THE HUNGER GAMES (film 2012)

THE HUNGER GAMES (working title: "Artemis"). Gary Ross, dir., co-script with Suzanne Collins and Billy Ray, from the novel by Suzanne Collins. USA: Lionsgate et al. prod. and dist., 2012 (see IMDb for three other production companies and very wide distribution.. Philip Messina, prod. design.

See for a decadent Wonder City of the (Near) Future contrasted with twelve (formerly 13) "Districts" — a very poor one of which is District 12, a coal-mining area with Appalachian suggestions. Having lost a rebellion against the Capitol, the Districts must supply each year a boy and girl, 12-18-years old, to compete in the gladiatorial Hunger Games, this year held in a large open space that looks like and is a substantial forest but is a forest made into a vast set for a TV show of the Games. The set is an area of total surveillance, where white-clad technicians can work deadly SpFx, one of which produces virtual predators that become very real in what looks like cybernetically-mediated magic. Cf. and contrast the Japanese novel and film BATTLE ROYALE (BATORU ROWAIARU, film: 2000), Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" (New Yorker, 26 June 1948), and such dystopian films as ROLLERBALL (1975), THE RUNNING MAN (1987), and THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998). In its upshot, HUNGER GAMES lacks the bittersweet but powerful irony of TRUMAN and is mild in its satire compared with even ROLLERBALL and RUNNING MAN (to say nothing of the 1984 1984 or Terry Gilliam's director's cut of BRAZIL); the sequels, however, may supply more political bite and develop the conflict between the working-class rural Distrticts and the corrupt, Rome-under-Caligula metropolis (cf. and contrast Zamiatin's We).

5. DRAMA, RDE, 27/III/12