Hi, everyone. I'm Em. And welcome to Verbal Diorama, episode 337, the Hunger Games. This is the podcast that's all about the history and legacy of movies you know and movies you don't. And I volunteer as tribute to fight to the death with all the other hosts of this podcast. Something tells me I'll do well. Welcome to Verbal Diorama. Whether you're a brand-new listener or a regular returning listener, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for choosing to listen to this podcast. I am happy to have you here for the history and legacy of the Hunger Games. And obviously, if you are a regular returning listener, thank you so much for listening to this podcast and continuing to listen and support this podcast over the last seven years and now 337 episodes. It genuinely means so much that people keep coming back to this podcast. And it's something that I adore doing with all of my heart. And it's mostly because of movies like this one, because this is a really fascinating episode to go into for so many different reasons. I returned from animation season with an episode last week on the Spice Girls and their movie Spice World, which was a real treat, actually. Mostly because nothing has really shaped pop culture and pop music quite like those five women did. And with it being International Women's Month, I wanted to do something else for the girls. And Katniss Everdeen feels like quite a unique heroine for young adult fiction. She's not meek and timid like Bella Swan, and she's not a know it all like Hermione Granger. She's just a poor girl from an Outlying district of Panem, who loves nothing in this world except her young younger sister. So much so she's willing to volunteer as Tribute to save her sister's life. She's not an easy character to like, but her superpower is empathy. And she forges her own path rather than just accept the status quo of this world. And what this world expects of young people like her. It will eventually make her the Mockingjay. But for now, she's just the female tribute from District 12. May the odds be ever in her favour. And may the odds be ever in your favour. Because here's the trailer for the Hunger Games.

In a dystopian future, the totalitarian nation of Panem is divided into 12 districts and the capital. Each year, two teenage representatives from each district are selected by lottery to participate in the Hunger Games. Part entertainment, part brutal retribution for a past rebellion, the televised games are broadcast through Panem. 24 participants are forced to eliminate their competitors. While the citizens of Panem are required to watch. When 16 year old Katniss' younger sister Primrose is selected as District 12's female representative for the 74th annual Hunger Games, Katniss volunteers as Tribute to take her place. She and her male counterpart, Peeta Mellark, are pitted against bigger, stronger representatives, some of whom have trained for this their whole lives. Let's run through the cast. We have Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, Josh Hutcherson as Peeta Mallarck, Liam Hemsworth as Gale Hawthorne, Woody Harrelson as Haymitch Abernathy, Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinkett, Lenny Kravitz as Cinna, Stanley Tucci as Caesar Flickerman, Donald Sutherland as President Snow, Wes Bentley as Seneca Crane, Willow Shields as Primrose Everdeen, Toby Jones as Claudius Templesmith, Alexander Ludwig as Cato, Isabel Thurman as Clove, Amandla Stenberg as Rue, Jacqueline Emerson as Foxface and Jack Quaid as Marvel the Hunger Games has a screenplay by Gary Ross, Suzanne Collins and Billy Ray, was directed by Gary Ross and was based on the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. On 14 September 2008, Suzanne Collins dystopian young adult novel the Hunger Games was published in hardback when it was released in paperback in July 2010. It entered the New York Times bestseller list and Featured for over 100 consecutive weeks. By the time the movie adaptation of the book was released, the book had sold 17.5 million copies. Let's not forget this was a huge book at the time. Collins began her writing career in 1991 writing for children's TV shows like Clarissa Explains it all, the Mystery Files of Shelby Wu, Oswald and Wow Wow Wubbzy. Between 2003 and 2007 she wrote the Underland Chronicles and in 2008 she signed a six figure three book deal with Scholastic. The inspiration for the Hunger Games came from several places, none of which were Koushun Takami's 1999 novel Battle Royale nor the 2000 film adaptation of the same name. Suzanne Collins has stated she didn't know about Battle Royale until her book was turned into her publisher. Her idea was based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, which she originally read when she was eight years old. The tale of Theseus and the Minotaur was told by Hermes, messenger of the gods. Hermes tells how Crete was once all powerful because of the instruments of war created by Daedalus for King