So Becca wrote a fairly decent argument that innately slapped anyone who thought The Hunger Games movie was a failure on the wrist for being too whiny. For wanting to bake your cake and eat it too, essentially. And it definitely got my blood boiling.

You may have read a comment or two by me, maybe the better term is fanatical rant rather than comment, but I truly think I’m justified to be an unhappy costumer. Time and time again I’ve seen a good book become a terrible movie and frankly I’m done with accepting it as the normal status quo. So to Becca and everyone else telling me to get over it, I say not in a million years.

I completely disagree with the notion that The Hunger Games movie was an amazing, spectacular or simply good book-to-movie film. Reread the book and watch the movie right after and tell me they did a decent adaptation, then we’ll talk. I thought the movie was horrible! Absolutely horrendous as an adaptation.

So no, I will not get over it. I’m not going to be blase about a failed book-to-movie adaptation just because I’ve seen it happen so many times. Just because this one did a little better than other adaptations doesn’t make it gold.

Did I expect to see every part of the book translated onto the screen? No, of course not. I’m not an idiot. But I am sick and tired of watching a movie change the book’s material for no apparent reason. You want to talk screen writing and time constraints, fine, take out the excessive bits like the Avox storyline. To be honest you could probably fit that better in Catching Fire than in this movie. Remove some of the gadgets like the nightglasses, which they did. I was perfectly okay with that.

Involve Flickerman and Templesmith more and use them as a tool to explain things that the book only referred to in Katniss’s head. Good call, I loved it. Haymitch sending actual messages to Katniss to help promote the fake romance idea. Good move.
But why on earth did Seneca Crane, a man no one knows about until the Catching Fire book, have so much screen time? Why was President Snow so fully focused on when he should have just been more of an off screen foreboding threat?

Why were certain death scenes changed for no reason what so ever? It takes one second to hit Clove in the head with a rock! Why the unnecessary change? These are my questions! This is what infuriates me! I know there are big subplots that just can’t make the cut but why do little details that do make it into the movie get ruined too?

I understand that its a movie and not a book. But its based off a book so it should reflect not only the book’s overall message, but also the book’s material. Peeta should have lost his leg. The movie should have focused more on Katniss like the book. Peeta should have found out that Katniss was playing him the whole time.

I’m not asking for voice overs or a five hour movie about a girl running through the woods. I want to go see a book-to-movie film and get giddy as school girl in my seat when scene after scene plays out like it did the book. Obviously not every scene will make it but the greater majority of it should be quotable from the actual novel!

You don’t go to see a film like this to see a poetic interpretation of a book, you go to these movies because you loved reading it and wanted to see the story and characters come to life. Or you even go just to see if you would like to read the book and if that’s the case I’d appreciate a better representation of the novel than a misleading one, wouldn’t you?

And as far as authors go, they’re all idiots in my opinion. Suzanne Collins right now is the biggest idiot because she got so much input and didn’t bother to protect what she wrote more effectively. Perhaps, she had regrets with the book and was looking for a fresh way to rewrite it, who knows? But what I do know is that once you write and publish a book it no longer belongs just to your imagination.

Now it’s out there in the world gaining followers, and dedicated fans don’t change scenes or rewrite anything just because it didn’t translate well in their heads. Fans become the life sustenance of a book series like this. Its the fans you should aim to please. Not the authors. They’re all too willing to rewrite something they didn’t quite like after publishing or too unattached to certain details despite how rabid the readers are about it.

I don’t want it all. I just want it right.

I want to go to a movie based off a book and be both entertained and satisfied by its adaptation. Is that really so much to ask for? Think of how much more money the movies would make if a happy medium could be found where fanatics and curious spectators along for the ride both walk away happy. The numbers would be astronomical! And I don’t think its an impossible achievement.

I think that this movie with a little more tweaking and maybe ten or fifteen more minutes could have done it, especially with such a decent cast! I’m just tired of it. I’m tired of the lame, bogus excuses of “that wouldn’t have translated well into the movie” or “we ran out of time.” Trust me, there’s a way. Hollywood just isn’t looking for it.

So maybe you shouldn’t settle? Maybe you shouldn’t focus on what can be easily translated, but instead realize what could be directly translated. What’s so hard about putting the novel’s dialogue into a script when it works on film? Seriously, where’s the issue there?

I’m a disgruntled consumer. This is not the product I paid for. Fix it, Hollywood, or give me my money back.