Hunger Games-review

So I saw the Hunger Games when it first came out and I have to say I enjoyed it for the most part. The part that is not included in that statement is the lack of intelligence demonstrated by nearly every character. I am also pretty sick of the die hards who read the books and insist that these things are well explained. I dont think there can be a good explanation for something that is just awful. But anyways, I dont want to get really negative with this movie as I did think it was entertaining and worth seeing. I always love things that involve tournaments of any kind as I just find that fascinating for some reason. all that being said I cant overlook some of the terrible things that the characters did.

My main points of contention with this movie are the people from the "super districts" who apparently do nothing but train for this and then volunteer to go in. All they do is train but apparently that training does not include basic tactics of any kind, basic survival skills of any kind or any other kind of training that would seem useful here. It seems to me that the only training they get is how to use weapons and then suck with those weapons and get bested by two people who have no specialized training. In fact the character of Peeta is a baker but he apparently also doubles as a master spy who can paint himself perfectly to blend in with his surroundings. How can a baker do something like that you might ask, well apparently he decorated cakes at the bakery which he then apparently covered his body in so that he could develop his skills at blending in.(as a side note he did not actually cover his body in the cake, I was just pointing out how little painting cakes should have to do with camoflage) Also, dont ask me where he gets paint from in the middle of the Hunger Games or how he even paints his own face or body like that since there is no mirror and he shouldnt be good at that since he is a baker. Anyways, back to the "super district" people, they consist of two girls and two guys as you may or may not know. They each seem to have a slightly different skill set in terms of what weapons they prefer and what their strengths are, however what they all share in common is their lack of ability to do anything that would make sense. The competition starts off with these "super people" rushing towards this cache of weapons and supplies and doing what makes the most sense, slaughtering every other contestant that sticks around long enough to die. So far so good for the super people, this is all perfectly in line with what someone with their skill set should probably be doing. The issues arise when they go after Katniss, the main character. While not a major issue, it is worth noting that one of the girls from the super districts can throw knives amazingly well and is killing people left and right with them. The knife girl kills this guy who is running at Katniss when Katniss is on the ground. This is a recurring theme where these people could do nothing and win and instead act first and lose. In any case she kills the guy and then Katniss is lying there prone more or less and the knife girl misses her twice and leaves her with only superficial wounds. Later on in the movie, all four of the super districters catch up to Katniss who has to run up a tree to survive. Here is where things really fall apart for these people. They attempt to hit Katniss with an arrow from the ground (no problem with this, seems perfectly reasonable) the arrow misses and then the main character bad guy shoots at her with the bow and also misses. After two misses it is decided that apparently a bow cant kill her up in a tree where she cant maneuver. At this point the main bad guy named Cato tries to climb the tree but a limb breaks and he gives up. Peeta, who is traveling with them at this point to survive, tells them to just wait because she will have to come down or starve. So at this point if the main characters had any sense at all they would just kill Peeta because he has already led them to Katniss which was his only value. Also, they have to expect that they will be able to kill her when she comes down so there is minimal risk to killing someone they will kill later anyways. Another big problem with this movie that I hear defended by the book readers is that Katniss was supposed to be thin and able to climb trees well but the others didnt have experience doing that. Okay, my question is this then.....what kind of training have these people been doing in their district, they know this thing takes place in a forest, why would you not practice climbing trees. I also dont understand why climbing trees requires any kind of skill, the two girls from the super district appear to be thinner than Katniss by the way so they should be able to climb better than her. Even if they cant climb though, why not start a fire at the base of the tree, they have all the supplies they secured from that beginning cache anyways so its not like destroying the forest or doing damage will matter to them. But okay, say they cant start a fire for some reason....even though everyone else seems to be able to do that perfectly well, why not go to different sides of the tree and bombard her with rocks or those throwing knives or arrows until she dies or falls out of the tree. So those are all perfectly good options besides just trying to climb the tree one more time and throwing her from the tree to her death down below. These super district people decide to all go to sleep right near the tree and without anyone even trying to observe what might be around them......like a nest of incredibly deadly insects for instance. Also, why would they all sleep at the same time.....Katniss could climb down and leave without them ever knowing since it's collective nap time for the super beings. I feel it is important to mention at this point that if Peeta had any sense he would have killed all these people while they slept by systematically slitting their throats or something. Whenever I tell people that they say "but if the other people wake up they will kill you" well I'll tell you something, I will kill the big guy Cato first and then even if they all wake up they wont be perfectly alert for a moment so I will kill the other guy by stabbing him in the brain or something. At that point your facing down two small girls with ranged weapons, it seems easy enough to kill the knife girl with a spear or something from one of the people you killed and then move away from the girl who has a bow if she has even been able to get to her feet and attempt an attack. If she has then you can wait a minute since she cant even hit a stationary target (Katniss) then I would let her fire and then throw a knife at her, if that didnt kill her that would be fine because I would just move up to her and cave her skull in with a rock because she is terrible and probably couldnt fire at me if she had a knife in her. But even if you say that is too risky you could wake up and take all of their stuff away, I mean you could at least try....it's not like they wont try to kill you at some point anyways. If you can get their weapons than I would say that's game over for them, they have no weapons and you can do the same plan I detailed before but without fear of reprisal. With Cato dead the other little chump is no problem to kill and the two girls appear very weak and could probably be overtaken easily since they have no weapons. In any case, what actually happens is that all these super people are morons and sleep under this nest of deadly insects which Katniss drops on them while they ALL sleep and the girl with the bow dies as she is stung to death.

