Monday, August 27, 2012

Battle Royale and The Hunger Games





I do accept the fact that I have seen the movie Battle Royale way too late than most of the people, In fact I also accept that I saw this movie AFTER I heard the rumors that the idea in the books and movies Hunger games by Suzanne Collins was kind of copied off from Battle Royale. I wanted to check out for myself because the series hunger games is one of my favorites.
 So moving on , I saw the movie Battle Royale and I was kind of surprised at the high ratings given to it at IMDB, I do appreciate the idea because that was undoubtedly original but since idea isn’t the only thing that makes something awesome, and that is where the my conflicting opinions come in. I thought Battle Royale was good in its idea but it was somewhat lacking in refinement. Also the fact that the acting in the movie was plain terrible! I haven’t read the book Battle Royale, I just saw the movie so therefore I will compare both movies and Battle Royale and hunger games rather than books.
Battle Royale gave the idea of collapsing economy where children were starting to get ruthless and employment rate was dropping and what not so therefore the government passed a bill called Battle Royale that randomly selects some class to be shipped off to some deserted island and made to fight to death. Three days the students are supposed to fight to death till one stands remaining or they all simply die. In the movie the class which is chosen gets right down to business and starts killing with their randomly given bags which could posses any type of weapon for them, ranging from axes to GPAs to even pot lids. There are many things that struck me as plain weird in the movie. First what is the point of the battle?
I mean yeah the teacher explains and stuff but living in a collapsing economy where any class at random could be skipped off to die wouldn’t that make the people take out their kids from school all together and thus effect the economy further? I know my mom wouldn’t send me to school if she thought there was even a remotest chance that the school might kidnap and force me to kill my class fellows. I just want to know how battle Royale was helping the country. See? Refinement, the idea is all well and good of battle to death but you could at least explain why. I also read that people think the movie and books are like satire on their society because the kids are becoming violent and disrespectful, yea I still don’t think this battle is the way to gain respect and PEACE. Talk about killing for peace right? Moving on the movie, another thing that struck me as weird was how quickly they all recovered from the fact that they were all kidnapped and the teacher just killed two of their class fellows in front of them. i swear if it were me I would not have left that room into God know where alone with that weapons bag like they did, like all waving their hands at their friends and running to get that bag  (one guy even punched the air like he won the friggin Emmy.) I think its psychologically impossible to wrap your head around this kind of thing in like 15 minutes, “ohh I have to kill all my class fellows?, including my best friends? , oh and if I don’t in three days my head explodes?, oh yess HIGH FIVE!!!”. Okay so they all started the games and one minute later they trying to kill each other, no hesitance, no depression just plain killing until there is the person of opposite sex in front of them , yess then they all say stuff like ‘I’ve had a crush on you’ or ‘I loved you for so long’. I’m serious they all had nothing better to say given the circumstances, during the movie I got so sick of people telling each other they liked them just before they died a very funny way that it started to seem funny, in fact the whole movie started to seem funny because the way people were dying was just so unreal and weird. If you’re so scared and don’t want to kill anyone so you decide to call for peace from the top of the mountains to everyone to seize fire you don’t yell stuff like “someone someone had a crush on you for so long” yes, you simply don’t do that, yes yes I get that they’re are in ninth grade and they’re kids but I think even kids when faced with life or death on in this matter death and death don’t do this kind of stuff, was I the only one who remembered  that they were all going to die? Then there are like five or six girls who are weirdly VERY cheerful about having this guy upstairs in the light house and they’re like peaceful until a girl poisons the soup and one of them dies . Then very rationally they all kill each other deciding who poisoned the soup, yes because that’s what cheerful girls do. Anyway there are these guys also who make bombs and hack into the systems of the game to shut it down or something but the thing is, they figure out that the teacher is listening on to their conversations through the neck thingies they’re all wearing. It’s apparently very hard to figure out that the guy who was yelling stuff like “I DID IT, I MADE THE HACKING SOFTWARE” would be the one who brought the systems down , because the teacher and evil guys ask each other stuff like “who did this?” and “Why did it happen??” , seriously? It couldn’t be the guy who was yelling “I did it”?? nahh that’s too obvious I guess. There is a lot of stuff that was way too weird to comprehend. The acting was really bad though so at least that was there to laugh at. Also the alleged danger zones the teacher announced 3 times day, what the danger zones were and what would happen if one was there was not explained.
I did think the idea was cool given that it was original. In hunger games a lot of ideas were same like the announcing the people killed or things to keep the students moving, but I would again say that hunger games was refined, it gave reasons for the games and how it worked and how it helped the country while Battle Royale was not that refined, it could fall more into the category of mindless killing movies maybe. Looking at psychological factors and the story, hunger games was more accurate. I would say even of it was a copy of the ides it’s still better, at least its acting was good and had logic as to why things were happening the way they were.
i think both movies are worth watching one being my favorite and other being the original idea.

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