Gary Ross
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…reminiscent not so much of a Winkleman as a Flickerman – Stanley Tucci's Caesar Flickerman in The Hunger Games films.
That was of course the point behind King’s idea – even if in the years since, through The Hunger Games, Squid Game and others, it became something of a stock premise for satirical science-fiction films and shows.
…this version invites comparisons to The Hunger Games and especially Black Mirror.
…but we're in a post-Hunger Games world…
After The Hunger Games, Black Mirror, Squid Game, and decades more of media-saturation parables, the idea that we’re addicted to spectacle isn’t exactly a revelation.
Though it came first, “The Running Man” owes a lot to “The Hunger Games” franchise in the way that the Network exec Killian and “Speed the Wheel” host (Sean Hayes, love) are styled like variations of Caesar Flickerman without the warmth of Stanley Tucci.
…and “The Hunger Games” franchise, which shares the same director, Francis Lawrence, as “The Long Walk.”
The scenario is like a more dystopian, less stage-managed version of “The Hunger Games,” except Lawrence (who’s directed all but the first movie in that franchise) is holding back very little of the story’s viciousness.
With a clear thematic kinship to The Hunger Games, Lawrence proves an astute choice…
The Long Walk has been unfavourably compared to Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games saga…
It would be easy to see this as a precursor to the Hunger Games franchise, with which Lawrence has been cinematically involved since nearly its beginning.
It’s a statement that Francis Lawrence previously made with his Hunger Games movies…
The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
Directed by Irving Pichel
influenced The Hunger Games (2012)
Plot Themes
The Richard Connell short story "The Most Dangerous Game," for example, has inspired any number of adaptations, legitimate and otherwise, of its tale of a big-game hunter so bored with taking down regular animals that he sends off human beings to serve as his quarry.
"The Hunger Games" has other things on its mind, namely raw survival, in the vein of "The Most Dangerous Game."
And the finished film, though it combines elements familiar from short stories "The Lottery" and "The Most Dangerous Game," does come off as a lethal "Survivor" or even"American Idol" with deadly weapons.
He might have added The Truman Show (for the TV cameras hidden throughout the forest environment to catch every pursuit and fatality), Oliver Twist (for the children forced by adults into criminal behavior), Romeo and Juliet (for the poison that two lovers plan to take) and, centrally, Richard Connell’s 1924 story “The Most Dangerous Game,” whose scenario of a mad Cossack trapping humans on his Caribbean island and hunting them down like big game has inspired a couple dozen Hollywood films.
“Truman Show’’ and “Wizard of Oz’’ are joined by “Logan’s Run,’’ “The Running Man,’’ “The Most Dangerous Game,’’ “The 10th Victim,’’ “1984,’’ “Big Brother,’’ “Red Dawn,’’ and countless other influences, and there’s an angry online contingent of “Battle Royale’’ fans that want their 2000 drive-in Japanese classic left in peace.
The picture's entire second half is dedicated to the morbid title festivities, and anyone familiar with Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game," 1987's "The Running Man," 2001's "Battle Royale," 2001's "Series 7: The Contenders," or 2007's "…
The Giver (2014)
Directed by Phillip Noyce
influenced by Pleasantville (1998), The Hunger Games (2012)
Visuals Plot
Today it just looks like a low-rent mishmash of Divergent and The Hunger Games , recycling riffs from Logan’s Run with sets and costumes lifted from Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey .
Yet because both “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent” hit the screen first, the movie version of “The Giver” — scene by formulaic scene, narrative cliché by cliché — can’t help but come off as a poor copy of those earlier pictures.
The problem with the film adaptation isn’t simply that it messes with this simple plot—it’s that every single deviation from the book is meant to either push the story into the realm of familiar cliché, or to more closely and unnecessarily copycat the dystopian specifics of current YA hits like The Hunger Games and Divergent.
Not only does the screenplay tap into the essence of the futuristic tale, but it elaborates upon Lowry’s delicate and straight forward storyline—but this movie knows when to say when, running up to 97 minutes—short compared to The Hunger Games at 142 minutes, or Divergent ’s 139, even with the addition of the obligatory chase scene, the second of the film’s two endings (the first one is Lowry’s).
It's a scenario that has been developed in slightly different directions by the likes of The Hunger Games and Divergent, and it even has a scene reminiscent of the Sorting Hat selection in Harry Potter.
That said, the book's themes about the importance of passion, of celebrating differences, encouraging creativity and the joy of life in all its stages remain intact in “The Giver,” the new film based on the popular series that preceded both “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent.”
The questions raised here, regarding the morality of violence as entertainment and the brutality of pitting children against each other, have been addressed before, and to more potent effect, in films like "Series 7: The Contenders" and the shockingly violent Japanese actioner "Battle Royale."
