Extra Nate: Hunger Games Closing Thoughts
It’s Extra Nate! The once a month sensation that’s sweeping the globe!
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So let’s talk about the Hunger Games because after having some time to digest it, I think I know how it could’ve been better. I understand it’s the height of hubris to present my idea like I’m better than Suzanne Collins and it’s a hell of a lot easier to critique a work than to create the work itself. Obviously she’s more successful in the field of writing than I will ever be and my stupid thoughts can’t take away from that. With that disclaimer out of the way: here are some thoughts on how I think it could be done better because my thoughts are smarter and sexier and more dangerous and cannot be contained within a book. That’s why I haven’t published as much as her. Because I’m just too good. That’s what we’re going with.
Starting with the first book… no notes. Hunger Games 1 is a great book. I think it still holds up after all these years. I even awarded it a WABie. Solid book. I wouldn’t change anything about it. I think it’s pretty obvious that most of her ideas were spent on the initial book. I mentioned on the podcast that we have a book villain and a main villain. The main villain is President Snow and the Capitol in general. He represents the decadence and the cruelty of the system set against Katniss and the Districts. She can’t beat him with an arrow to the face (or she shouldn’t anyway). She also can’t beat him in the first or second books because then we have nowhere to go (unless you wanted to beat him in the 2nd book and then do a God Emperor where we flash forward and nothing has changed and the real enemy was complacency and corruption – but let’s put that aside for now). In the first book Snow was present briefly. It was clear he represented the Capitol which was an omnipresent evil. They did evil things and had such a lavish lifestyle while the Districts were in squallor. They didn’t care about all the people they ruled over like slaves. Katniss was defiant to the Capitol and she got a small win over it, but at the end of the day, the Capitol still exists. It suffered no real harm. The villain of the first book that Katniss needed to overcome physically was Cato. He banded a bunch of tributes together. He was strong and smart and wanted to murder Katniss. The stakes were elevated after Cato gutted Peeta like a fish and one of his henchmen killed Rue. Katniss had to overcome him in order to survive the games and get her win. That’s why, despite the Capitol still being around, the book felt complete. It felt like there was a conclusion and catharsis of our protagonist defeating the antagonist. Cato was the antagonist. We don’t get that in later books.
Book 2: Catching Fire. First off I’m not a fan of the name. Hunger Games 2: Starving for Justice was right there and we squandered it, but that’s okay. The villain of this book was set-up to be the New Security Officer (or NSO as I will call him going forward) who whipped the hell out of Gale and generally made everybody miserable. Then abruptly… new hunger games. This guy? Doesn’t matter. Katniss wanting to rebel? Nope, you’re off to the Capitol. Bye. Then NSO dies in the fire bombing (or maybe not? He’s never mentioned again) of District 12 and the book ends on a cliffhanger after ANOTHER Hunger Games.
How would I have changed this? Well, we talked about it on the podcast. If you want a second Hunger Games then just have Katniss be the one training the tribute rather than the tribute itself. The Capitol in this book really seems dumb and evil for no reason. They aren’t trying to placate the masses and everything they do seems to piss of the Districts AND even the Capitol’s own citizens (seriously, why did they try and kill past tributes?). Instead I’d just drop that portion. The first part of the book could be Katniss and Gale. Because Gale has anger and resentment toward the Capitol and he was a non-factor in the first book. You can’t have a love-triangle if a third of the triangle doesn’t exist. I’d have most of the book focus on Gale and Katniss’s relationship so that there is a real triangle here because this is still a YA series and we have to have that as a trope. I guess.
So Gale and Katniss. Let’s do that. Gale hates the Capitol and wants to stop them. Katniss doesn’t want to. The Capitol isn’t blowing people up because that’s only going to make them rebel further, but they’re not exactly winning hearts and minds either. The revolution hasn’t started yet, like it has in the actual book. Katniss doesn’t really care. Then the NSO comes in and whips the shit out of Gale and that’s what pushes Katniss to rebel. Haymitch tells her that he once thought that way, but District 12 is a crappy coal mining town. They couldn’t win. Katniss ponders how she might get a message out to the other Districts because she realizes that, yes, District 12 can’t win. But maybe all 12 Districts united can. Because the Capitol divides them. That’s how they have won so far.
