this is one of the best adaptations of a ya novel Hollywood has ever produced and this is an amazing book ruined by a director's obsession with nose hair sorry I'm getting ahead of myself volunteer I volunteer I volunteer as tribute it's hard to express just how special it felt to be a fan of The Hunger Games back in the 2010s like many I was an average reader the American education system hadn't yet robbed me of my passion for reading and the young adult genre had exploded in popularity to the point that even non-readers my age
would crack open a book or two don't tell me you're here for a special book Juggernaut franchises like Harry Potter and The Twilight Saga had just concluded so fans were experienced enough to distinguish between good and bad adaptations of beloved Source material and this is what made the Stak so high for the Cinematic adaptation of The Hunger Games trilogy see from a literary standpoint Point Hunger Games Catching Fire and mocking jay have always punched above their weight class while they contain generic ya tropes like a brunette tough girl protagonist obligatory love triangles and organizing its
Society into different clubs Collins used these tropes to subvert and Elevate the genre on the surface these books are highly approachable ya dystopian fiction but underneath all the shine and spectacle it's an Unapologetic meditation on desensitization to violence the cost of progress and the types of trauma that can be mitigated but never truly mended you love me real or not real real in short these books go way harder than they have any right to as a result there was a lot that the movies needed to get right and even more ways that they could get
it wrong we'll take a look at the first movie later in the video but for right now let's focus on the four films directed by this guy and ask ourselves does Francis Lawrence do the books Justice well sort of Francis Lawrence first joined the franchise in 2012 when he signed on to direct Catching Fire just like the book Catching Fire takes everything from the first entry and turns it up to District 11 the politics the pageantry the passion everything that was set up previously begins to Bubble Up to the surface from a stylistic standpoint Lawrence
leans heavily into everything that makes the capital so alluring and this works because the the second book is all about how the capital is trying to distract people from the Brewing discontent in the districts people are starving in 12 here they're just throwing it up to stuff more In Piss wears makeup and is made to look more traditionally attractive because President Snow is using her as a pawn for the capital there are more visually appealing settings because it creates a contrast between the capital and the poorer Districts The Action is bigger and more entertaining because
the capital is going all out for the third quarter quell I want them dead the second movie is so great because the vision of the source material and the vision of the director are perfectly aligned with one another but there in lies the problem one of my favorite aspects about the four novels in the series is just how distinct they are from one another you go from a story about survival to the beginning of a rebellion to a tragedy about war and then jump back in time to see how someone could be seduced into supporting
this oppressive system they monsters all of you the franchise evolved in radical and intense ways with each new installment but unfortunately Francis Lawrence doesn't take mocking J for example the book is intensely psychological in nature even though the plot is about Revolution that spans an entire nation we are trapped in Katniss's perspective she is so traumatized and disconnected from reality that the revolution unfolds around her like one of her nightmares pet will you stay with me more than either novel that came before Machin J is defined by the inner monologue that Katniss provides throughout the
first person present tense allows Suzanne Collins to capture a level of apathy and dissociation that is usually reserved for actual War novels it's one of the few pieces of writing that manages to capture a similar emotion to the puppy scene from The Things They Carried and if you don't know what I'm talking about just be grateful and don't look it up like The Things They Carried maing is less about the war itself and more about what war does to people and that's a Nuance that seems to completely go over his head his two-part film adaptation
approaches The Source material very literally the extended runtime means that most of what happens in the book makes it into the movie but the perspective with which we view these events changes how they come across take for example when Katniss sings The Hanging Tree are you are you coming to the tree in the movie Francis Lawrence uses it to set up a montage of the Revolution and don't get me wrong it's a good montage but it misses the the whole point of the song in the book Katniss starts out by singing The Melody Ru taught
[Music] her the notes that as she puts it ended up as the background music to her murder just as they did in the Hunger Games before the mutations broke through the trees chased us onto the cornicopia and slowly noded KO to a bloody pulp desperate to ward off these memories canis begins to sing the Hanging Tree instead are you are you com the tree a her father taught her a forbidden song a song that is in and of itself a subtle Act of rebellion in the silence that follows she reflects on the lyrics the tune
