danyerr replied to your post: danyerr replied to your post: Started and finished…
while the BR movie is not fundamentally different, it still does take some liberties with characters. (most of the differences are in character background stories.) otherwise the movie stays pretty true to the premise and main story line of BR.I definitely see some obvious similarities between BR and HG, but I think as soon as you get into Catching Fire the HG story shifts from being about the games themselves as to what the games are a symptom of and the bigger picture. Whereas I think in BR, the battle itself is a microcosm symbolizing a bigger picture, and that battle and what happen to each character there is the entire story.
The overall ‘boy and girl try to work together to thwart the game’ ends up being similar, and the whole alliances being formed and broken, all that is reminiscent of Battle Royale, I felt BR’s ‘battle’ was way more structured than Hunger Games’ ‘game’ is. (What with BR’s maps and collars and quadrants and time constraints and whatnot).
I do believe her when Ms. Collins claims she wasn’t inspired by Battle Royale in any way (because why would she lie about that?) but I really wouldn’t have been surprised if she had said that was one of the things that sparked the idea.
Then again, the whole battle to the death (like gladiator battles), and hunting humans (like The Most Dangerous Game) isn’t a new idea…
What do you think?
in all honesty i have been avoiding HG like the plague because it sounds so similar, and i can see myself being really disgruntled and judgmental while reading it.
my boyfriend had told me the book (he was just really excited when he first read it, and decided it was necessary to tell me the whole goddamn thing), and i kept saying to him “you were actually reading battle royale, you just don’t know it yet”.
but i’m actually really glad that they’re different! i’ve been desperately trying to find someone who’s experienced both HG and BR to give me their opinion, but my classmates and coworkers are oddly unfamiliar with contemporary japanese dystopian fiction (who knew, right??), so they just kind of look at me with puzzled expressions.
anyway the point is that i’m all about dystopian fiction, and have been hoping HG wasn’t an exact replica so that i could read it without feeling like it was a cheap rip-off of one of my favorite novels. i’ll read it and let you know once i have even more feelings than i do now.
