Ironically today, while talking about Shakespeare, my English professor said, “there is something about seeing your favorite characters fleshed out on screen and on stage, truly bleeding and fighting for their life.” Walking out of The Hunger Games‘ midnight release, I was thoroughly pleased; everything that I remembered from that story I read about two years ago was portrayed so well and so exact, I couldn’t help but outright claim it was one of the best book-to-movie films of this popularity to be released. Those things that made me cringe and cry and cuss were all there, and I felt the same eeriness about how much the Capitol idolizes the killing of young children. Unfortunately, the first thing I hear out of pretty much everybody I came with was, “They didn’t show that part where [insert scene here].” A friend of mine even went as far as to say that it was a horrible, shallow adaptation that had horrible acting and even worse screenwriting. To this I say: get over it, fans. You can’t have it all.

Fans, you have to understand the medium in which both of these stories are portrayed: books and movies. Books on one hand can show you everything, or show you only one side of things. The Hunger Games focuses solely on Katniss’ point of view so as to truly delve into to the brutal effects that violence and war has on the individual psyche. Thankfully, the movie did not attempt to do a Katniss voice-over. That is where the differences between books and film come in. Since we cannot see into Katniss’ thoughts on film, the screenwriters have to have some way of making the plot flow together in a smooth way that everyone (even the non-readers) can understand. They are entertaining a movie theater full of people, not just one person inside their own head. The fact is that this means they cannot include every single little detail that knits a novel together. Two big examples: the lack of Avox inclusion and Peeta’s miraculously un-amputated leg. For the sake of understanding I will argue both sides.

About the Avox that Katniss sees abducted in the forest and then again in the Capitol with her tongue cut out: I don’t see it as significant enough to THIS story’s plot to include, and I understand why the screenwriters decided to exclude it. This small factor shows the brutality of The Capitol, yes, but in terms of the movie, the audience gets that fact already, by the fact of the Hunger Games’ existence alone. Showing them laughing and cheering at the Tribute’s imminent death pretty much encompasses how this future audience looks at violence. The Avox girl gives movie-Katniss no emotional motivation (that is covered by her love for Prim). On the other hand, perhaps there needs to be this exposure the violence outside of the Hunger Games. By adding in this small subplot–that doesn’t really require much movie time or intense CGI–it would have been easy to remind the audience that The Capitol is cruel in more ways than one.

About Peeta’s leg, I pretty much shrug. If you really think about it, how much does Peeta’s injury come up in the later books, and how much does it affect him emotionally? In the book, it can be seen as a physical representation of the mental injuries left on Peeta for the things he had to do to survive. In a way, The Capitol “changed” him, even though he fought so hard to stay who he was. It is something that follows him around for the rest of his life. Then again, for those of you who have read the next two novels (I will not spoil) his scars become much deeper and more gruesome than an amputated leg that doesn’t seem to cause him much hindrance. So in screenwriter world it understandably went to the chopping block.

Those are only two of the many little details that didn’t make it into the movie. I could name others, but I’m going to have to cut out parts of this long article anyway. The point is that before you start bashing a book-to-movie film, try arguing from both a fan and a screenwriter’s perspective. It is ok if you are sad that one of your favorite parts didn’t make it onto the screen; we go to see these movies to see those things placed in reality. But look at the film as a whole and you’ll see it kept the most important parts of the novel, portrayed them to the fullest extent, and then added ways for the movie to flow in a way that is interesting and gripping. Remember that Suzanne Collins herself co-wrote the screenplay, which is something neither Twilight nor Harry Potter can claim. Overall this film was brilliantly faithful without nit-picking over the tiniest of details. So fans: quit complaining and recognize this film for what it did instead of what it did not.