might seem harmless enough but the lyrics are incredibly Grim a man accused of murder himself killed beckoning his lover to come sharing his fate to join him in the world that may or may not exist Beyond her own because death is better than whatever sort of life she might lead canice judges him at first but then she remembers didn't I want to kill Peta with that syringe to save him from the capital was that really my only option probably not but I couldn't think of another at the time the other characters reactions are also important
in this moment Katniss feels guilty because everyone is watching me intently and pox has tears running down his cheeks because no doubt my freaky song has stretched up some terrible incident in his life great meanwhile Plutarch is just happy that they got it all on camera it's a little on the nose but of course so is war and that mentality is exactly what's wrong with Lawrence's Direction in this scene yes he accurately filmed the events as they happened in the book but without any sort of attempt to communicate Katniss's inner monologue all the Thematic Nuance
of the song is lost in favor of it being an epic bit of background music even more Insidious is the fact that they sold this song as a pop single in order to promote the movie I mean there's being toned deaf and then there's jayla's Rebel remix of Hanging Tree debuting on Billboard's Hot 100 that's true that's like 100% every everything you said was true see I think the problem is that the director's greatest strength is also his greatest weakness the stylistic choices that made Catching Fire so amazing make maching J feel fundamentally at odds
with itself his visual style is very objective so while he captures the Grandeur of the capital and the cqu arena excellently the tight corridors of District 13 are absolutely boring to look at in the literal sense District 13 is supposed to driv and monotonous but the books use the setting as a metaphor Katniss is as much a caged animal here as she was in The Hunger Games the winding passageways reflect how difficult it is for her to make sense of both reality and her own thoughts working through her trauma is complex and scary and she'd
much rather find a place to hide shutting out everything and everyone while I'm not a huge fan of the movie overall the cinematography in Joker does an amazing job at making a drab or ugly setting visually interesting not to mention how well it reflects the psychology of the main character Lawrence gets away with not depicting Katniss's in her monologue throughout Catching Fire because that book is all about how disconnected from the rest of the world she is sure there's a revolution beginning to take shape around her but she doesn't have the bandwith to process that
she's just focused on protecting herself and the people she cares about get food for Prim get treatment for Gail get pea out alive making J is the opposite though Katniss has fewer immediate responsibilities and so is left with much more time on her hands time to consider her role in the revolution time to ponder what length she is willing to go to to win this war time to reflect on who should be in charge and what she has to live for once this is all over and the movies just don't really depict this in any
meaningful way they're much more focused on the visual manifestations of war in favor of showcasing bodily harm moing Jay Parts one and two fail to highlight the scars that are left on one's Soul well it's unfortunate that the misguided Direction kept the mocking J movie movies from being as great as they could have been I wouldn't say Lawrence's stylistic choices actively tarnished what was great about that book however the same cannot be said about the ballot of song birds and snakes but before we discuss the director's obsession with nose hair let's talk about flexa spot
because we all know that to survive these games you're going to need a sponsor does your back hurt from carrying the weight of an entire Revolution on your shoulders or you know day-to-day life well one of the best ways to reduce back pain is by utilizing a sleek dirty and easy to operate standing desk like the flexas spot ew8 believe me when I say that this video would have taken at least twice as long to write if it weren't for this desk I always get uncomfortable if I sit for too long and I'm naturally fidgety
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you care about the three-step building process can be completed single-handedly in less than 5 minutes and you'll reap the benefits as soon as you start using it if you're interested in a flexus spot desk click the link in my description to up your posture and productivity today are you are you you coming to the tree so the ballad of song birds and snakes is a really unique novel in the series it's a prequel it's more or less structured like a tragedy the protagonist is one of the most despicable characters from The Originals and the narration
is now third person limited fostering a unique relationship between the reader and protagonist at first glance it's just a cool look at how snow got the idea for his version of The Hunger Games but as we all know Suzanne Collins doesn't do shallow the book explores whether people are inherently selfish and violent or merely pushed to those extremes by the society they are born into it shows how tribalism is fostered by inequality and how oppressors are threatened by those who are self-sufficient the story paints a tragic portrait of a man who could have had everything
