The majority of today’s youth seem to gravitate more towards action, adventure, and maybe a bit of romance. These are more commonly being wrapped up into a dystopian fiction nowadays whether that be inside a book or movie. Now why is this? Authors and directors have realized something very important relating to teenagers. In a world where our faces are glued to any kind of electronic device we can get our hands on and that everything we might desire is within arm's reach, I think it's safe to say we live a cushioned life. Teenagers are curious to feel and experience these foreign struggles and deprivations that a dystopian fiction will offer being that their whole world is most of the time safe and comfortable.This generation is crying out for change and while change may not be happening in this precise moment, they look to books and movies like these that will exhilarate and engage every feeling and thought they might have.
My point is that who doesn’t want to imagine an alternate world where things are completely different than the norm? Where things seem to do their best to work against you in everyday and you have absolutely no choice but to pick up the pieces and keep going? Where the risk of holding on to hope is all you that you have? When all you've ever been used to is now the exact opposite? Because one day you might wake up and have to decide for yourself what you stand for, and in that could mean life or death for you. Where in schools teens are trained and taught to achieve greater skills like surviving the world around them and fighting for something that they believe in. They get to imagine the possibility of "what if.." Teenagers are longing for a break in the typical routine of everyday life and this genre captures it.
Catching Fire, the sequel to The Hunger Games fits into all of these areas. The fact that it was based off of a book trilogy is one of the great tributing factors of both movies doing so well. The characters live in a world where the government is corrupt and where killing and superiority is welcomed and praised. People are living in poverty; they live to work and die with no chance of a better life. However, it only took one girl to come along and defy the odds. Catching Fire is filled with action, thriller, adventure, and a bit of romance mixed in. Like the book series, the movie is set into the future after a great rebellion of the districts that changed everything for the worst, creating the Hunger Games, a barbaric, sadistic event thought up by the government and televised every year to the people of the districts. They basically watch their own kids kill and be brutally killed. It definitely falls under the dystopian fiction category.
The movie is about Katniss and Peeta and struggle and determination for survival as they are tossed into yet again, another Hunger Games. Fighting for each other and for their loved ones, Katniss and Peeta grow closer once again and do everything they can to both make it out alive. But things are different this time; this time they have allies and that is what can make all the difference. With the president of the Capital determined to see them killed in order to what he thinks will cease the amplifying rebellion that was sparked by the outcome of the previous year's hunger games, by the girl on fire. The odds are not exactly in their favor. Little do they know some undiscovered sources are at work to save them which leads on into the plot of the next movie.
I thought Catching Fire was incredible, especially compared to the first movie, which in my opinion, didn't live up to my expectations. Nothing makes a book lover like myself happier when a movie actually follows the book well. Of course no movie is absolutely perfect in that way, but Catching Fire came close. It's impossible to not put yourself into one of the characters roles to feel every pain and struggle they have. Capturing every detail and emotion you imagined and felt while reading the book and being able to see it expressed on screen is absolutely amazing and makes midnight premieres worth all the while. That's what I believe made the movie such a success with not only teenagers but people of all ages. It was truly a well acted and directed movie.