Minos. Minos competed with his brothers as ruler. He prayed to the sea God Poseidon to send him a Snow White bull as a sign of the gods favour. Minos was to sacrifice the bull to honour Poseidon, but owing to the bull's beauty he decided instead to keep him. Minos believed that the God would accept a substitute sacrifice to punish Minos. Poseidon arranged with Aphrodite for Minos wife Pasiphae to fall in love with the bull. Pasiphae had the master craftsman Daedalus fashion for her a hollow wooden cow into which she climbed to let the bull mate with her. She then fell pregnant and bore Asterius Minotaur. Pasiphae nursed the Minotaur, but he grew in size and became ferocious, rampaging throughout the palace, killing those it caught. To find a solution to this problem, Daedalus created a labyrinth under the palace and the Minotaur was lured inside and locked in. However, it still needed feeding. Minos decided to demand tribute from the peoples he had conquered in the form of seven young men and seven young women to be fed to the Minotaur. This tribute was a consequence of Athens earlier conflict with Crete, specifically the killing of Minos son Androgeus. Theseus, son of King Aegeus of Athens, is determined to be one of the chosen 14 Athenian youths and persuades his father to allow him to go to Crete with the aim of killing the Minotaur, which he does. Theseus volunteering to be part of the tribute and killing the Minotaur ended the tribute and leading to a new era of Athenian power. Theseus is also from the ship of Theseus fame. Just FYI, Crete's ruthlessness and the willingness to kill children spoke to Suzanne Collins that the real villains won't just kill adults, but spare them and kill the children. And in a true authoritarian regime, the parents will sit by powerless to stop it. She took inspiration from the story, but instead of setting it in a labyrinth, she decided on Roman style gladiatorial games. Then one night while channel surfing, she flicked between a reality TV program and the news which was reporting on the Iraq war. On one channel there's a group of young people competing for something and playing up to the cameras. And on the other there's a group of young people fighting in an actual war. All of these ideas blurred together and Collins had a really good idea for her story. The idea that society eventually becomes numb to the horror shown on tv. That the wealthy elite see poorer disadvantaged people as other and how you can remind the poor they are inferior by subjugation and brutality, not to punish the adults, but to punish the children, while the elite remain desensitised to the violence. In Colin's world of Panum, named after the Latin term panum et circenses, which means bread and games or bread and circuses, coined by the Roman poet Juvenal to describe the political strategy of gaining public support by offering Free food and entertainment. Rather than good governance, it refers to satisfying basic needs and providing distractions to to keep the populace docile and uninterested in deeper political issues. The government of Panem made it quite literal in a future North America. After ecological disasters and nuclear war destroyed the continent, rising sea levels have sunk the populous east and west coasts, leaving the mountainous middle. It's said that 99% of the North American population was wiped out. According to the Hunger Games Wiki, Panem has a population of 4.5 million people. The remaining land was split into 14 districts, 13 outlying ones and the capital. Modelled on ancient Rome within the Rocky Mountains, the central government and the wealthy elite live in the capital. The capital set minimum production quotas for each of the districts. And the districts are subject to a system of central planning for rather than a market economy, each district was responsible for certain industry. District 1 was luxury items, 2 is masonry, 3 is electronics, 4 is fishing, 5 is power, 6 is transportation, 7 is lumber, 8 is textiles, 9 is grain, 10 is livestock, 11 is agriculture, 12 is coal, and 13 is nuclear research and technology. The outlying districts were subservient to the capital, expected to provide services in exchange for protection given by the capital's army of peacekeepers, largely to the detriment of the district's populace. This unequal relationship was brutally enforced for several years, culminating in a civil war known as the Dark Days, led by District 13, Panem's then centre of its military industrial complex. After three years of conflict, the rebellion collapses, with the apparent destruction of District 13 bringing an end to the war. The remaining districts were quickly subdued, with the resulting Treaty of Treason enforcing a harsh peace on them, as well as instituting the Hunger Games, an annual event established as a continual reminder of the failed rebellion. Public executions and whippings, restrictions on civil rights and mass surveillance became widespread throughout Panem in the following