Catching Fire – Movie Review

Let's talk a little about movie adaptations. Movie adaptations are hard to make. They're also very easy to mess up. It's nearly impossible to appease fans of the source material and people who have no emotional connection to the book whatsoever.

(Warning: The following rant contains excessive name-dropping of below-par movie adaptations.)

Sometimes the movie may actually be not bad, but the fact that it strayed from the book so much could anger hardcore fans. Take Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. To an outsider, it's not such a bad movie. It had a solid plot and likeable, if one-dimensional, characters. But to a hardcore fan, it was terrible. Major plot points that came back in the rest of the series were just ignored, leaving nothing to build on. Leading to why Sea of Monsters was almost as bad.

You can also have the exact opposite. The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones basically copied the first half of the movie exactly from the book, dialogue and everything. This pleased many fans, including myself. But the movie critics weren't fooled. They hated the movie, and we the fans were puzzled. After thinking it over, the critics have a point. The moviemakers were so concerned with reproducing exact plot points to appease the fans that they didn't make a good movie overall. It didn't capture the dark, humorous tone of the books, and suffered because of that.

Now The Hunger Games was a rare adaptation that did not directly fall into one of these two traps. The screenplay was written by Suzanne Collins, who began her career in television writing. That helped a lot. However, it's my opinion that authors should not write the adaptations of their own books. They're always tempted to make exact copies of their books (See The Perks of Being a Wallflower). But listen: I don't want an exact copy of the book. I could just read the book and imagine a movie. I want the director to sit back, look at the book and think, "How can I make it better?" And unlike The Hunger Games's Gary Ross, Catching Fire director Francis Lawrence did that. And it worked beautifully.

Catching Fire was AMAZING. Truly a fantastic movie. It was just mind-blowingly good. "Mind-blowingly." Wasn't a word before. It is now.

Let us now have a moment of silence for the shaky-cam filming and bad CGI. You will always be remembered as what ruined the first movie. Thank you for your service…

All jokes aside, they were both gone! A ton more money was put into this movie, and you can tell. All the special effects are much better. The arena is fantastically done. It's all very well done.

The cast is also phenomenal. Jennifer Lawrence's performance as Katniss was one of the best that I've ever seen. The supporting cast is as solid as they were in the original. The major new additions were Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Plutarch, Sam Claflin as Finnick, and Jena Malone as Johanna. There was a lot of skepticism around Claflin's casting from the fans. I have no clue why (Maybe he wasn't hot enough for the fangirls? I don't know.). He was perfectly fine as Finnick, no worries there. Hoffman was solid as Plutarch as well. The real surprise here was Jena Malone. The writers increased Johanna's role a little in the movie, and Malone took it in stride. She captured Johanna's crazy, I-don't-care-what-anyone-thinks-about-me attitude perfectly.

The plot was changed very little. You know, I might not even have any spoilers in this review… LOL, jk. Spoilers will come later. Here are the un-spoilery plot changes:

1. President Snow's granddaughter. If you've read the third book, you would know that President Snow's granddaughter is mentioned once or twice. Her appearance in Catching Fire indicates that she may have a bigger role in Mockingjay. I can't wait!!

2. Mind games. The one disadvantage of the book is that the reader only saw Katniss's perspective. The movie was able to show more of President Snow & Plutarch playing with Katniss. The mind games they play are featured much more prominently, and it ties the movie together in such a way that is amazing.

Now for those spoilers I promised…

Seriously, there are only two spoiler things I want to discuss. There were two things that they left out of the movie that I was hoping for. First, in the book, Plutarch shows Katniss his expensive watch, which is supposed to give her an idea of the fact that the arena is a clock. Of course, at that point he thought she was going to be mentoring tributes in those games, but still. It was a nice bit of foreshadowing that was left out. The second was my favorite quote from the book. You know the part where Cinna tells Katniss and Peeta to look straight ahead while they're in the chariots? Well, I was really looking forward to Katniss saying, "Finally, something I'll be good at." and IT DIDN'T HAPPEN. Ugh.

Anyway, there were only two minor things I would've included. And that's a crazily small number, considering how nitpicky I am.

Spoilers over.

I think that Francis Lawrence and crew did a fantastic job with Catching Fire. It was truly amazing, I would even say it was better than the book. And the book is one of my top 10 books ever. That's how good this movie was.

Final score: 9.8 out of 10

Mockingjay Part 1 comes out on November 21, 2014!!!!!!!

- Nick