he needed in life but who was too much of a coward to trust in the good of others losy I said are you trying to kill me even years before Katniss and the mocking jay snow need for control was already sewing the seeds of rebellion a little hope is effective a lot of hope is dangerous but when it comes to the movie I'll just come right out and say it I think Francis Lawrence fundamentally misunderstood The Source material at 2 hours and 38 minutes the movie covers pretty much everything that happens in the novel except
the perspective through which we view these events conveys a very different message there are two big issues I have with the cinematography in this movie and the first is Lawrence's obsession with nose hair hair for some reason almost anytime a character is shown on screen the camera is shooting them from below as if the cinematographer is performing a booger check at first I thought it was an accident maybe the camera operator was doing his best and just happened to be a short King but then they managed to shoot from below Peter dinklage's eyline making it
clear that they were doing this on purpose so what exactly was Lawrence trying to communicate here well maybe he was trying to make the world of the capital and its citizens feel strange and offputting except he uses the same angles to capture Lucy and the other tributes so there's not actually a contrast between the capital and the normal World okay if not that then maybe he's trying to capture the essence of President Snow a power hungry narcissist who looks down at the rest of the world Everyone likes an underdog I don't this is a better
reason but it still doesn't work in terms of being an unreliable protagonist the low angles do create a disconnect but the problem is you're supposed to connect with Coro in the beginning the character is objectively charismatic his motivations are almost always self-serving but he has a talent for gaining people's trust and manipulating them as he sees fit the camera work should start off making us feel intimately connected with the character only to realize we can't trust him as time goes on when it comes to making him feel Larger than Life yes the camera work is
effective but it still misses the point of the book this is not a story about President Snow it's the story of how a young man was molded into that person put simply it's his Joker origin story so to communicate this you want to lean into the contrast between who he is at the beginning of the movie and who he is at the end this shot at the end of the film perfectly encapsulates the essence of President Snow but we never establish who Cory elanus is because every shot of him in the movie looks like this
there really is no impact when we finally get to this point I think the real answer is Francis Lawrence just decided to do it this way for the heck of it and that's allowed but it ends up making it incredibly difficult to connect with with any of the characters on screen there's a reason the closeup is the most powerful shot in cinema eyes tell us what a character really thinks or feels even when their words say the opposite eyes make a creature feel human even when they're not and eyes are what allow a person sitting
in a movie theater to form a powerful connection with a completely fictitious character but when you interfere with that connection it makes it much more difficult to invest in a character and when you do this for every character in your movie you make it impossible to invest in the story the other big issue I have with Lawrence's use of cinematic language is how he approaches The Hunger Games itself what are the Hunger Games for while the Battle Royale portion of the novels are undeniably thrilling to read Suzanne Collins has said before that the games themselves
are her least favorite portion to write which makes sense this series is meant to condemn violence not condone it the action is necessary to both the plot and message but Collins is incredibly careful not to glorify it this is even more true in song birds and snakes by the time the 10th Hunger Games have rolled around viewership of the event is way down way down it's not an elaborate event like we see in the first two books but rather a drab and obligatory tradition a big part of Snow's Arc is figuring out how to make
the games not boring to watch so how does Lawrence approach these incredibly primitive and unique games well unfortunately with the exact same techniques that he used in Catching Fire you know the third quarter quell the arena that couldn't possibly be more different from the 10th Hunger Games I Love Changes in aspect ratios but the use of IMAX in this film is so tone deaf not only does the expanded ratio not make sense in the confines of an indoor arena but it inherently glorifies the violence that it's depicting the broadcast of the 10th Hunger Games is
meant to be janky and stand in stark contrast to the highly polished Productions we see later on queuing another on my account one can you give me a tree right there sure but the director want wants to turn it into a spectacle just like the capital if I recall correctly IMAX was also utilized for the nature sequences in act 3 and in my opinion these should have been the only times it was utilized the expanded ratio for close-ups truly endear us to the main characters and the wideopen Landscapes communicate that despite what snow thinks this
