This week in unwelcome news, it’s rumored that the script for Suzanne Collins’s popular dystopian fantasy trilogy The Hunger Games will play up the “love triangle” between lead character, Katniss, and her two prospective beaus, Peeta and Gale, in an attempt to …
… appeal to Twilight fans. This is, to say the least, disappointing.
I read the books over the past week or so, and admired the way that Collins had written Katniss as a “strong female character” without her toughness reading as “sassy.” Instead, Katniss is well-rounded, her thoughts, intentions, motivations and comprehension of the world both very real and very understandable. And a big part of the character is her obliviousness — especially early on — to anything related to romance. Playing up the love triangle may take away from her toughness or even her individuality as a character, but most importantly I think it takes the story away from being a post-apocalyptic tale of survival and instead makes it another stale teen flick.
What makes the move particularly funny, and I will warn that this is a bit spoilery, is that in the books themselves Katniss plays up romance for the cameras as a way of appealing to the lowest-common-denominator spectators of The Hunger Games as a way of gaining sponors during the event. At one point, she’s told that having men pining after her makes her far more interesting than she would be on her own.
I hope for the sake of the movies — which I’m still looking forward to, as Jennifer Lawrence currently can do no wrong — that this is a false rumor, but I don’t hold out a ton of hope, especially given how dull and unoriginal so much of the cinematic landscape has been all year.
That is disappointing to read. Katniss already is somewhat of an annoying protagonist because of her “Oh, why is everyone trying to help me? I’m not worth it” schtick that gets really old by the third book. By amping up the love triangle Katniss could become a Bella Swan with a bow and quiver.
Katniss won’t become Bella Swan. She’s to independent. i doubt she would go kill herself because someone left her
Actually, this is very old news…the “playing up to the Twilight crowd” came from a “source” at HollywoodLife, you know, that bastion of fine, honest tabloid gossip. It came from a leaked script originally penned by Billy Rae (who is no longer attatched to the project btw) Suzanne Collins and Gary Ross are NOW writing the screenplay. The leaked script therefore, has been thrown out. Apparently, Collins and Ross did not care for the way Rae was writing Katniss; it wasn’t true to the original character that Collins had written so, I think that with Collins and Ross at the helm the last thing we as fans will see is an untrue representation of Katniss Everdeen.
I should write Collins and Ross re-wrote the screenplay as the film is already in production. Oh, and I NEVER believed Katniss to be e “why is everyone trying to help me, I’m not worth it” crap…. I wonder jeneria, did you actually read the series?. Nor could Katniss ever be in any way confused with Bella Swan especially with the AUTHOR of the books having co-written the sceenplay.
In reply to your rather patronizing question: Yes, I did read the series. And in each book there’s at least one point where Katniss realizes that people are trying to save her and she goes into a ridiculous spiral of self-pity and questions her own value. By book three that plot point is tired and irritating.
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You “believe” Katniss to be strong. I don’t agree.
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Katniss, in my opinion, never fully embraces her power or her importance and despite all the great things about the series, she remains rather hollow. The few moments where she survives because of her own actions are fantastic, but just as often, she survives because someone else sacrifices themselves.
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She is infinitely better than Bella Swan on paper, but I could see how her constant self denial and self doubting could easily be exaggerated into Bella 2.0 on the screen.
I’m a bit torn on that point. I think Katniss was strong when she believed she had no other choice. When there were more options available, she tended to seem less courageous. She also seemed unable to function when life was normal because she’d never had a normal life growing up. She was more in her element in the Hunger Games and in the war, but being able to just sit around and be happy was something she had no experience with, so she tended to mope and be hollow, as you say. I agree that it could get a bit annoying and I found myself skimming at certain points of Katniss’ internal monologues because they got so angsty and repetitive. also thought that some of the male characters contributed to Katniss seeming helpless because so many of them had the “Mario must save the Princess in the castle” complex instead of believing she could help herself.
True. The male characters didn’t help. I thought one of the more intriguing aspects of her persona was that she was truly only interested in those who needed her help. While I suppose this was supposed to make her seem compassionate, it also made her seem very manipulative and self-serving.
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And I admit, I hated the ending. I hate that they went the Disney hetero-normative route and pretty much dampened if not entirely negated all her accomplishments.
Correction: that’s Ray not Rae. …typing too fast.