Watch out paranormal romance. Dystopian science fiction is coming for you. Last night, I saw The Hunger Games, starring the exquisite Jenifer Lawrence, whom I first saw in Winter’s Bone (That’s right, not X-Men). I am a huge fan of the best-selling, award-winning Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, and I was not disappointed in this adaptation.

The Hunger Games paints a bleak picture of the future: a post-war North America, called Panem, divided into 13 districts whose citizens are compelled by their Capitol to send a young male and female “tribute” to fight to the death every year in the televised, eponymous Hunger Games. It’s not your typical teen date movie, I suppose. Of course, the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, is not your typical teen girl protagonist. Without giving too much away, I will say that Katniss finds herself competing in the games to survive and on her own terms.

Any film adaptation of a book that I love makes me worry. The Hunger Games, directed by Gary Ross, was pretty faithful to the book without being bogged down in details. Something has to be left out, and I think the screenwriters mostly used good judgment. I was concerned that the audience would be unable to relate to Katniss without her inner monologue provided to the reader in the book (just thank God they didn’t use narration, ick), though the way the film was put together, we could see her justification for her actions and words without it being too painfully obvious. I was also worried that to achieve a PG-13 rating, they would tone down the bloodshed too much. For a book for young teenagers, The Hunger Games is spectacularly violent. The filmmakers were able to tone down a little without diluting the horror of children forced to kill each other by their government. The acting was good for the main characters but less great for the supporting characters. Jennifer Lawrence was wonderful. Also, can I just say how much I love, love, love Woody Harrelson?

My problems with this movie are few. My only technical complaint is the camera work. They overused handheld shoots which made it difficult to follow the action sequences. There was not enough character development for a couple of the characters I think deserved it, and a few plot developments were difficult to follow for viewers who haven’t read the books. I am not someone who needs to be spoonfed everything, but I would have liked more exploration of the power of the Capitol and the Panem Universe. They also downplayed the biting critique on mass media and PR manipulation that made the books so brilliant, but hey, it IS media, so… Also, as my boyfriend informed me, some plot developments were predictable. I understand where he’s coming from, but I do not think the author meant anything to be surprising. The story is about the transformative power of violence and marketing, and the film almost captured it. Let’s hope the rest of the trilogy gets its due, so we can see it fully developed. Rating 3 out of 5 stars.