By Meghan Poff

*long pause and sigh*

Yet another well written novel ruined by Hollywood and marketing hype.

I hate to have to be the Debbie Downer since everyone else I know loved the movie, but then again most of those people didn’t even read the book and if they did, they read on such a surface level that they didn’t even comprehend the theme of it.

Let me start by pointing out that we know we have seen a truly disappointing movie when we leave the theater with the only plus side being the attractiveness of the actors. On that note, I feel an excellent job was done casting Liam Hemsworth as Gale.  But as I said, this is not the point.

I feel the greatest fault of The Hunger Games was Hollywood’s need to make money from it, which is not surprising but a setback nonetheless. I know violence was not a major theme of the film, but it was important to show because that is the reality of the story. The movie could have easily obtained an R-rating, but that wouldn’t have drawn as many target audience viewers to theaters so therefore, we get a watered-down, 10-year-old appropriate version of the story. Which, excuse my adjective use, was incredibly lame.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I certainly didn’t pay nine dollars for a movie ticket to see 20 minutes of Katniss sleeping in various trees.

Another fault of the filmmakers was using the tired camera style of shaking the camera around and switching back and forth between different cameras quickly to make the scene look action packed. The reality is the only thing I got from the spectacle was a headache, and had completely missed the scene because I had to avert my eyes.  Shout out to director Gary Ross for making that call.

Despite everything else, I must give credit where credit is due. An excellent job was done with the scenery and costuming. Whenever I read a book, I always get an image in my head of what I think the setting and characters should look like, and the movie literally took the pictures out of my mind and put them on the screen. So at least that was adequate.

But probably the main reason I stayed in the theater the full two and a half hours, a ridiculous amount of time even for a good movie, was the fact that I had already paid for the ticket. And only because I’m cheap.

In all my hypocrisy though, I probably will go see the other two movies when they come out in theaters just because I am already committed to the series.  Nothing else.

So really, what I’m trying to say is that you will love The Hunger Games if you also love the Twilight series and/or the Justin Bieber movie.

What more needs to be said?