I have officially given up on Hollywood.

[ThinkAnarchy]

My wife and I just got home from seeing the Hunger Games. It may be good if you haven't read the books. With that said, I thought is was pretty dreadful. I will watch the final two if they are made, but I won't be paying for them the next time around.

I will try and keep this spoiler free.

What was good

The beginning was done well and maintained the feel of the book.

The capitol was impressive and seemed very close to how I pictured it in my head.

It had some big actors.

It was nice seeing a few different perspectives, mainly some things that were occurring while the games were taking place outside the arena that couldn't be shown in the book due to it being written in first person.

The Bad

One thing I loved about the books was the 1st person perspective. I understand movies are told from 3rd person, but why cut the inner turmoil out completely? Katnis doesn't talk to herself in the film, we can't hear her thoughts, and as a result I really didn't feel connected to her at all.

They made her less intelligent which pisses me off. In the books she is an intelligent young girl that had to come to terms with the situation she was thrown into. Not only that, but she was required to use her intellect to solve problems. There was still some of that, but even what they did show in the film may not have been understood from the movie alone.

Haymitch had too small a role in the film.

They should have gotten a better actress for Katniss. I found some of the dramatic scenes nearly laughable. Those were very few though, and I may be being unfair on this point, due to the film leaving such a sour taste in my mouth.

They did a terrible job showing how much time passed in the arena. It felt like a few days when it was actually well over a week.

At the end of the movie, she still looked healthy. What the fuck? Not only that, they cut out a lot of her struggle at the beginning of the games.

There wasn't nearly enough violence for the context of the story. I understand they needed to get the pg-13 rating, but come on. It's a story about children being murdered for the enjoyment of the Capitol. The books were gruesome and they were intended for the same young audience... 

The romantic aspect was to little in the film. The survival aspects of the games were too short as well though, so I wouldn't want more of the romantic stuff to only lose more of the little action they had.

They need to quit making good books into crappy fucking movies.

I could go on about things I disliked, but the above are the things that annoyed me the most. I needed to vent after spending $20 and three hours of my time watching this.
/rant