years. Travel and communication between districts was banned. For the next 74 years, the districts endured oppression at the hands of the capital through the Hunger Games. Districts were routinely starved, but you could get more food if you entered your children into the annual reaping multiple times via the tesserae, which where you would get grain and oil in exchange for more entries. While the Capitol was based in and around the Rocky Mountains, District 12 would be located in and around Appalachia. Now, Hollywood has had a mixed response adapting young adult books to movies. Classics like Treasure island and Little Women have been adapted multiple times over the years. The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton's young adult novel from 1967 was adapted into a movie directed by Francis ford Coppola in 1983. And then of course you have the Harry Potter series, which started in 2001, which was aimed at a slightly younger demographic that aged over the time to young adult. But the real catalyst for change was probably Twilight. The success of the Twilight series demonstrated to Hollywood that young adult fiction, particularly with a passionate, largely teenage female fan base, could translate into enormous box office returns. Before Twilight, studios were somewhat hesitant to invest heavily in YA adaptations. After a string of mixed results, like the Eragon film adaptation, which was a critical flop and a commercial disappointment in 2006, Twilight proved the audience was there. Twilight made around $393 million worldwide on a modest $37 million budget in 2008. That kind of return made studios actively hunt for the next Twilight. It created a franchise template. The idea of adapting a beloved YA trilogy or series into a multi film franchise became a priority for studios. Lionsgate, which distributed Twilight, was especially motivated to find a follow up franchise. And the Hunger Games fit perfectly. YA is often seen as less serious compared to adult fiction, but the Hunger Games has so many layers of complexity, it's almost not YA fiction at all. In early 2009, Color Force, the production company led by Nina Jacobson, acquired the worldwide filmmaking rights to the novel. Jacobson is somewhat of a force herself, having worked as senior vice president of production at Universal Pictures in the late 80s and early 90s before moving to DreamWorks as a senior film executive and in 1998 overseeing film production at Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures and Hollywood Pictures. Immediately after the birth of her third child in July 2006, and while she was still in the delivery room, she was fired from Disney as part of a corporate restructuring and by 2007 she had established Color Force along with Brad Simpson. Two weeks after Color Force acquired the rights to the hunger games in March 2009, Lionsgate acquired the worldwide distribution rights to the planned project, which was seen as an outlier choice considering Warner Bros. New Regency and Spyglass Entertainment had all expressed interest and unlike Lionsgate, had made profit in the previous five years. But what clinched it for Lionsgate was them matching every other studio's offer, but also offering Suzanne Collins a percentage of the film's profits too, as well as allowing her to write the screenplay to protect her vision and to not sanitize it, but also to make it as faithful as possible to the source material. Gary Ross, Sam Mendes, David Slade, Andrew Adamson, Susanna White, Rupert Sanders and Francis Lawrence were all listed as possible candidates to direct, but Gary Ross would be announced as the film's director in November 2010. He became interested in directing the film after his agent had notified him that a film adaptation of the Hunger Games was in development. Ross had heard about the book due to his children reading it. He started reading the book at 10pm at night, finished it without stopping, and called his agent the next morning to tell her that he wanted the job. He would actually help Suzanne Collins write the screenplay along with Billy Ray. And with the book written in the first person as Katniss's pov, it was decided to expand on the character of the head game maker Seneca Crane to show the inner workings of the Games and the machinations of the Capitol away from Katniss. Crane wasn't a named character in the first Hunger Games book, but he is referenced in its sequel, Catching Fire. Gary Ross had a sense of who he wanted to cast before the auditions, but because this was a potential huge franchise, the studio wanted everyone to read for the parts. Lionsgate confirmed in March 2011 that about 30 actresses auditioned or read for the role of Katniss Everdeen, including Hailee Steinfeld, Abigail Breslin, Emma Roberts, Alison Stoner, Saoirse Ronan, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jodelle Thurland, Lyndsy Fonseca, Emily Browning, Shailene Woodley, Kaya Scodelario and Troian Belisario. Jennifer Lawrence, fresh