I considered reviewing the film of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, but it would have just been a gushing stream of enthusiasm. For brevity’s sake, my review is this: ‘it’s great, go see it’. To add some nuance, here are three reasons you should also read the book:
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Getting inside Katniss’s head
While Jennifer Lawrence gives a brilliant performance as Katniss Everdeen, the books let you really get inside her head. Suzanne Collins does an amazing job of showing rather than telling just how traumatised Katniss is, and of drawing you into her interior world without making the books slow. She also manages to make readers understand things that Katniss doesn’t, even though the whole story is told from Katniss’s viewpoint. It’s an incredibly skilled piece of writing.
Extra details
Turning a book into a film inevitably means cutting things out. The film’s producers chose the right things to drop, but those details are still worth experiencing. There are secondary characters in the book who aren’t in the film and who add real depth to the world, as well as details of the rebels’ plan that are pleasingly clever.
More Peeta
Katniss isn’t the only tragic figure in these stories, or the only one worth more time than the film can give. My heart breaks every time I watch Peeta Mellark try to survive a fake relationship with the woman he loves, and I sometimes want to scream at Katniss for not understanding how much she’s hurting him. While Josh Hutcherson is terrific as Peeta* the book gives you time to really appreciate his situation.
So go see this film and read this book. They’re both brilliant.
* The consistent quality of the performances in the film also reflects well on Francis Lawrence’s direction – there’s barely a false note from anyone in the thing.