The Hunger Games Series Revisited

Five films over eleven years, and they're all good to great - pretty impressive really.

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Here's what I've been watching and playing over the last seven days...

MOVIES

The Hunger Games

A really strong start to the series with a fantastic central story aided by excellent performances across the board to help cover up that it feels like they come up against some serious budgetary issues at some points.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Taking that strong start and using a clearly much higher budget to make the movie as visually impressive as it needed to be to match the continued excellence of the story and acting.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1

A slight dip as this film struggles to match the first two, which is most likely due to the story being split in half when it was never meant to be.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

A pretty decent ending with some surprising deaths to keep new watchers on their toes wondering who's going to survive to the end of the story, but again suffers from being the second half of a single story rather than a full instalment in its own right.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

A pretty good prequel that doesn't go over the top with the links to the first four films and stands on its own two feet as a story that can be enjoyed on its own, even if it is about thirty minutes too long.

It's quite the experience watching these movies after finishing Andor and noticing the similarities and differences between the two series.

Both are about fighting back against an oppressive government that has soldiers in white armour willing to gun down innocents if ordered to do so, and both feature eye-raising moments.

As an example, the Ghorman Massacre in Andor is a masterclass in building tension and dread, knowing something awful is going to happen and then getting to see it.

Meanwhile, there are children regularly being murdered on-screen in The Hunger Games, which should be incredibly shocking - to be fair, it probably is to most first-time watchers - but the focus is so tight on Katniss and her attempts to stay alive that it can feel somewhat overlooked.

Just to note: that isn't a criticism of The Hunger Games, as it fits in perfectly well with the banality of evil that both these movies and Andor shine a light on.

I think the reason Andor works so much better is due to the medium rather than the story-telling - there's the time available to sit in a moment and really take in the impact of what you've just seen, whereas a movie has much more limited time and needs to keep pushing forward.

One aspect of a rebellion where I think The Hunger Games does do something that Andor couldn't is the idea that whoever replaces a tyrant could themselves be a tyrant themselves, just in a different form.

Julianne Moore's Alma Coin is an excellent 'quasi-villain' and it's made clear that she would be just as severe and domineering as Coriolanus Snow, simply shifting who the targets are from one group to another and continuing the cycle of hatred and violence.

Maybe we'll get a Star Wars series that is a spiritual sequel to Andor in the future, showing people being dissatisfied with the New Republic established after the fall of the Empire and explaining the numbers who joined the First Order in the sequel trilogy.

It's a little unfair to compare both, but I do think they go well together and are both going to prove unfortunately relevant for years to come considering how much the world really needs to show a willingness to stand up to tyranny.

GAMES

Assassin's Creed Origins

I've finally picked this up again and will be forever be thankful for cloud saves and being able to resume my save game that always crashed at the same point on my old PC, but runs like a dream on my much more powerful new desktop.

Bayek and Aya still have a long way to go to topple Odyssey's Kassandra though.

Death Stranding

Continuing to plod through this and enjoying it more as a sci-fi walking version of Euro Truck Simulator 2 rather than anything more than that at the moment.

Also currently playing: Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020)

TV

Still no new series picked - there's too much choice! - but I would still prefer to watch something non-Star Wars related before I start on Rebels.

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