is the life he should be living but once again because there isn't a contrast between games and nature this message gets tarnished Francis Lawrence is undeniable a talented director he has made plenty of amazing movies and catching fire is one of my favorites but it is also undeniable that he was the wrong director for this film so who should have directed The Ballad of song birds and snakes well this is the funny bit they already had the perfect man for the job I went upstairs I started reading about 10:00 at night I finished about 1:
or 1:30 in the morning and literally put the book down and said you know I have to make this movie I just have to and I literally got on a plane Monday morning in FLW to England to see Nina Jacobson who was the producer I mean I had to make the movie Gary Ross directed the original Hunger Games back in 2012 and was initially set to return for catching fire but Ste down when he realized that the quick turnaround wouldn't allow him enough time to do the source Material Justice and that reverence for colins's writing
is clearly evident in the first film sure there are some details that get rearranged or emitted but no other entry in the franchise captures the essence of the books to this degree for one thing the camera intimately connects us to the protagonist's point of view shots aren't necessarily from her perspective but the camera holds on and moves between objects in a way that directly conveys what Katniss is focusing on when it comes to blowing up the supplies the camera the audience and Katniss all put together what needs to happen at the same time when Marvel
attacks Rue the camera focuses on him because he is the biggest threat it's only once he's been eliminated that katness notices that Ru is injured the camera makes this realization feel just as sudden and horrifying as when Katniss describes it in the book not to mention how vividly it translates her sorrow perhaps most importantly the lens through which we observe the arena is Katniss's perspective and not the capitals I know people complain about the shaky cam in this movie but it's one of the few times that the technique is used correctly steadier framing would highlight
the act of violence putting us in the mindset of an outsider watching from the safety of our own home the kinetic shaking instead highlights the reaction to violence we are in the arena with catniss we are just as frightened and disoriented the only time we can calm down and steady ourselves is when we are alone or with someone we care about I admittedly enjoy watching the first movie less than Catching Fire but that's kind of the whole point so how exactly would Ross's approach to film making be better suited for The Ballad of song birds
and snakes well first of all I think he'd be much better at putting us in the mind of the main character and we wouldn't have to jump up their nostrils to get there the way Ross uses camera movement to communicate Focus would work even better for snow than it does Katniss unlike Katniss snow is hyper intentional with everything he does the ju toos between his pedigree and finances means that at any given moment he is both predator and prey he must always be on high alert and showing the audience all of the different little things
he focuses on could perfectly capture how he approaches every moment like it's a game of chess moves and counter moves Ross's handheld aesthetic would also ground the story with Cam work that feels was almost diagetic however the most important difference in How Gary Ross would have adapted song birds and snakes is the way in which he would have approached the games let me ask you one final time what are the Hunger Games for unlike his use of close-up shaky cam in the first movie I believe Ross would have filmed the action in a much more
reserved way not big and bold like the cinematography in kesin fire but static and from afar like how they recorded the arena in the narrative itself Suzanne Collins didn't want want the reader to feel like they were participating in the 10th Hunger Games like they did in the 74th or the 75th she wanted the reader to be stuck watching them from afar through low Tech monitors and limited camera angles I wish we had a camera inside of the duct but we don't Ross would make the movie not about Lucy Gay's fight for survival but about
snow watching it her Victory would matter to the audience but only because snow needs her to win in order to get what he wants even if Lucy gy beard somehow wins it all I will do everything in my power to ensure that you don't see a dime ask yourself how much do you care if she lives now the only time the audience should have felt like they were in the arena were when the bombs went off and when snow went in to rescue his friend would it have made for a less entertaining movie absolutely but
it would also have made for a much more poignant adaptation there are other little things like how Gary Ross captures the Stillness of nature or how well he depicts friendship but it's all just to say that a director with his sensibilities could have truly elevated the final product sometimes a great filmmaker isn't a great choice for a given movie and sometimes you got to leave the dance with the one who brought you there in the first place if you're interested in more analysis of onscreen adaptations check out these videos on The Witcher I'm Dylan and
this has been the writers block