It has the overall foundation of “Battle Royale” (although it is not as intense or adult in nature as this cult favorite).
Harry Potter meets Battle Royale meets Ender's Game?
What sets Collins's books apart from these is the idea of the warriors being average teenagers; but even that twist has already been used in director Kinji Fukasaku's great "Battle Royale" (2000), to which "Hunger Games" has many similarities.
How is it that author Suzanne Collins has no lawsuits pending against her for totally plagiarizing Battle Royale with her The Hunger Games?
When this book was first being developed by Lionsgate, there were the inevitable comparisons to the Japanese film “Battle Royale,” which features a very similar scenario in which an entire class of school children is pitted against one another, fighting to the death on a remote island.
Ocean’s Eight retains a paper-thin connection to Ocean’s Eleven and its sequels by linking Danny Ocean (R.I.P.) with this movie’s lead, his sister, Debbie (Sandra Bullock).
Ross and co-writer Olivia Milch stick to the template of Ocean's Eleven, Soderbergh's first and best overhaul of the 1960 Rat Pack vehicle.
An “Ocean’s” movie is all about the heist, to be sure, but the exhilarating beauty of “Ocean’s Eleven” is that it was a screwball buddy comedy, as well as a romantic comedy, all vibrating through the tossed-off intricacy of the robbery.
You could talk about what’s missing in Ocean’s 8 as compared to Ocean’s Eleven , the 2001 caper remake that this gender swaps.
From the funky, jazzy soundtrack to sliding, fragmenting cuts to whole swaths of the story — there’s even a “please tell me this isn’t about your ex” fight between Debbie and Lou that mirror’s Rusty and Danny’s conversation in Ocean’s Eleven, almost to the letter — Ocean’s 8 desperately wants you to be remembering the films that came before it every step of the way.
But first you'd have to trace the social and political origins behind the rise of reality TV in the '90s – which is the obvious inspiration for a number of similar films, including " The Truman Show " (1998), "Series 7" (2001), and "The Condemned" (2007).
Running through this futuristic tale, about youths ordered to hunt each other in a life-and-death reality show that is staged for the pampered ruling elite by corrupt political leaders in retribution for a failed revolt, are echoes of Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" and films like "The Running Man," the Japanese film "Battle Royale" and even "The Truman Show."
And how do you think The Hunger Games compares to other movies (e.g., The Truman Show ) where characters find themselves under surveillance?
But the film leapfrogs obvious questions in its path, and avoids the opportunities sci-fi provides for social criticism; compare its world with the dystopias in “ Gattaca ” or “ The Truman Show .”
While recalling dystopian tales from "The Running Man" to "The Truman Show," "Games" also incorporates a minor but well-acted love triangle, as opposed to the accidental "Twilight" laughs of Team Dreary vs. Team Wooden.
He might have added The Truman Show (for the TV cameras hidden throughout the forest environment to catch every pursuit and fatality), Oliver Twist (for the children forced by adults into criminal behavior), Romeo and Juliet (for the poison that two lovers plan to take) and, centrally, Richard Connell’s 1924 story “The Most Dangerous Game,” whose scenario of a mad Cossack trapping humans on his Caribbean island and hunting them down like big game has inspired a couple dozen Hollywood films.
In the land's 12 remaining and miserably neglected districts, life among the starving 99-percenters is harsh enough to make"Metropolis" look like a staycation.
It's a social structure with echoes of "The Time Machine," "Metropolis," and John Boorman 's whacked-out "Zardoz."
One thinks of not just the Occupy movement but the division between the working and wealthy classes that inspired such past science-fiction classics as Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" and H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine."
This series has tried its hardest to escape the shadow of the “The Hunger Games,” but between the originally unclear source material in the form of Veronica Roth’s increasingly disappointing novels and the changes made for each film, this story isn’t particularly direct or engaging.
The stories are so similar to "The Hunger Games" that author Suzanne Collins should sue Roth for grand theft.
As such, it shares common themes with Big Sister The Hunger Games and Big Brother The Maze Runner .
The first installment based on Veronica Roth's dystopian young-adult book series, "Divergent," came off as a pale imitation of "The Hunger Games," heavy in exposition and short on action.
It's not quite a blockbuster like, say, "The Hunger Games" or "Twilight", but it isn't a disaster either.
While many readers have enjoyed the book trilogy as much as The Hunger Games , the same isn't true of the film adaptations.
The best examples are from the late ’90s and include Pleasantville – two teenagers are transported into a 1950s sitcom – and The Truman Show, in which Jim Carrey lives inside a fake suburbia, constantly filmed for TV audiences.
The neighbourhood, promoted as safe, secluded, and well planned, is created along the same lines as other superficially perfect fictional communities, from the comically wholesome town in Pleasantville , to the more sinister examples in The Stepford Wives or The Truman Show ; but Yonder goes further.
