Watching The Hunger Games

Paul and I finally watched the long delayed The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013).

It was a tense movie: characters, like in any sci-fi film, are always on the run, hunted and haunted by their hellish worlds. Because of her sympathetic tendency towards the downtrodden, Katniss and her partner were thrown into a demonic forest, attacked by burning clouds, fictitious animals and countless sufferings to stay alive until she shot into and broke the artificial dome of sky (reminding us of scenes in The Truman Show).

It is also an extremely successful movie. The two and a half hour running time did not seem long at all. When the end came, it was almost a relief, as one would wake up from a torturous nightmare, to know that the revolution had earnestly begun, and District 12 no longer existed. Probably this is where the attraction of the sci-fi genre lies. The mashup of spectacular Roman chariots and the Third Reich's Nuremberg rallies flanked by those vertical banners designed by Albert Speer, plus District 9's story, have totally dazzled newer generations born and living in cyberspace. The eternal worship for love and youth have also captured older generations nostalgic for their fleeting days. No wonder by the end of October 2012, 327,000 visitors had flocked to Hendersonville, NC to experience Hunger Game's forest and DuPont's High Falls after the first Hunger Games came out.