I wish I was a bigger fan of this series than I am. It has all the parts of something I’d really be into, but The Hunger Games just can’t seem to hit the bar for me. I’ve read the first book only and thought it was good, the movie being a good adaptation but failed to be really engaging.

Catching Fire gave me the exact same feeling that the first did. It has all the production of an expensive Hollywood movie but left me indifferent about everything happening on screen. First, it’s really predictable. As such, it felt like little more than a bridge episode to something far greater and more interesting in the next movie. We follow down the beaten path to social revolution with the populous being so suppressed that they are just itching to pop the second Katniss says the word. The format and pacing is almost exactly the same as the first movie so that makes it feel even more like a retread. Again we start out in District 12 and see that everything sucks. The seeds of revolution are taking root. Then, the set up for the annual Hunger Games that the evil government loves so much. Katniss and Petea get thrown into The Hunger Games again (cue ‘oh no! This is terrible and unfair!’). We hop on the train and zip back to Hunger Games HQ where we go through the same meet-the-rest-of-the-cast, training and interview segment as before (but wisely done faster), then the actual Game to get to the end where we get a ‘dramatic’ reveal to the credits.

While it’s not a bad movie and series, I don’t understand why it’s so unbelievably popular.