The Hunger Games: A 150th Post Extravaganza

That's right! I'm delaying talking about Fantasy Football to finally talk about the Hunger Games! I have no idea how I'm going to broach the subject, but I'll do this the EMPH way: with very little forethought and a great deal of digressions with the illusion of order!

I'm partial to this logo. It's simple, classy and has meaning to the story.

What I Think of the Series as a Whole

I'll start this off with a bold statement: I think The Hunger Games is significantly better than Harry Potter. For starters, Katniss never uses a time machine to solve all her problems and then never mention it again. Secondly, The Hunger Games brilliantly use Latin and classical history and Harry Potter has all the subtlety of a freight train with Latin. Seriously, the main evil family is led by Lucius Malfoy (translated: Satan McBadguy, because Lucius is one step away from Lucifer) and his eldest son, Draco Malfoy (translated: Satan McBadguy Jr., because Draco means dragon and dragons historically are the very incarnation of the Devil). I will talk more about Latin later, because this is really one of the highlights of the book. But back on point, I think The Hunger Games is substantially more relatable than Harry Potter and its story is much more focused and relies less on deus ex machina to resolve the plot. For starters, Katniss's unhappy starting place is a lot more believable and a lot more sad than Harry's. Her family lives in poverty and was pushed to the brink of starvation due to the untimely death of her father in a mining accident, which forces her to assume more responsibility than a teen girl should. Harry's sad place is an evil wizard killed his parents before he ever met them and now he must live with his comically abusive aunt and uncle where they force him to live under the staircase instead of one of the extra rooms they have, because they are jerks and Child Services doesn't exist in this universe and literally no one has ever asked Harry about his well-being. Then one day, Hagrid shows up and tells Harry that he's a wizard and also he's the wizard of destiny and also his parents left him a fortune in wizard gold but lacked the foresight to convert any of their money into wealth their son could use OR consider leaving him in the care of someone who wasn't estranged from the family. Whereas Katniss has to overcome her obstacles by playing things smart and surviving, at least until thefirst half of Mockingjay, Harry overcomes his obstacles through things he had no control over. Boy, it sure is fortunate that it turns out that Harry's very touch kills Voldemort and that Voldemort forgot about this. One good avada cadavra spell from Quirrell and it's a 1 volume story. It's also a good thing that Dumbledore's phoenix can apparently find its way into long hidden and forgotten chambers so that Harry can literally pull a magic sword from a hat. I could do this all day, but I won't.




Best Book in the Series

Can I just say that I love that the movie decides to take the logo and set it on fire?
Is there a more apt metaphor for Hollywood's style? I think not!

The Hunger Games is the best because it features a ton of truly clever universe building, as well as featuring a wide collection of emotional highs and lows (full disclosure: when Rue died, I cried. A single manly tear, I mean.) and memorable characters (Cinna 4 life). Catching Fire was nearly as good, but the book feels out of place with its pacing. It feels like Catching Fire is not so much its own story as it is the epilogue to The Hunger Games and the prologue to MockingJay tied together in an impromptu binding. I have no proof of this, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that it was originally a two part story that got split into three parts for cost/marketing reasons (trilogies are all the rage these days). Personally, I think it'd be great to have the bookends of Katniss going to the Hunger Games as the start and end of the first part of the story and the war against the Capitol  being the focus of the second story. The way the story is set up still works, but it does distract a bit from Catching Fire. MockingJay is my least favorite of the three. It's still good, but the first half of the book nearly sinks the entire story. In fact, this deserves its own header.

Why MockingJay, why?!

So the problem with MockingJay is that instead of good, relatable Katniss with her realistic limitations, believable enemies, and limited resources we get Katniss Everdeen, superhero. Whereas before, her only support was a drunk (who was secretly awesome the whole time) and a shy guy (who it turns out can really support the crud out of you), in MockingJay, she has the entirety of the future Pentagon backing her up. Cinna designs custom battle armor for her from beyond the grave (NB: I know they explain it away in the story, but I call shenanigans!), Beetee designs a high tech bow for her (because I'm starting to buy into the Freudian subtext of the bow as her weapon of choice. P.S. do not look at the freudian subtext of The Hunger Games, it's like a black hole) and the entire military campaign of District 13 revolves around her. Her previously ruthless enemy, President Coriolanus Snow, goes from conniving to comical. For instance, President Snow believes that the single greatest threat to his reign is going to be visiting a specific location and knows this far enough in advance to visit the place and leave his calling card (creepy flowers) there. This shows Katniss that he knows her all too well and he'll be keeping an eye on her. And that's great for scaring teenaged girls, because they do hate creepy guys. But the thing is, Katniss is public enemy number one for the Capitol. So why be creepy? Why not just use some of your high tech military power to say, I don't know, get a guy with a high powered sniper rifle with a clear line of sight on the building you know she will be entering? I bet the glass in the windows isn't bullet proof! Or maybe instead of putting creepy flowers in her kitchen, you could put explosives and cripple her security team and psychologically traumatize her? I'm just saying, President Snow, it's literally a war. You're allowed to be mean in war.

