The Hunger Games

While I'll admit that the trailer didn't exactly "OMG WOW!" me or anything, I'm not really seeing the Twilight influence here.

I mean, seriously, everything that takes place in a forest is ripping off Twilight now? -_-

It didn't look anything like Twilight to me. But it could have focused a little more on the plot - I guess they haven't done much special effects yet.

Anyway, the forest in Twilight would be different - Washington state has conifers, the trees in this were deciduous like you'd get in Appalachia.

I just read the tropes page on this and how in the hell would this wind up competing with Twilight? I'm not really sure the sparkly vampire angst filled love story crowd crosses over with the bloody death games and horrible mutilation crowd all that much.

Because Lionsgate is hyping it up as the next Twilight. Everything that you had seen so far (production photos, news stories) basically says "this is the next Twilight" and Lionsgate has a history of following the leader (a good example being that the Hostel series was basically an attempt to create a second Saw series). You are more likely to see a movie that doesn't follow the book and instead becomes "Twilight with fantasy elements".

It's similar to how The Dark is Rising became a Harry Potter clone because Walden Media wanted another Narnia.

edited 31st Aug '11 6:46:51 AM by Buscemi

Listen, I have no doubt that the success of Twilight had something to do with the fact that the movie is getting made, but only so much as that it was a female wrote a successful fantasy series starring a young woman and two young men as the protaganists and that Stephanie Meyer (Stephen King did as well) gave it a good review, which is frankly a good thing. It's a good series. The more people who read it the better.

After that, the only other connection is that it is moderately attractive people running around a forest which is a very thin connection at best. All that I have read about the film makes it sound more like Battle Royale from Japan or George Orwell's 1984 than it does Twilight.

So until promos start heavily focusing on the romance between Gale and Katniss or her and Peeta or you can provide links, articles, quotes, etc that show directly that Lionsgate (same distributors of Precious, 3:10 to Yuma, and Religious)) promoting this as "the next Twilight," I'm calling bullshit.

edited 31st Aug '11 11:37:56 AM by snaver

Well.

Maybe we'll all be pleasantly surprised? I mean, the plot would be kinda hard to deawesomify. Unless they go severely off the rails and, I don't know, change it to be more Twilight-esque.

Hey, this could turn out to be a good thing. Something decent might actually come out of Twilight!

For some reason, all I can say is that the initial marketing and trailers for Rise of the Planet of the Apes had most of us thinking it was gonna suck, or at least be meh, and then it turned out great. Ever since then, I've decided to reserve judgment on most things even more than usual...

Well, it's going to be PG-13 as far as I know. That means that they will excise as much of the Battle Royale-type premise as possible (and that movie wasn't picked up by an American distributor for years due to rating issues). After that, what's left? A Twilight clone with ridiculous names.

Yeah, one of my worries as soon as I initially heard that they were doing a movie is "This would be R if done accurately. And...they're definitely going to go for a PG-13."

Stupid rating systems. If a bunch of teens read it and it had no ill effect on them, then a faithful movie adaptation isn't going to be any more harmful. Unrated movies are lucky, or at least that's how it seems to me. Maybe there's something I don't know about the system...

The ratings system is ridiculous. I suspected that for a good while, and the R rating for The King's Speech - a perfectly acceptable movie for all ages, except that most kids would find it boring - confirmed it completely. When you can get an R-rating for a couple of scenes of swearing, things have gotten completely irrational.

I see the Twilight influence. It's not a content thing, it's a style thing.

Okay, so I finally read the first book. IMO, if they're going to market this as "the next Twilight," they'll have to seriously change the plot or employ Never Trust a Trailer on a massive scale. Until the last few pages (and even then it's only hinted at,) the required Love Triangle just isn't there. Yes, there's going to be stuff between Katniss and Peeta. It's part of the plot. But if it's done anything like it's done in the book, the Bella/Edward fangirls are going to be majorly disappointed. Also, Gale is barely in the story. And the part he plays isn't that important in the long run. His appearance in the first book is just to introduce him.

I hope they don't try to turn it into some Twilight clone. But they probably will tone down the violence and turn up the romance, because they don't want the movie to be rated R or they're trying to cash in on Twilight's success.

@frog753: I don't know that unrated is the way to go, because most people think unrated = porn.

I think it's just an advertizing gimmick.

Ever see Bridge to Terabithia?

This is something similar. Bt T's trailer was advertized more like a Narnia rip-off, due to how well Narnia had done, even though though the movie was nothing like it.

Lionsgate isn't Disney. Lionsgate prefers to Follow the Leader instead of creating their own thing.

That's true.

@wuggles: I wasn't actually considering that very seriously...and for what it's worth, I don't think "porn" in regards to unrated, I think "indie". Or often, more disparagingly, "crappy little indie movie that got slammed in one of the New York Times's small capsule reviews, by a reviewer who very well might not know what they're talking about anyway, but probably sort of does."

Sorry, this is getting a bit off-topic. I have a bit of an odd sense of humor sometimes. But what I'm getting at is that I know this movie will just go for the PG-13, but I don't feel like the book is really PG-13. It's a lot more like a soft R, almost entirely for the violence and generally disturbing moments and concepts.

I do hope they don't Twilight-ify this. I quite liked the books.

Is this going to just be an adaptation of the first book? If so, I'm looking forward to the parts with the tracker-jackers and the tribute muttations. But I guess I'll just wait until this comes out to see some reviews and figure out if it's faithful or not. Or, more accurately, how precisely unfaithful it will be.

Also, what rating did the last Harry Potter movie get? Because it was pretty dark, so this might have a chance to retain some grimness, assuming that the HP one was PG-13 as well...

edited 14th Sep '11 6:55:52 PM by LudicrousLurker

Yes, the last Harry Potter one was PG-13.

Me? I'm just psyched that Woody Harrelson is playing Haymitch. Next time I read the book Haymitch is going to sound like Harrelson in my head and I will not mind one bit.

I'm sorry, but how many tropers here knows that Suzanne Collins herself worked on the script? I can't argue that it might have a Twilight style, but it should definitely be faithful to the book (aside from some details that wouldn't work in film).

edited 5th Oct '11 2:55:30 PM by Pokénatic

Is she? I didn't know that! Fantastic news! (I wonder if I could get a list of movies upon which the original author/artist of the book/graphic novel worked or something like that...)

Add Mary Poppins and the first Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to the list.

Collins actually has some experience in this field, sort of. She wrote for kid's TV shows before writing the Underland Chronicles. So yeah, not only is she writing it, but she has written for a visual medium before in some sense...bit of a long shot, though.

Cheap, crappy Battle Royale ripoff from what I've heard, though I admit I've yet to read the book.

Hope this fails miserably, as the last thing the last remnants of the BR fandom needs is an influx of HG fans telling us how much better their version is.

BR ripoffs just do not work, this needs to be accepted!

edited 7th Oct '11 10:35:00 AM by CaissasDeathAngel