off an Oscar nomination for Winter's Bone, auditioned while she was working on X Men First Class and Ross was knocked out by her presence and knew that she was Katniss. Lawrence wasn't sure she wanted the pressure though, and took three days to consider taking the role when it was offered to her. She asked her mum for advice and she advised her to take it if she loved the role regardless of the size of the movie, despite Lawrence being four years older than Katniss because she was 20 when she took the role, and not also quite how Katniss is described in the book, but more on that later. Lawrence accepted the role the same month in March 2011. That would probably change her life. Despite the character literally starving in a scene, she refused to lose weight for the role, not wanting to be a bad role model. And yet somehow 2000s media still told us Jennifer Lawrence was fat in this movie and that she needed to be skinnier, which is ridiculous because they weren't asking Liam Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson the same questions and suggesting they be less muscular. I wonder why that is. Lawrence was paid a modest $500,000 for the role and she would make 20 times more than that for the sequel Catching Fire. Ross also thought Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth were perfect for Peeta and Gale respectively. He found the three leads easy to find and cast. He had to convince Woody Harrelson to play Haymitch Abernathy after Harrelson turned down the role initially and John C. Reilly was in talks with for the part, but afterwards Harrelson was grateful to Ross for giving him such a fantastic role. Ross had previously worked with Stanley Tucci on the Tale of Despereaux and when Ross told Tucci he had a role for him in the Hunger Games while they were out on New Year's Eve, Tucci accepted it without even knowing the character or seeing a script because he just trusted him and he was cast as Caesar Flickerman. Donald Sutherland realized quickly that how important the role of President Snow was to the narrative and when he got the part he suggested several changes to his portrayal of Snow which ended up in the movie. Jennifer Lawrence dyed her naturally blonde hair dark for the part of Katniss. Liam Hemsworth also dyed his naturally blonde hair dark for Gale. Lawrence also underwent extensive training to get in shape for the role, including archery, rock and tree climbing, combat running, parkour and yoga. On the last day of her six week training she had an accident in which she hit a wall running at full speed but was not seriously injured thanks to her previous training for X Men First Class. Lionsgate would also hire Olympic bronze medal winning archer Katuna Lorig to teach Lawrence how to shoot with a recurve bow. Lionsgate had a very tight budget for this movie. It had hoped to make the Hunger Games on a $60 million budget. However, it would need months of on location shooting in woodland and forests and thousands of CGI shots. Twilight had cost Summit $37 million, but it wasn't on the same scale as the Hunger Games. The script was written for the Hunger Games to be as faithful as possible, but also to keep costs low. A budget of $75 million was agreed to and virtually all production shooting took place in North Carolina, which also had tax credits from the state government. Principal photography began near Brevard in Transylvania county in western North Carolina in May 2011. After a detailed insurance risk analysis for flora and fauna hazards and immediately the issues were the weather and the local wildlife. In Dupont State Forest, 300 bears lived in those wooded areas and would come out at the slightest scent of food. The heat regularly topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit. That's 37 degrees for us Celsius folk and it rained almost daily, it would lead to shooting only being able to take place for four to five hours to get the optimum daylight because big trees cause Big Shadows. Katniss's hometown in District 12 was filmed in the abandoned mill town of Henry River Mill Village in Burke County, North Carolina, with the woods outside. District 12 filmed at Pisgah National Forest. Scenes in District 11 were filmed by Steven Soderbergh as second unit. Director Soderbergh and director Gary Ross are longtime friends, and due to the timescales involved on the movie, Soderbergh agreed to do his friend a favor. He was also working on Magic Mike the same year as director, director of photography and editor. So clearly Steven Soderbergh is just a guy who likes to do everything. The scenes where Caesar Flickerman interviews all the tributes were filmed at the Knight Theatre in Charlotte, North Carolina. Ross and production designer Phil Messina drew on the buildings of the 1939 New York World's Fair and symbols of political power, including Tiananmen Square and Red Square, and also brutalist architectural design when conceiving the capital's architecture, which is all straight