Plot
After breaking the rules and surviving their Games, victorious tributes Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) return to District 12 and try to recover. However, with the Victory Tour to come, Katniss discovers that she’s inadvertently alighted the embers of rebellion, and needs to convince the malevolent President Snow (Donald Sutherland) that her and Peeta’s love is real. But with the 75thHunger Games around the corner, she quickly discovers the Capitol’s true power and fury in the form of the 3rd Quarter Quell.
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| What's with the skinny rib-cage thang? Surely not appropriate for your badass military unit of choice. |
Review
When The Hunger Games launched to a $152.5 million weekend debut two years ago, it took quite literally everybody by surprise. Young Adult is the new vogue genre, crafted and mastered by Harry Potterand Twilight, and there have been more than a few pretenders to the throne. All of which failed. The Hunger Games however didn’t just succeed, it broke just about every record in the book. Just because it could.
The Hunger Games with Katniss Everdeen is queen now, and they’re ready set the world ablaze with the follow-up Catching Fire.
With a new director – Francis Lawrence (no relation) – and release date, it was looking so far so Twilight for Catching Fire. Fortunately this particular sequel is nothing of the sort.
What truly characterises this adaptation of Suzanne Collin’s seminal book is its balance. Balance between gut-wrenching drama (of which there is an almost cruel amount) and light-hearted, legitimately giggle-worthy, comedy, epitomised by the sassy presence of Jenna Malone as ex-victorious tribute Johanna Mason.
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| 'Style' is...a subjective term. |
More notably: the balance between respecting what’s come before and going gung-ho in the hunt for new. Fortunately, Gary Ross’s remarkably intimate story-telling stylings have carried over with the camera often as close to Katniss as possible, keeping the use of handycam in the ‘conservative but effective' camp. When we arrive in the new arena however, where everything is quite literally exotic and out-of-this-world, Francis Lawrence holds no punches, culminating in a hair-raising conclusion that’s leaps & bounds ahead of its papery brethren.
Our path may be the same – starting in the (beautifully captured, yet eerily haunting) dilapidation of District 12 then slowly moving towards the newly luscious arena – but the story itself is fresh, effortlessly weaving themes and intrigues together for a plot that, while ostensibly simple, is in fact full of devastatingly human nuance. There are new schemes at play this time around, a renewed focus on Panem-at-large (indeed, the first half of the film is a whistle-stop tour) rather than the Games themselves, allowing the film to ditch the icky ‘kids killing kids’ legacy and how best to handle it, instead focusing on delivering a solid narrative. Everything is naturally bigger this time around, we are in sequel territory after all, but it’s also darker too, both visually and thematically. There’s an art to those nefarious jungle-scapes, provided you can ignore the ceaseless tension long enough to think about it.
The vital sense of humanity and goodwill in this grim and grisly world derives and flows from one place: Jennifer Lawrence. Her performance is beyond standard exaltations and probably requires a thesaurus to adequately describe. Put simply – and not that it’d ever happen – but her dedication and skill with the film’s key emotional beats is award-worthy all over again. The tiniest flicker of the eyes, clenching of the jaw, a single uttered word, and you can truly feel the anger/ heartbreak/ misery of this deeply fascinating character. Katniss is the Girl-On-Fire while all she dreams of is a snowy field, and Lawrence pitches it perfectly.
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| Stanley Tucci is a global treasure. Here's Jennifer Lawrence praising him. |
Not that the rest of the cast don’t pull their weight of course. Woody Harrelson is back as drunkard loner come mentor Haymitch, Elisabeth Banks gets to rock her ludicrous wigs as Effie, Donald Sutherland reaches all new levels of unsettling malice as big-bad President Snow, and newcomers Sam Claflin (as District 4 tribute and Capitol heartthrob Finnick Odair) Jeffrey Wright (as District 3 tribute and reclusive brain box Beetee) and Phillip Seymour-Hoffman (as new Head Gamemaker and resident Mr. Ambiguity Plutarch Heavensbee) all fit snuggly into their new characters, hitting that Goldilocks quality of feeling ‘just right.’
It’s not all perfect of course. On top of Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth is back as Gale, aka ‘the other love interest’ (because what’s love worth if it isn’t in triangles?) and again marks one of the weakest elements of the film. At 2+ hours, Catching Fire is no quick-flick (and in fact fixes some of the book’s pacing problems) but it still manages to feel rushed, most notably concerning Katniss & Gale who have simply not spent enough time together across the two movies to make the potentially destructive consequences of their relationship warrant much sense. One of the most affecting sub-plots of the book – Haymitch’s history – has found itself on the cutting room floor in the hunt for streamlining too. An understandable, if not disappointing, exclusion considering his significance to the saga at large. With an adaptation, there will always be oversights and missteps - for example, Peeta's painting which is left far too vague in the film iteration - but Catching Fire gets enough right that barely matters.
What the original Hunger Games did so well is that it was an adaptation that worked as an adaption. It worked with the book, expanding the story that made sense in regards to its medium, and managed to craft its own identity whilst still very much being ‘The Hunger Games.’ Catching Fire is no different. It’s no accident that the most beguiling scenes are those ‘behind the curtain’ as it were, which show us that President Snow is no simple scheming figurehead, but a real (albeit broodingly evil) human being. He’s a villain with substance, and seems so much more terrible for it.
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| I hate it when this happens on nights out. |
Verdict
I almost don't want to say it but...I'm gonna say it: Catching Fire is a sequel in the vein of Empire Strikes Back. It's bigger (much bigger) and darker (so very much darker) than it’s predecessor, but never loses its sense of identity. A rare treat.
5/5
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