You visualize a book differently than everyone else because, well, no one has the same imagination. Reading a book sparks someones imagination into creating a visualized story based on the words on the page. In other word, its a movie inside your own head. The personalize movie inside your head often times is created into a movie that everyone can see for the not so modest price of 10 dollars.
Catching Fire was made to become a movie. Suzanne Collins created it for the sole purpose of eventually blowing the mind of everyone who watched it. When I stepped into the theater I was as giddy as a toddler on Christmas day. I already convinced myself that this movie would go beyond my expectations and surpass my feelings towards all other movies.
Although I read the hunger games four years prior to the movie release, throughout the movie it felt like I could remember every word of the descriptions and dialogues. It created the perfect environment and arena.
Katniss Everdeen, played by Jennifer Lawrence, shows the biggest emotional damages in the first movie or book. Jennifer Lawrence has to portray a sense of seclusion. Katniss may have won the last Hunger Games with her partner Peeta Mellark, played by Josh Hutcherson, but the threat to her life after cheating the system for the first time in the history of the Capitol becomes a whole lot for her to bear. It would be fair to say that Lawrence undeniably hit it out of the park with this performance. She brought a character to life. A character that so many loved to read about and now get to see on a giant screen, as close to real life as possible.
Katniss was not the only character to come to life in the second movie of the Hunger Games trilogy. Recurring characters such as Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), Gale (Liam Hemsworth) and Snow (Donald Sutherland) pulled together a great performance in embracing the persona of the book characters that we all know and love.
The movie did not focus on the return of the characters we already knew but the introduction of new exciting victors of the other districts. The casting of characters like Finnick Odair, Plutarch Heavensbee, Johanna Mason, Wiress and Beetee were phenomenal. I felt like I saw the characters created by my own imagination projected on the giant screen in front of me. The performance sucked me into the movie, making me believe that those were truly the character that I read about in eighth grade.
Catching Fire takes places all over each district, the Capitol and another stadium. For this movie to have been successful, each area would have to be carefully constructed to meet or exceed expectations that the reader had for each area. The book carefully describes the actions of the people, the surroundings in the perspective of Katniss and the layout of the newest and most exciting stadium.
The arena, which is based on a clock, traps the 24 competitors in an overly bloody battle. Every hour, a different section of the arena has a unique challenge. The movie had to recreate one of the most vivid environments that I have ever read or imagined. When watching the movie, I expected the bird’s eye view to be absolutely mind-blowing and it was. The arena was made to perfection. The characters that I have loved for eight years were right in front of my eyes. It may seem lazy but they were there and I barely had to think.
Most movies portray the book poorly or differently than most of the audience prefers. Catching Fire gave the audience what they expected and more. The visuals, casting and acting brought me into the story that I enjoyed four years ago. It was the type of movie that made me feel as if I were remembering something that had happened earlier in my life. The visuals mimicked the words that Suzanne Collins wrote and that I read.
Catching Fire is a must see not only for the readers but for everyone. If books and literacy are not your forte, the movie brings out the book perfectly. Of course it is not able to mimic the thought process of Katniss Everdeen perfectly, Lawrence did a spectacular job of allowing the audience to get into the mind of Katniss and keeping the movie in third-person.
The story projected itself not only in my imagination but also on the giant screen in front of me. With the hype and excitement brought to the table by Catching Fire, I can only wait and eagerly anticipate the release of the third and final part of The Hunger Games Trilogy.
