Food? Competition? If you can ever employ and intertwine these two plot devices into a cohesive story you will see Jake McLaughlin in the theater. Despite never gaining weight and having a terrible palette I really love food. And despite never playing any formal sport and being not athletic whatsoever I really love to compete. But apparently these are not the topics or themes of The Hunger Games (Kobayashi weeps).
I’m not going to go into detail about the story as I’m sure all of you are by now familiar. (If I had to sum it up in one sentence: Katniss be trifilin’.) I have not read the book, as I believe all movies to be better than their written counterparts, i.e. Matilda (God bless you Danny Devito). So I came into the movie with a fresh perspective and learned much more about myself than I had bargained.
First, I am really captivated by competition. I like to watch people compete at basically anything. I remember when I was introduced to curling during the 2006 Winter Olympics and would spend my lunch break watching those beautiful, enthralling sweepers and bowlers. If one can watch curling then one can certainly watch teenagers killing each other, right? It’s sorta like boxing… Ohhh. That’s supposed to be the point of the movie. That we’re NOT supposed to enjoy watching teenagers kill each other.* Got it.
*To be clear, I do not totally condone teenagers killing one another.
But I spent the last half of the movie a little frustrated because I cared more about the competition than I did about Kathleen and Peter. Who was winning? How many people did K-Dough kill? Who was still alive? Side note. If I were to restructure the rules, I would definitely reward people for kills and such. It’s like Call of Duty. You kill fifteen straight people, you get a tactical nuke.
I also enjoyed the first half of the movie with all the speculation on who were the favorites and who were the underdogs. One thing I’ve realized is that the joy of being a sports fan is like 45% speculation-prediction-second guessing, and like 55% actually watching the event. I wanted more Sportscenter-like analysis and more stats. Here are some that I actually dug up:
Out of the 75 times the Hunger Games have been played only 13 of the winners have been female – with only one girl not being from District 1 or 2.*
*This makes Katrina’s win that much more impressive.
Districts 1 and 2 hold 68 of the Games’ winners.
The record for most kills for a champion was 20 by Dugger Hopkins.
The record for least amount of kills for a champion was 1 by Regina Rutters. (Also known as the most boring Hunger Games EVER.)
The record for the most kills by a non-champion was 17 by Raleigh Faringer, who was upset by the first outer district champion: Billy Calhoun.
To air a 30 second commercial during The Hunger Games cost 1.5 million dollars.
Finally, I learned that I might be too competitive. I’ll be honest I really like winning, and if winning means staying alive longer than my opponents then yes, I would indeed kill my competitors. All super great athletes have what we like to call: “The Killer Instinct.” And we all have it, it’s just that the great ones are able to tap into it. That’s why we love Michael Jordan so much. Imagine how many teenagers he could kill. A LOT, I assure you.
“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.” – 1 Corinthians 9:24 (Definitely taken out of context.)
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