. Not really pertinent to the main plot of the story, but still  I’m thinking of those people who haven’t read the books. It’d be nice to know they understood it just as well as you did.

I honestly have to admit that the only other problem I had with this movie was that they made the mutants at the end look like over sized lionesses. Which, to me personally, was kind of a slap in the face. The mutants looks so awesome in the book! I pictured them as werewolf type creatures with 5″ claws that could easily tear through flesh. They could walk on their hind legs and they were supposed to resemble the dead tributes. And they didn’t. Which was disappointing.

I really enjoyed the insight we got into how the government functions. It was definitely a great addition and without it I think the movie would’ve been a bit boring and might’ve not made much sense. This was a creative license addition that has the Casey approval stamp all over it.

To recap: the movie was very similar to the book. There were some pieces that I didn’t quite like and if you haven’t read the book you might be confused, but there were also parts that I thought were great additions. This is a movie that will suck you in. You’ll feel for the characters and possibly cry (I did. Not ashamed to admit it). But whether you’ve read the book or not you’ll definitely cheer as our heroine gets closer to winning the hunger games.