is it me or was that movie somewhat unoriginal and unshocking and very predictable.

I think if you've watched enough of certain kinds of anime and/or are familiar with greek mythology the plot seems kind of bland.

I've also read enough fantasy/fiction books that play the general idea up much better as well:P meh.


Given that effects, acting, cinematography seem nothing out of the ordinary for that movie I dunno what's so great about it.

I thought captain america and thor were better movies tbh :P

On the other hand 21 jump street ftw:P

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ima_sokoni_iru_boku
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It followed the book to a T, which is why it was so popular. Some of Harry Potter's criticism is that there were parts that were different from the book to the movie.

I think the movie was done quite well, especially since it was a book prior (lets think Twilight here).

Also, what percentage of the population watch anime? I'd say a smaller percentage then those who spent money in theaters.

It could also be that I"m somewhat spoiled by game of thrones :P

Something can be a good book without being a good movie (and vice versa).

The fact that a movie follows a book exactly neither contributes nor detracts from the quality of a movie.

There are plenty of good movies that followed book plots almost entirely (or losely). Jurassic park, fight club, LOTR are some examples.

I personally don't think a movie's quality should be based on how faithful it is to a book since as a piece of art it should stand on its own (Jurassic park took many liberties with the plot but it was still a good movie).



regarding your point bout anime: % of people in media has little to do with it. I'm sure even fewer people study/remember greek mythology either:P (And for the record I haven't really watched anime in many years)
Note that more people watch bollywood for example but many fans of the genre admit openly that the plots to many of those movies are silly:P

Battle Royale

was this before or after the justin bieber concert, martian?

Man I read up on battle royale and the book is nothing like it. Why not say that Battle Royale ripped off any number of historical events or movies just because one aspect of them were the same. Lord of the flies?


And Martian, I think the better question is what percentage of people actually knew Jurassic park was based off a book :P I sure didn't

It wasnt bloody enough.

Game of Thrones FTW

I wasn't saying Hunger Games ripped anything off of Battle Royale. I enjoyed both books. I was more stating that Battle Royale was another similar style before Hunger Games.

It was before!

Hunger Games, the novel, was written WAY AFTER Battle Royale, the novel and the movie, came out.

An American Hollywood Bastardization of Battle Royale.

That's what Hunger Games was.

Also, it's not the Blair Witch Project, we don't need that shaky camera work. It took out all the action sequence, and made it just blurry as fudge.

I saw the movie and thought it'd make a better TV show than movie.

A lot of aspects were the same as far as I can tell, haven't seen or read hunger games though

And the song of ice and fire books are terrible .. hope the show was better

Jurassic Park was a huge disappointment for me. Almost no T-Rex chase, no god damn compys and a main character that was supposed to die lived.

My main concern with Lord of the Rings was how much wasn't even filmed. I know they had to cut a lot as is for theatrical release, but a lot of fans would have paid for the whole journey to Mt Doom. The MMO and both TCGs touch on the things like Tom Bombadil, while Peter Jackson stated that the reason the character was omitted from their films was because, in their view, he does little to advance the story, and would make their films unnecessarily long. (from peter jackson to this copied from wikipedia)

Just don't get me started on the running man :p

Don't get me started on LOTR and some of the scenes that changed for no reason :P I prefer to forget and enjoy them for what they were.


Yah i get you now Newworld and agree with that :D I guess I thought you were being dumb like that Forgotten guy... ;)

You thought they were terrible? Man.. what do you like.. Twilight? :P Those are some great books although they have gone down in quality a bit over the last few.

A bit? lol. Feast for crows was almost unreadable .. game of thrones was great and that's why I gave the rest a shot

game of thrones books were very...boring. But the shows are good!

O.o how can you say they are boring? seriously what do you guys read? I thoroughly enjoyed all of em, though ill admit book 5 had a few slower chapters

LOTR did as well though; once you scale a world and tale you're necessarily going to have some slower bits

I can't think of a series I've enjoyed more tbh

Yah a shorter book should be guaranteed to have less slower parts. A series the size of this or the wheel of time will always have a few slower parts.

