The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

I know what you're thinking.  Isn't this blog dead?  Yes, I thought so too.  But you know what can bring me out of retirement, albeit briefly?  Fangirling.

OMG THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE IS THE GREATEST MOVIE I'VE EVER SEEN!!!

OK fine, not the greatest, but 7000 times better than the first and 800% met my expectations for it!! My 14-year-old self was very, very happy!

Pretty sure the second book is my favorite of the trilogy, very close to the first.  As for the movies, I thought the first one was alright.  There was too much good stuff from the book left out of it for me and while it was cool to see the characters and story brought to life, it was a bit disappointing.  Have I still watched it multiple times? Yes,  But actually, now that I've seen the second movie, the first is dreck by comparison.

I'm not even really sure what the difference is, but this director is on it.  It makes me sad that the first movie exists.  Can't they redo it?  Forget it ever happened and make it more like this one?  I guess it's that it's way more faithful to the book than the first movie was.  It totally brought everything to life, and anything that was left out I'm OK with being left out.  They hit everything I wanted to see.  And they made me wish the movie was 5 times longer.  If it had taken place in real-book-time, it would have been amazing.  They truly did my favorite installment justice.

The book certainly had a lot of kickass characters, and the movie versions were perfect.  Johanna was awesome.  Finnick was amazingly perfect - can't wait to see his story continue (angst!!!!).  Haymitch and Peeta continue to rule my life with their perfection.  And Gale continues to suck, but that's OK because he's Gale -- he's supposed to suck.  And that makes him perfect.  And while there were a couple times where I thought too much Awesome Jennifer Lawrence Personality was sneaking in to the performance, Katniss rules too.

So what's next?  I hate the third book.  But I'm excited about the movies now that this one was good!  It gives me hope.  Because they're splitting that damn book into 2 movies -- they had better be worth it.  They should have split this one into 2 movies.  And made it a 5-hour epic.  I would watch that 100 times.

So now here I am, dying to see it again soon.  And re-reading Catching Fire so I can relive the flaily teen angst and drama.

I LOVE IT!