Thursday, December 5, 2013

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

The second installment in the Hunger Games trilogy marks the beginning of the revolution, long overdue in Panem. The victors Katniss and Peeta are paraded around the districts but rather than appease the public and keep them quite, the mere presence of Katniss - unwilling token of the uprising - inspires people to become defiant. It starts with three raised fingers in district 11, as a thank you from the locals for Katniss' treatment of Rue in the previous hunger games.

To stop any unauthorized behavior the new game runner, Plutarch Heavensbee, talks President Snow into a new kind of hunger game, to get rid of Katniss in a way that would not shed any more doubts onto the government. To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the hunger games the tributes will be drafted from the previous victors - two per district, one male one female.

Once in the arena, Katniss and Peeta form an alliance with Finnick and the elderly Mae, arranged for them by Haymitch. From then on, not much goes the way President Snow intended, but very much the way Plutarch orchestrated things. Rather than quench the revolution by distracting the public with the spectacle going on under a dome, a revolution is started on a smaller scale within the dome. Katniss is apparently the least informed of everyone involved.

In the end, the dome is brought down through lightning, wire and one of Katniss' arrows and she and a handful of other survivors are lifted out of the arena. Katniss awakes in District 13, where she learns that while her mother and sister and Gale are there, as well, Peeta and one of their allies, Johanna, did not make it out but are held by the government.

8/10

1 comment:

  1. Great review Isabella. The social commentary was handled well and the movie did an excellent job of diving deeper into the this world that's ultimately the driving force of everything happening in these movies.

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