I don't think Bigwiggle has read the quenta silmarillion ;)

Very similar idea in Battle Royale

As a jap... +1

there are no original ideas, only interesting ways of retelling the same story. The architecture of most modern fantasy is derived from LOTR, does that make them all bad? Of course not.

Battle royale and hunger games have a similar plot focus, children fight to the death in an arena, after that the stories are quite different. I haven't seen the hunger games movie, but the book was really enjoyable. you need to distinguish between blatant half assed rip offs (half of what hollywood produces nowadays), and interesting new ideas executed effectively. The movie might suck, i don't know, but it won't be because similar things have been done before.

1. i did not read the book

2. i heard it was a good book, and reviews are high on the movie

3. my girl wanted to watch it with me

4. i think it is way overrated

You think it is overrated and havn't seen it? :P Or you did watch it with the gf.

i watched it. i was expecting a lot due to what i've heard bout the book & movie reviews. it wasn't bad but i expected way more

The book is obviously much better due to not having to make it for a pg audience and have the inner thoughts of Katniss rather than just actions/reactions

i might read the book when i have the time..i hope its not twilightish :D

You guys have really read all 5 song of ice and fire books and still consider it a great series? Every book has been worse than the last.. Martin just blogs about how depressed he is now and writes more poorly each year the Jets don't win a superbowl

Hmm well then the Jets better win the season after this. Packers got this one and he takes forever anyways :P

From watching those movies with the gf I get the gist of the story line and I would say other than some baseline similarities which tons of books/movies could have it is much better written than twilight. The third book kind of disappointed me but the first one was quite entertaining and the second quite good too.

How can anybody like the movie?

Not that it was a bad movie. It was entertaining and engaging.

But I thought the plot was terrible. Not like a 'Dude Where's My Car?', John Reilly, or Jonas Hill 'comedy' terribly unwatchable movie. I mean the story was terrible. How can people like it?

I loved the books, all three of them, though the first was definitely the best. I disagree that the "movie followed the book to a T". On the contrary, the more I spoke with people who saw the movie and did not read the book, the more I realized that there were many ways it was off.

Not just in what it actually left out, but the depth of certain things that were lackluster.

Examples (some small spoilers in here, more for the book than the movie since it is about what the movie left out):

District 12 looked like a bad place to live. But it didn't look as miserable as the book made it out to be with people dying of starvation frequently. They didn't really explain the black market, the implications of the fence power-outage, the consequences for breaking the law, the system of Peacekeepers and their corruption (relevant later).

The "runners" from the Capital were left out... so what was with the flyby in the woods??? pointless. Also, the (trying for no spoilers here) "later" scenes with one of the runners were also left out and that revealed some of the Capital's true nature...

One of the centerpiece items -- the Mockingjay pin -- came from a different character entirely in the movie than the book.

They seriously eliminated the mother's history and role in the town and the impact that had on the skills of Katniss and Prim.

They seriously eliminated the father's role in raising Katniss.

They eliminated the instructors from the pre-Games training... it wasn't a "practice" arena, it was a "training" arena. Many of the candidates learned / honed their skills there under experts in each field... for example, Peeta's camoflauge...

They took the faces off the dogs, which again eliminated some of the psychological terror the Capital engages in.

They cut some of the suggestive scenes, such as the candidate who strips after the parade -- those come back with relevant info in later books / sequels.

They eliminated most of the scenes / explanation from the other districts. They eliminated the customized bread and explanation from Rue's district (this is a strong piece in the district bonding, important later).

Most folks who hadn't read the books that I spoke with did not understand what the Peeta / bread scenes were about or why they were even in there.

They did not make clear the repercussions of the Peeta/Katniss entanglement after returning to District 12.

They generally did not make President Snow into an evil character.

Overall, I think the sac'd a lot in order to get it to PG-13 (including blood/gore) and this was intended as a "hook" to get people to come back and watch the next installment which I cannot see staying at PG-13 (I hope not)... But I am concerned that they cut out so much of the weight that folks who saw this one won't be "hooked" anywhere near as much as the books did.

I have not read the book but based on Atryn's comments I might.