A little side note that a forgot to mention before.....every district gets mentored by someone who has won from their district before and can give them advice on how to succede. My thing here is that one of the most obvious pieces of advice seems to be, "dont go for the supply cache, you arent as good as the super people". I am proven right here as half the contestants die right there trying to get stuff.

So Katniss now has a bow.....Yay! More of her being way better than the super people for some reason. After some down time she makes a plan to destroy the supplies the super people have stored in a big field in a pile. Although it is completely unclear to me how she plans to do this as she has no explosives of any kind of reasonable means of destroying all those supplies. In any case the rather unintelligent super people decide to run off and leave this kid who has no skills of any discernable kind to guard the supplies. Katniss is trying to think of a plan to destroy the supplies when one of the smart contestants runs up and jumps all weird around the outside edge and eventually takes some stuff and leaves unimpeded. Katniss now realizes there are mines buried around the supplies in case someone tries to get them. Katniss decides to shoot a bag of apples which releases them on the mines which then blows up all of the supplies. Why are the mines so close that they destroy all of your supplies, it seems like the super people could have just put them a little further out and accomplished the same thing they wanted without losing everything. At this point book people tell me the kid who was guarding the supplies deliberately did that so if he needed to he could blow up their supplies and try to run away or something. Just as a side note, when the super people come back and see all their stuff destroyed, they break the kid's neck for it.....so good plan. Anyways, even if he did plant those in that way, shouldnt the super people have noticed that and told that kid to fix it so that it wasnt the worst designed trap ever. How is that even a viable plan for the kid anyways, you would have to assume that these super people can survive without supplies far better than anyone else, so why would you want to destroy supplies that you probably need. I would think his best option would be to take some of the supplies and book it and maybe try to pair up with some of the other dejected and useless contestants and try to overtake the super people with an all out assault while they are having one of their collectve nap times.

After Katniss destroys the supplies she then hurries back to find her helper Rue trapped in a net. At which time she frees her from the net only to have one of the super people miss from incredibly close range with a throwing spear that kills Rue instead of Katniss. My question is why are the super people even seperated, they should be together so that when chump number one misses the spear throw, knife girl can just rip Katniss apart with knives or Cato can impale her or something. Instead the guy who is trained to be bad at everything misses and is immediately killed by an arrow from Katniss as he stands there with no plan and deservingly dies. So far the training of these super people is very impressive (sarcasm).

Next Katniss tries to get supplies that the now sick Peeta needs to survive, the knife girl is waiting in ambush and even though she has all the advantage and could easily kill Katniss decides to ask pointless questions about where Peeta is and for some reason also gloat about how they killed Rue. I really dont understand why someone who was trained for this event would even feel the need to interogate someone, should she have known that Peeta was injured by Cato and that he was really no threat. Like a classic movie villain she talks for too long and is grabbed by this big guy from the same district as Rue who overhears her talking about killing her and is mad, so he then slams her against the wall and her neck breaks.