Then you can have that second Hunger Games where Katniss is forced to mentor someone. Maybe it’s Madge. Maybe it’s someone else she knows. Maybe it’s Prim’s friend (but not Prim herself, let’s not be ridiculous). Katniss gets to know this girl. Shares her hopes and dreams. Then watches as the Capitol murders her in the arena. I’d say she should get taken out, not by another contestant, but by the Capitol sending a message. The message being that they can do this every year if she doesn’t behave. Next year she’ll have another young girl to tutor and next year they can kill her even if she’s performing well in the arena. You submit to us and we’ll give her a fair shot to live. You don’t? Whoops we dropped a fire ball on her so she dies in agony.
During this time Katniss could also start talking to the other tributes. The older ones. She can get to know them. She can start to network. She can get a feel for how the other districts are going. Then she can realize that the other Districts are primed for rebellion (except 2 I guess) and all she needs is one little push. She thinks she could be that push. Maybe during this she learns that the Capitol has a serious problem. Some unknown factor. She has to sneak into a place to retrieve some data without getting caught (or maybe she does get caught or maybe there’s suspicion, and that’s why the Capitol kills her tribute?) and she learns that District 13 wasn’t destroyed. There’s another military force out there that could supply the other Districts with weapons and leadership. Together they might be able to beat the Capitol. She returns from the Capitol and the final part of the book is trying to get a message out to 13 and finding out Haymitch is in on it all. Her plan to get a message out works but NSO catches her (hell, maybe he could be assigned to her in the Capitol too so he’s present throughout the entire book?). Now she has to defeat this book’s villain. She beats him in combat with Gale and Peeta’s help. Then the power is cut. They recognize what’s happening and evacuate the town just in time for her to watch it get fire bombed by the Capitol. All hope appears lost… then District 13 shows up. They got her message. Time to finish this.
Book 3: Mockingjay. Hmmmm how about Ravenous for Blood. They can’t all be winners. So now you have Peeta without his mind wiped. You have Gale more fleshed out. Katniss can resolve that love triangle during this book. I think the war needs to happen but Katniss shouldn’t be directly involved in it or should be a smaller part of it than she was. Because we need to focus on the characters, not the manufactured horrors of war. Think Return of the Jedi. Luke went to fight Vader while his friends did a lot of the heavy lifting. Katniss needs to confront Snow. She needs to have a war of words and the mind with him. The propaganda fits that, I suppose. I wasn’t a huge fan of it but it does get the job done. This book could also use a villain that isn’t Snow. Someone Katniss will need to physically overcome before facing Snow in the end. Snow isn’t a physical threat to Katniss. Maybe Snow needs to have a real reason for why he’s doing the things he’s doing besides “because I’m evil.” Maybe there needs to be another perspective here. Maybe Snow is just the product of the system and Katniss realizes that the system itself needs to be totally dismantled. She kind of realizes that in the actual book 3 but it felt really strange to me. Yeah, Coin is bad, but if Coin dies… is there not a Vice President who will follow her agenda? Like in modern politics, if we change the president things might shift a little this way or that, but the money behind the power and the systems that allowed this to happen will still exist. Maybe that’s a lot of ask from a YA novel and I’m obviously not giving a good answer here. I mean you could always just do the Return of the Jedi and blow up the big bad and then go “and then everybody celebrated over the victory and we will form a New Republic and also Hayden Christensen is here? That’s weird.”
Or you could finish Snow in the second book and make book 3 in the future where nothing has changed and she needs to be that change. Because we had a war 75 years ago that almost wiped out our species. 75 years later, we’re gearing up to do it all again. We’ve learned nothing. I think there needs to be a theme here. A thesis that needs to be answered. Fallout says “war never changes.” In New Vegas it then states “if war never changes, man must change.” That’s the thesis. I guess I don’t really understand what the Hunger Games is trying to say at the end of the day. Snow was bad and evil and even stupid for seemingly no reason. Coin was evil but in a different way. If both of those people die… ???… then peace? I think the 2nd book needs a few tweeks to really fix it. The 3rd book needs something more. There’s just not a lot of meat on that bone and it’s just a miserable and depressing slog. That’s just my 2 cents though. I think that’s all I have to say. I’m not proofreading this.