lines and concrete reminiscent of the ancient Roman Empire, but also futuristic and cold. In stark contrast to the coldness of the Capitol's architecture would be its clothing and makeup, and the movie's costume designer, Judianna Makovsky, also worked with Gary Ross on Pleasantville. The opulent and indulgent residents of the Capitol would display a bright, brazen collection of voluminous shoulders, excessive ruching and theatrical hats reminiscent of both 1930s and 19th century fashions. They looked a lot at Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, whose design celebrated surrealism and eccentric fashions, and she loved the color shocking pink. Makovsky admitted that she thought it would be funny if these people who have such a vicious streak in them were covered in flowers and ruffles to accentuate the evil under the surface. Makovsky insisted that the people of the capital be powdered and eyebrowless to give them a ghostly, haunted look. With Panem being America's future, she looked to the coal mining towns of history and chose muted colours of greys and blues for the District 12's residents to look cold and dirty, as if everything had a layer of coal dust on it. Clothing was the easiest way for the audience to distinguish between the haves and and the have nots. When Suzanne Collins wrote the Hunger Games, she made conscious decisions to make some characters explicitly white, like Peeta, some characters explicitly black, like Rue, and some characters more racially Ambiguous like Gale and Katniss. In the book, Katniss and Gale are described as having straight black hair, grey eyes and olive skin. Rue and Thresh are described as having dark brown skin and eyes and dark hair. Katniss's sister Prim and her mother are described as having pale skin, blue eyes and blonde hair. Peeta is described as having ashy blonde hair and blue eyes. Collins said in an interview that the book was set in a time period where hundreds of years have passed from now. There's been a lot of ethnic mixing, but there are some characters in the book who are more specifically described, such as Thresh and Rue, and also Most of District 11 being a predominantly African American district located in what was the deep south of America. Cinna wasn't written as black, but as racially ambiguous. Despite Rue being written as black, there was some fan backlash over the casting of Amandla Stenberg as Rue because readers hadn't thought that the character they were reading was black. Despite the fact that Suzanne Collins did actually explicitly describe Rue as black. Lenny Kravitz's casting as Sinner received a mixed reaction initially, but Jennifer Lawrence, being cast as the olive skinned Katniss, received accusations of whitewashing that at the very least she was described as a Mediterranean woman. The casting was no doubt intensified by the controversy surrounding the casting of Rue and Thresh. Looking back, the controversy surrounding Rue seems particularly silly. But once the movie is came out, most people agreed that Lawrence did a great job as Katniss. That she conveyed the character's feelings and emotions well, translating the first person narrative we get from the books. For her part, Suzanne Collins wrote to fans of the franchise in 2011 dear readers, we have found Katniss as the author. I went into the casting process with a certain degree of trepidation. Believing your heroine can make the leap from the relative sense safety of the page to the flesh and bones of reality of the screen is something of a creative act of faith. But after watching dozens of auditions by a group of very fine young actresses, I felt like there was only one who truly captured the character I wrote in the book. And I'm thrilled to say that Jennifer Lawrence has accepted the role. In her remarkable audition piece, I watched Jennifer embody the very essential quality necessary necessary to play Katniss. I saw a girl who has the potential range to send an arrow into the game makers and the protectiveness to make Rue her ally, who has conquered both Peter and Gale's hearts, even though she's done her best to wall herself off emotionally from anything that would lead to romance. Most of all, I believe that this was a girl who could hold out that handful of berries and incite the beaten down districts of Panem to rebel. I think that was the essential question for me. Could she believably inspire a rebellion? Did she project the strength, defiance and intellect you would need to follow her into certain war? For me, she did. Jennifer's just an incredible actress. So powerful, vulnerable, beautiful, unforgiving and brave. I never thought we'd find somebody this amazing for the role and I can't wait for everyone to see see her play it. Thank you all for sharing in this journey and may the odds be ever in your favour. Love, Suzanne Collins, unquote. So if Suzanne Collins can be okay with it, surely everyone else could be too, right? It's sad that Amandla Stenberg, who was 12 