But the worst part is when Katniss and Gale shoot down the Capitol's hovercrafts during a bombing run on District 8. Literally nothing in this scene makes sense. It's literally three kinds of impossible. For starters, they never specify how fast a hovercraft can go or why a bomber would be flying low enough to be shot by an arrow, but I will give them the super benefit of the doubt on this one. Let's say a hovercraft can go as fast as a military helicopter. That's about 165 miles per hour. I propose that you can't reliably hit something flying through the air at 165 mph with an arrow, that's more than twice as fast even the fastest bird (peregrine falcon, 60 MPH when diving; thanks youth spent watching PBS!). Even if you could hit it, it'd be going to fast for the arrow to stick in. Again its not specified, but I think its fair to say that whatever material hovercrafts are made of is not more malleable than steel. Third, I argue even if you could hit the target and get the arrow to stick, you could not fit enough explosives into the tip of the arrow in order to destroy the bomber. I don't have precise figures and they could just use future technobabble to explain it away, but it wouldn't take much weight to foul up the aerodynamics of a bow/destroy its ability to pierce steel. Also, why is the Capitol bombing their hospital? Wounding your enemy is exactly what you want to do when you're fighting someone with scarce resources! You don't kill the wounded because a wounded soldier helps you win in two ways: 1. a wounded soldier can't fight, but drains food and medical care like a soldier who can 2. wounded soldiers really cause the public to rethink their commitment to destroying the Capitol. Just look at what all the wounded from Vietnam did to the American psyche.

MockingJay Redeemed

However, the second half of MockingJay recovered beautifully. It manages to strike a tone which I'll call "The Saving Private Ryan Equilibrium" wherein war is both brutal but is worth the pain and suffering. Without spoiling anything, there were some truly shocking sacrifices made in the closing moments of the war which gets the book back to its gritty roots. If this event had taken place in the first half of MockingJay, I'm sure Katniss would have shot the explosives out of the air with the greatest of ease. Plus, the twist where SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER Katniss shoots President Coin instead of executing President Snow SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER is just incredible. That moment single-handedly dulls the pain of the District 8 bombing.

This is getting really long. I'm not surprised, but still let's talk about the books as a whole again

It's not to be overstated how impressed I am with this book series. I was compelled to read the entire series within days of each other because I was that invested in the characters and the story. And there are some pretty girly moments in the story. I mean strip away the systematic violence, war, and death (also known as the first half of Catching Fire) and you have a lot of scenes where Katniss tries on all the pretty dresses, then thinks about which boys are the cutest and then evaluates her relationship with her mother and sister. None of those things involve fire, guitars, or crushing your enemy beneath your booted heel and, as a man, I find these concepts strange and terrifying on their own. However, Suzanne Collins presents them in such a way that I actually enjoyed reading through it. But seriously, her battle armor is also a fashion statement? I mean, Cinna, I love you in a totally straight way, but this is a bit ridiculous.

I'm that close to 2,000 words?! Wow, okay. The movie can wait until another day. Let's talk about DEM BOOOOOOOYYYYSSSS!!!!! P.S. There be spoilers here

Right, how to say this in a way that doesn't sound crazy, I've been on Team Peeta from Page 1 (or whenever he is established as a character) so I was as thrilled as a straight man can be when I learned Katniss marries Peeta instead of Gale (for my fellow bros, this ranks about as high as your kicker nailing a 53 yard field goal in fantasy football or your running back bringing in a goal line carry)I think he was genuinely sweet and affectionate and was willing to sacrifice for her and sacrifice is a key part of relationships (or so I have read). Gale on the other hand is all about their mutual love of hunting and not exploding Prim. Then he goes and cuts their conversation topics in half. But seriously, Peeta took a sword to the leg for this girl (which is worse than taking an arrow to the knee; HEY! Skyrim humor!). That takes serious commitment. Sure, if taken in a vacuum, his unspoken crush since kindergarten is a little bit unusual. But I'm going to say that she was always busy hunting and that they probably hung out in a lot of groups at District 12 high and she just didn't realize because she was busy monologue-ing. Plus, Gale also has the whole unspoken crush thing, he just alludes to it in hypothetical situations. Maybe there's something about Katniss that is intimidating (the answer is: her beauty. And also her lethal precision with a bow and large collection of animal carcasses she brings into town). My only gripe with Peeta is, for being a two time tribute, he's not particularly good at fighting. the high point of his martial career is not getting killed by Cato. I know, I know, it's archaic for me to believe that martial prowess is tied directly manliness, but come on man! At least be able to defend yourself. About the closest comparison I can come up with in terms of not being able to defend yourself but still being a heroic dude is Doc Brown (who invented a time machine inside a DeLorean!) and Frodo (who was carrying the most evil artifact in the world). Maybe I'm just holding Peeta to an unfair standard, but at least fight someone to a stalemate once, Peeta!

According to my calculations Marty, this blog post is approximately  2,191 words long it should be ending. Do you know what this means? The sheer length rivals that of a sports post or possibly Mass Effect...
The ending should be arriving in approximately 5 words... LOOK OUT!

How I Would Score It

4.5 English Muffins out of 5. The missing half muffin is entirely your fault, first half of MockingJay.