Lastly, we have Cato who seems to have decided his best course of action is to split off and maybe do more terrible things. He ends up on top of some small metal structure that Katniss and Peeta have to run to in order to avoid being killed by these giant dog things. They are literally seconds from being shredded to kibbles and bits when they get on top of the structure. Here is my issue, Cato is on top of this structure, had he just stood there or pushed them or done anything the delay would have killed Peeta and Katniss and he would have won. Instead once they get on top of the structure he decides to make a drawn out speech instead of making Katniss drop her weapon because Cato is holding Peeta by the neck. Katniss then shoots Cato he falls off and the dog things start munching on him at which time she shoots him in the head and kills him to show mercy.

Those are my major issues with the movie. They were certainly numerous but I still feel the movie provided what you would expect from it. Overall I give the movie an 8 out of 10. It had cool effects and some pretty decent dialogue and as I mentioned it is a tournament movie so I may have given it more points than it deserves but you can always see it for yourself and decide.

Thanks for reading,

Steve.

Wrath of the Titans-Review

So yesterday I had the misfortune of seeing Wrath of the Titans. If any of you have not seen the first one, than you are lucky to have not been subjected to that. In my opinion the director of this movie should have to feel some wrath since he subjected the audience to so much of it. This movie was TERRIBLE. It really seems like the people making this movie decided that the movie looking cool was far more important than any substance or plot. The makers of this movie clearly wanted to jam in as much Greek mythology as they could but it feels really out of place at times. At one point this minotaur attacks Perseus and it feels so random and crappy just like the rest of the movie and you just have to look at the person next to you and shake your head wondering why that happened. This is the worst movie I have seen all year and I honestly can't think of a movie I enjoyed less than this right now.

Here are a bunch of things that don't make any practical sense:
It is said throughout the movie that in order to defeat Cronos someone would have to unite Hades' Pitchfork, Zeus' Bolt and Poseidon's Trident. That is all fine by me but then Ares has the bolt and the pitchfork and he is working for Cronos and decides the best course of action is to throw his pitchfork at Zeus back as he is leaving the underworld. Why not just move up behind a hobbling Zeus and the rest of the wannabe god group and shove them into the lava that is everywhere, or just snap his neck instead of constantly punching them for no reason. Whenever Ares fights anyone but a main character he kills them right away by stabbing them or something, but then when he fights the entirely human Queen Andromeda he swats her away and does not kill her. Ares is a poorly written moron in this part of the movie. He could have grabbed Andromeda and said "give me all the god weapons or I will snap her like a twig" then he should have snapped her like a twig and pushed the other two characters with her into a smoldering pit of lava. Then he should have just turned and killed Cronos by the way, I dont see much upside to letting him blow up the world. That is not even the worst of what he does though, at this point the main characters have the pitchfork and the trident but cant make the spear unless they have Zeus's bolt which is on Ares back. So then Perseus prays to Ares so he can hear him and basically challenges him to a fight at this temple. At this point a well written god of war should have gone down right away and killed him before he could even get ready to fight him or at the very least leave the Bolt of Zeus somewhere before going to fight Perseus. Anyways, Ares brings the bolt with him because he is a genius of tactics and war and then decides that he is going to punch perseus to death instead of destroying with the bolt of Zeus or just impaling him with a sword or any of the normal things someone would do in this situation. So of course Ares is awful and loses to Perseus and this stupid dagger made of wood that he has and then Perseus unites the three god weapons and destroys Cronos.

The entire movie was just like the first one, you wait and wait for this giant monster to come out and then get killed in two seconds by a chump on a pegasus. I really dont understand how he is even effective, if I was Cronos and I saw him flying at me I would just kill him with my incredible fire powers which he couldnt stop because he is not good......at anything. Also at the end of this movie it seems clear that even the director wants to distance himself from this picture since he kills off just about every god. For some reason all the gods turn into sand when they die which was probably a way to distract people from noticing how bad the movie is and instead concentrate on the visual aspects.

Overall I give this movie a rating of 1 on a scale of 1 to 10. This movie is so flawed and terrible I may boycott future movies by the same director just to punish him for being part of this.

Thank you for reading,

Steve.