at the time she was cast, had to go through the racist abuse online that she had to go through now. Comparisons to Battle Royale are abound, but unlike Battle Royale, the major concern concerned for the movie was the MPAA and the potential rating they would get for a movie that essentially glorifies the deaths of children. When Nina Jacobson first talked to Suzanne Collins about adapting the books, they agreed that they both wanted the movie to be PG 13 because Collins wrote the book for readers 12 and up and they wanted those ages to be able to see the movie. They didn't want to dilute or soften the material because that would really be irresponsible in its own way. The books are very intense and demanding of the reader and the movie should be the same. And that also included not aging up the characters involved, with Jacobson pointing out that if you up the ages from 12 to 18 to 16 to 21, you're not doing justice to the book or its message. But because these were children, it also couldn't feel exploitative, sensationalist or stylized, and it had to have weight and gravitas. The Hunger Games was rated 12A by the BBFC in the UK for intense threat, moderate violence and occasional gory moments. To achieve that rating, Lionsgate had to cut or substitute 7 seconds of film by digitally removing blood splashes and the sight of blood on wounds and weapons. The uncut version was ultimately released on Blu ray in the UK with a 15 certificate. In the US, the film was granted a PG13 rating from the MPAA for intense, violent thematic material and disturbing images all involving teens, which is what Suzanne Collins and Nina Jacobson had originally anticipated. The movie, of course, does have disturbing scenes, but nothing really unsuitable for the age range. Sometimes not showing something can be more effective than showing it, and that became an easy way to show excessive violence without showing excessive violence. It could still easily tap into the things a lot of young people are feeling with regards to climate change, oppression, authoritarianism, calling for change and justice, and the constant feeling of dread that we all have every single day. But also to have a movie and a lead character that values life, someone who doesn't go all out to kill, someone who protects a young girl to the best of her ability and when she dies, someone who takes a moment to honour her life and give her a memorial. That Katniss values human life, gives the people something the Capitol has been trying to quash. Hope. And as we all know, rebellions are built on hope. Wrong movie, but you get the gist. It's a good time to segue into the obligatory Keanu reference of this episode, which is a part of this podcast where I try and link every movie that I feature with Keanu Reeves. Now this one was a particularly tricky one because Keanu Reeves doesn't really go in for young adult entertainment. However, Lionsgate, obviously bolstered from the success of the Hunger Games, would then go on to release a little movie in 2014 called John Wick, which would also become a huge success. The studio with three sequels, one TV miniseries, and one spin off movie so far. And of course, who stars in John Wick but Keanu Reeves? And that is the easiest way to link Keanu Reeves to the Hunger Games. So the Hunger Games is known specifically for its music, mostly its leitmotifs. I am going to try and whistle. I hope this. I hope this works. Something like that anyway. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to do that for this episode. I've probably cut most of my attempts out, but there's that. And there's also the Horn of Plenty, which is the general theme of Panem. Danny Elfman and T Bone Burnett were initially hired to score the Hunger Games, and Burnett was also going to act as the film's executive music producer for the soundtrack. However, due to scheduling conflicts, James Newton Howard replaced Danny Elfman as the composer. Arcade Fire also contributed to the score album, and they also composed the Horn of Plenty, the Fisher Stick inspired Panem national anthem, which appears throughout this movie and also all the future movies as well. Arcade File also contributed the song Abraham's Daughter to the soundtrack, as well as Taylor Swift featuring the Civil War song Safe and Sound. Eyes Open, also by Taylor Swift was released as the soundtrack's first official single on 27th March 2012. Rue's Lullaby, sung by Jennifer Lawrence isn't included on the soundtrack, but the lullaby was written by T Bone Burnett with the lyrics taken from Suzanne Collins book The Hunger Games was released on 23rd March 2012 and immediately went to number one at the US box office with no real competition. It stayed at number one for four weeks before it was dethroned by Think Like a Man and the Lucky One and the Hunger Games dropped to third. It stayed at third for a further three weeks and stayed in the US top 10 for 10 weeks. On its eventual $78 million budget, the Hunger Games grossed $408 million domestically and $286.4 million in 20 internationally for a total worldwide gross of $694.4 million. At the time it was the highest grossing film distributed by Lionsgate and it also set opening day and single day records for a non sequel the Hunger Games has an 84% of rotten tomatoes with a consensus of thrilling and superbly acted. The Hunger Games captures the dramatic violence, raw emotion and ambitious score scope of its source novel. It was praised for the casting of Lawrence as well as the maturity and sophistication of the adaptation. It did however, get criticized for its shaky cam style, which is something the sequel Catching Fire does not have. However, it really does add to the discombobulation of that first Hunger Games. In my opinion. The movie received 51 award nominations and 128the the song Safe and Sound won a Grammy Award and was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Original Song. Jennifer Lawrence won a Saturn Award and an Empire Award for Best Actress and the Critics Choice Award for Best Actress in an Action Movie. Now of course, Hollywood was never going to stop making more Hunger Games. A new sequel appeared every year after the original hunger games in 2012, in many ways like the titular Chiller Games itself, coming back year on year and giving the audience more and bigger. The first four films released from 2012 to 2015 and collectively grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide. They dominated pop culture. They made Jennifer Lawrence a bonafide movie star. And then we saw a wave of copycat franchises like Divergent, the Maze Runner and the Mortal Instruments, among many others that never quite reached the Hunger Games level of success. Success A prequel, the Hunger Games the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes came out in 2023 and told the origin story of President Coriolanus Snow, played by Donald Sutherland in the original Films during the 10th Annual Hunger Games and post the question the previous Hunger Games movies largely avoided how exactly did the Hunger Games become such a cultural phenomenon? And why do the Games endure through for 64 more years? The Hunger Games Sunrise on the Reaping is based on Suzanne Collins 2025 Novel of the same name, showing young Haymitch Abernathy being selected to compete at the 50th Hunger Games. That movie is due out in November 2026, so later on this year, as of the release of this episode, it stars Joseph Zada as Haymitch McKenna Grace, Jesse Plemons, Ralph Fiennes, Glenn Close, Kieran Culkin and Elle Fanning. It was also announced that Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutchison will reprise their roles as Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, respectively. The Hunger Games might be based on YA fiction, but it also feels slightly more grown up. It takes important topics and makes them palatable to a younger audience without watering down the seriousness. There's inequality and class divide. There's an authoritarian government. It's a satire of reality TV and that there are no limits to what a producer will do to get viewers. The Hunger Games succeeded not because it had a clear political philosophy, but because it understood the power of entertainment. Above all, that there's very little real about reality TV because a producer can edit anything out of nothing to get views in clicks. And hundreds of years later, Panem's capital is doing the same thing, manufacturing stories to get viewers to, quote, care about their favorite tributes. Not that it's any semblance of real care. It's like how we care for our favorite reality TV contestant. We don't actually care even if they win or not. They're just a person on a TV screen. And this is why I find the love triangle, or indeed lack of it, fascinating. Because Katniss soon realizes in order to survive and get the sponsors to find favour with her and provide food and medicine, she needs to play up to the edit of the Star Crossed Lovers narrative that Peter hinted at in his interview. Without it, they'd likely be dead. Without it, they would not have been allowed to win together. But you're always under the control of the game makers. If you're not liked, you're set upon by mutts, or if they want you to move, they make you move. This is all about control and this is why when Katniss incites a rebellion, it crumbles that control so completely. It's not just essential entertainment, it's also political propaganda and Even if you do win, you're under the capital's control for life, isolated from your community in a victor's village, having to live with the trauma to and ptsd, substance and alcohol abuse, or even being prostituted to wealthy citizens like we eventually find out happened to Finnick and Joanna. If you refuse, you're punished. Your families are punished. You might be a winner, but you're not. You're actually a loser because you're forever a puppet of the capital, wheeled out every year to relive your trauma again