Genre films such as The Stepford Wives (1975), Edward Scissorhands (1990), and Pleasantville (1998) have memorably employed outlandish concepts to skewer the Western world’s vast wasteland of two-car garages and landscaped cul-de-sacs .
Pero lejos de la sensación de paz y equilibrio que debería causar, este escenario “perfecto” –el cine nos ha enseñado, mediante fantásticas distopías como Pleasantville (Gary Ross, 1998) o El show de Truman (Peter Weir, 1998), a desconfiar de la sonrisa amable de los vecinos, así como de la remilgada moral y el conservadurismo que inculca el sistema establecido– resulta francamente inquietante.
The easy one is that the film is a satire on suburban living, which it is, not unlike “Suburbican,,” “The Burbs,” “Pleasantville,” “The Stepford Wives” and “Get Out.”
Poots and Eisenberg are both excellent as the increasingly maddened couple and the film can be enjoyed purely as a “what the hell is going on?” Cube meets Pleasantville oddball mystery or as a deeper allegory about everything from the mundanity of suburban living to the systemic failure of government for its population just ready to be dug up from the eerily pristine surface.
Say what you will about “The Hunger Games” movies, there is a human touch in the performances, direction, and design of those films that somehow, repeatedly, gets lost in films reminiscent of the Jennifer Lawrence uber-franchise.
Divergent has been compared to The Hunger Games, but at least Suzanne Collins’ fantasy had some sort of real-world relevance, even edging up to social satire.
Since the Twilight series ended and The Hunger Games quadrology started, teen-aimed adaptations of novels with fantastical or supernatural themes – among them, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones and Beautiful Creatures – have been a timid bunch that made an even more tepid total at the box office.
Putting aside the obvious “Harry Potter” rip-off here, allow me to propose a faction for our times: Wannabe knockoffs of “Twilight” and “The Hunger Games.”
Divergent lacks the simplicity in concept of The Hunger Games, an obvious influence and brass ring; it takes exactly 10 words to explain “children must fight to the death for the state’s entertainment,” and a heck of a lot more to unravel why Dauntless and Erudite take their names from adjectives, while the other factions warrant nouns.
With strong themes of female empowerment and individualism mixed in with budding romance and a healthy helping of post-apocalyptic violence, it admittedly bears a more-than-passing resemblance to “The Hunger Games” franchise.
The Running Man (1987)
Directed by Paul Michael Glaser
influenced The Hunger Games (2012)
Plot Themes
The books have a devoted following, and although they’re often compared to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight (for no other reason than they’re bestsellers written for teens), there’s the possibility that done right, the films could have huge crossover appeal for people who have enjoyed everything from Japanese author Koushun Takami’s cult novel and resulting movie Battle Royale to William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies to Stephen King’s The Running Man .
Adults will be familiar with the skeleton of the storyline, which echoes not only Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" but also the much-maligned but creepily prescient Stephen King story/Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, The Running Man.
The Running Man (Paul Michael Glaser, 1987), Battle Royale (Koushun Takami, 2000) and Series 7: The Contenders (Daniel Minahan, 2001) were all set in either the future or an alternate reality where disenfranchised people are forced to take part in a violent competition where they must fight for their survival.
Ironically, the kill-to-win ethos that dominates movies from 1987's prophetic The Running Man to the undiluted brutality of Japan's Battle Royale in 2000, may find its largest viewership in The Hunger Games.
The gimmick of widespread murder as televised entertainment proscribed by the government to sate and distract the increasingly jaded masses would later turn up in films such as the classic 1975 Roger Corman production "Death Race 2000" and the 1987 Stephen King adaptation "The Running Man" (which, in a brilliant stroke of casting, deployed none other than game show staple Richard Dawson, in the role of his career, as the malevolent emcee).
We balked at the sort of show depicted in Stephen King’s The Running Man , but whereas death as entertainment is still an exaggeration, it’s no longer the leap it was once was; not at a time when almost any indignity is transmitted, while the stuff that can’t be for legal reasons is freely available, unedited on the internet.
The 5th Wave (2016)
Directed by J Blakeson
influenced by The Hunger Games (2012)
Plot Themes Visuals
Alien invaders behave intelligently before acting really, really stupidly in “The 5th Wave,” a tween-oriented sci-fi adventure that synthesizes “They Live,” “The Hunger Games,” and countless other visitors-from-another-world sagas.
So how does The 5th Wave compare to The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, or the other YA novels hitting theaters?
The colors are sometimes too bright for such a grim story, and the shattering of group trauma isn't present (the way it is in the opening scenes of " The Hunger Games ").
