376. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson

Director: Francis Lawrence

Running Time: 146 mins

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is an American film, and is the sequel to The Hunger Games. At the 75th edition of the games, Katniss and Peeta return along with previous winners, where the intent of the Capitol is to have Katniss eliminated to crush any potential uprising against his dictatorial regime.

The first edition of this series was brilliant, because of how it set up this fascinating idea of The Hunger Games, the fact that the story was great fun to follow, and also because it was full of great action from start to finish.

However, the one thing that that didn’t do so well was represent why this society was in such disarray, and that was what I thought was the main improvement in this sequel.

From the start, this story had a much darker and more gruesome note to it, therefore giving a much more believable representation of the dystopian society in which the story is set. Bringing in more complex political themes, this film was incredibly more engrossing to watch than its predecessor, due to the shocking nature of some of the terrors going on in society, such as control by fear and quashing of any symbols of hope.

But it didn’t forget the action side. Once the deep and dark atmosphere had been firmly put into place, the actual games began, and they were even bigger, scarier and more action-packed than they’ve ever been, with a much more dramatic tone as well as a very confusing and mysterious element to them.

Because of the fact that this film managed to pick up from where it so brilliantly left off, and then add on extra brilliantly fascinating themes that made the whole story so much more engrossing, I’ll give this an 8.9.

(By the way, this ends on quite a dramatic cliffhanger, so I can’t wait for the next one!)