and again and witness young people under your charge being routinely murdered in the Games. The only winners of the Hunger Games are the wealthy elite. And this is where I think Woody Harrelson's performance shines in retrospect of knowing this because that man is clearly suffering from ptsd. This is probably the best young adult film adaptation in my opinion, because it doesn't talk down to its audience or rely too heavily on a love triangle. There's little time for love or affection in the Games, but the love we do get, I feel, hits hard enough. And that's the brief friendship between Katniss and Rue. Because I like to think a half decent person in those Games would want to protect a sweet young girl the same age as the sister you desperately tried to protect. Katniss affection for Rue and the memorial she makes for her gives the people of District 11, Rue's district, the same hope. And slowly but surely, the Girl on Fire's fire spreads. Don't get me wrong, Katniss isn't completely altruistic, but her qualities go beyond what we expect from a heroine in YA fiction. The impact the Hunger Games had on young people, especially young girls who wanted to model themselves on Katniss. Or indeed Pixar's character of Merida in Brave was taking up archery in the us Teenage girls started joining archery groups and youth participation in the sport jumped 75% in New York City alone. And sales of archery equipment at the Archery Trade association rose 20%. And I think that's because characters like Katniss were so rare back then and even now are still so rare. A female character with few feminine traits not following the gender norms, given agency and power and skill in her own right, but also having traits that might deem her unlikable, shall we say. In an arena where likability is more important than anything else, Katniss feels real. No doubt because she was written by a woman, but also flawed. She's known Mary sue, and she learns quickly that to play the game she has to play the game. I am very much in the Jennifer Lawrence is perfect in this role club. I'm a huge fan of her work in general, and the fact she was working on two huge franchises at the same time is pretty admirable. I'm less taken with Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth, but I could watch Woody Harrelson, Lenny Kravitz, Stanley Tucci, and Donald Sutherland ad infinitum. Even Elizabeth Banks. Effie is one of those characters that develops more as we get to know her, and I think Banks is superb in Catching Fire, which is a movie I should probably get to at some point in the near future, but because I do enjoy Catching Fire a hell of a lot. But as the mouthpiece of the Capitol, Effie shows that the more that powers that be spout their hate and lies, the more their people believe it. Because I genuinely think Effie thinks this is a wonderful opportunity for these young people because she's so blinded by her own privilege. To me, the Hunger Games and Battle Royale are two separate entities that I enjoy very much. Although admittedly I've watched the Hunger Games more than I've watched Battle Royale. But Battle Royale has been on the list for this podcast for a long time. So eventually I will get around to that movie because as I say, I enjoy it very much. It's interesting actually, because to celebrate the 250th birthday of the founding of the United States, Donald Trump recently announced the Patriot Games, a four day televised athletic event featuring high school athletes aged 14 to 17. One young man and one young woman from each state and territory matched with celebrity coaches. It was immediately compared to the Hunger Games and I would love it if one of the competitors, ideally one of the young women, stood up and Katniss Everdeen Trump and his policies. Because now more than ever, there's inequality between men and women, mass surveillance, crushings of dissent and attempted silencing of people, and protests against all that's wrong in the world. We need more Katniss Everdeens. And may the odds be ever in their favor. Thank you for your consideration on this episode. As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on the Hunger Games and thank you for your continued support of this podcast. The next episode of this podcast, we are going into April and I need to tell you that number five is alive. I'm actually going to do a season of AI movies in April. Now I've coined it aiproel. No, I know it doesn't really work, but just go with me on this and I'm starting with a super problematic 80s movie because pretty much all 80s movies are super problematic in some way, shape or form. But it also has one of the best robotic creations that ever put to screen and that is Johnny 5 and the movie is Short Circuit. So please join me next episode for the history and legacy of Short Circuit. Thank you for listening to Verbal Diorama, a totally free and independent podcast that relies on listener support. 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Bye,