Regarding jurassic park: I had actually read the book well before the movie came out (or even knew that a movie was coming out). The book/author were quite popular at the time. I enjoyed the book. I enjoyed the movie. The movie really missed the entire point of the book but it didn't matter:P

Movies can be very good and be rated G or PG.. most of the movies I like tend not to be though:P I admit to liking puss in boots mmk:P

Did the Jurassic Park book even come out that long before the movie? I thought they were both early 90's. Great movie, better book

I don't remember exactly. Maybe it was only 1-2 years. But I was like 13 so it seemed longer:P

You realize in the grand scheme of things those are all small details right? This is a book adaptation to a movie. It is one of the closest renditions yet. There wasn't many ways you could give Katniss's inner dialogue and unless they wanted to make a much longer movie many of those details were just unlikely to ever show up in a movie. They'd need another hour at least to give the full feeling of the books.

locket: Katniss' inner dialog wasn't something I even brought up...

The problem was that all of these details add up - significantly - to the horror of the world they live in. And that is missing from the movie, IMHO.

An example... One _adult_ I went to see the opening with had tried to read the book and thrown it across the room in disgust (she was a mother and it was too much for her)... her reaction after the movie? "It just shouldn't have been that easy to watch kids killing each other".

The Hunger Games wasn't just a 1% vs. 99% world, which seems to be how it was portrayed in the movie. It is much more about oppression and power and the extreme use of such to maintain order and the status quo. There is a reason President Snow's roses smell like rotting corpses -- not at all conveyed in the movie...

Yes, details... but they do add up. You don't want non-readers walking away thinking "meh, so its a reality show gone overboard, big deal"...

Wow. I'm about 1/4 through Feast for Crows, and I'm certainly enjoying the series so far. It's not something I ever would have read in the past, but after the first 10 pages or so I found myself unable to put it down.

What's Wheel of Time like? Someone just gave me the entire series, but I haven't heard anything about it...

I haven't read wheel of time. Some people I know love it and others absolutely hated it.

Sean, I can lend you Hunger games

The people who hated Wheel of time that I know simply didn't like the length or delay in writing and got mad. 2 of the books around book 8 were a bit slow but the last two were awesome and the final book comes out in October and it should be amazing.

The author died, however the person finishing the series is a really good writer and has done a great job. Robert Jordan gave a full plot voice recording of what he wanted to happen so Brandon Sanderson is just filling in the gaps really. The final chapter of the book is completely done by Robert Jordan too.

As to how they are... I find them to be my favorite series personally. If you read the whole first book and don't enjoy it though you are unlikely to enjoy the rest. It's a huge world with lots of interesting characters and plenty of interesting ideas... thats kind of a rambling way to say I think you should try them :P

The ASOIF series sucks balls. We can`t really get invested in a character there.

Wheel of Time is awesome most of the time. Last few books are pretty good again, though they are rushing the end of the series. It seriously needed another 3 or so more books to do it correctly, not just one.

personally I couldn't enjoy the LOTR movies as anything other than movies LOOSELY based on the books. they dumped out hue sections of plotline and action in favour of bullfluff they pulled from their asses and just jammed in without regard to script or flow of the movie. net result, flufftified the movies to the books, but the movies themselves are passable as standalone.

My least favorite thing they did was when they had Frodo travel back to Gondor for some unknown reason instead of doing an equally simple and faithful version that happened in the book :P

Hunger Games was a really fun read. I thoroughly enjoyed the author's prose. It seemed like translating that to film was going to be difficult so I've yet to see the movie.

I refuse to pick up Wheel of Time again until the series is finished but that should be soon. The gaps between the installments really left me pissed off. It felt like watching Lost. Somehow it reminds one of my favorites along side LoTR.

Last book is out in a few months so don't wait too long if you want to finish it then :P Luckily I started when it was around book 7 but yah.. still a long wait for the books after that.

Wheel of time was enjoyable until like book 7, when jordans writing and characterization becomes incredibly redundant (all women are cold, men are clueless, etc.). The last two books have been good though, I think the author change livened it up a bit. Sanderson is a solid writer.

It's certainly no song of ice and fire, but it's an ok read.

Wheel of Time was great until the middle (7-11) books, Robert Jordan started going senile and would write whole chapters about bosoms. The beginning and end of the series make it well worth reading though.. can't wait for the last book