Placed in the YA spectrum, “The 5th Wave” wants to be “The Hunger Games,” but with its clunky, goofy plot, it ends up more in line with Bella and her pining over Edward and Jacob with occasional bouts against evil vampires than Katniss and her revolution-inspiring defiance against President Snow.
The 5th Wave joins, or at least aspires to, YA-fiction titans The Hunger Games and the Divergent series.
After “The Hunger Games,” “Divergent” and “The Maze Runner” series have jammed multiplexes in recent years, “The 5th Wave,” indeed, feels like the fifth wave of book-to-screen adaptations of end-of-the-world stories aimed at young adults.
The Lottery (1996)
Directed by Daniel Sackheim
influenced The Hunger Games (2012), Pleasantville (1998)
Plot Themes
Adults will be familiar with the skeleton of the storyline, which echoes not only Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" but also the much-maligned but creepily prescient Stephen King story/Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, The Running Man.
Running through this futuristic tale, about youths ordered to hunt each other in a life-and-death reality show that is staged for the pampered ruling elite by corrupt political leaders in retribution for a failed revolt, are echoes of Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" and films like "The Running Man," the Japanese film "Battle Royale" and even "The Truman Show."
It also has close ties to “Lord of the Flies,” “The Running Man” and Shirley Jackson’s well-known story “The Lottery.”
It’s a nasty but transfixing idea, and Shirley Jackson got there first with her unforgettable classic “The Lottery.”
This first feature written and directed by Gary Ross (who co-wrote "Big") starts out as a satirical fantasy about a teenage brother and sister (Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon) projected into a black-and-white '50s sitcom and winds up as a somewhat heavy-handed parable of totalitarianism and racial discrimination, with deliberate echoes of "1984," "Fahrenheit 451" and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery."
Some folks defended the concept by describing the story as a combination of Battle Royale and reality television, which sounded just like Series 7: The Contenders.
The Running Man (Paul Michael Glaser, 1987), Battle Royale (Koushun Takami, 2000) and Series 7: The Contenders (Daniel Minahan, 2001) were all set in either the future or an alternate reality where disenfranchised people are forced to take part in a violent competition where they must fight for their survival.
Many have accused it of cribbing rather generously from Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale (which similarly concerned school kids being ordered by the government to kill one another in an isolated arena) and Daniel Minahan’s Series 7: The Contenders (a Survivor- style mockumentary in which innocents are drafted to a reality show where they must murder their competitors).
The picture's entire second half is dedicated to the morbid title festivities, and anyone familiar with Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game," 1987's "The Running Man," 2001's "Battle Royale," 2001's "Series 7: The Contenders," or 2007's "…
Certainly it has a PG-13 rating to consider so it can’t be as dark and sadistic as the controversial Japanese sensation Battle Royale , but even the little-known Series 7: The Contenders had more to say in 2001 about the sickening depths to which people will sink for reality TV.
In the end, the pic is a little bit of "Predator" with a lot of "The Truman Show" and "The Running Man" (and the little seen or remembered "Series 7: The Contenders").
Far from the Madding Crowd (2015)
Directed by Thomas Vinterberg
influenced by The Hunger Games (2012)
Characters Plot
Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan), whose surname was the inspiration for author Suzanne Collins' character Katniss Everdeen in "The Hunger Games" series, is as resilient a character in 2015 as she was in 1874 when Hardy's novel was published.
One small element that might interest younger audiences of today is that the name of its lead character, Bathsheba Everdene, was Suzanne Collins' inspiration when it came time to give a surname to the heroine of The Hunger Games.
And “Everdene” has a new contemporary context from Katniss Everdeen, the strong-willed heroine of The Hunger Games franchise whose last name is borrowed from the protagonist of Thomas Hardy’s 1897 novel, Far from the Madding Crowd.
Bathsheba Everdene is the acknowledged inspiration for "The Hunger Games" heroine Katniss Everdeen , and even if Bathsheba doesn't have Katniss' archery chops, she battles against an oppressive regime with at least as much chutzpah as her dystopian-future namesake.
Hardy’s self-reliant heroine — who reportedly inspired the surname of a more recent one, Katniss of “The Hunger Games” — is in good hands with Mulligan, a subtle actress whose face speaks volumes even when she’s just quietly observing.
Before Suzanne Collins gave us The Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen, there was Thomas Hardy’s Bathsheba Everdene in Far from the Madding Crowd, another novel about a rural girl and her career and romantic suitors.
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944)
Directed by Preston Sturges
influenced Pleasantville (1998)
Characters
She's a spiritual descendant of the little sister in Preston Sturges' "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek," who looked at her small town and saw only rubes and suckers.
The Maze Runner (2014)
Directed by Wes Ball
influenced by The Hunger Games (2012)
Themes Plot Characters
The world of "The Maze Runner" is so small, especially compared to the vast universes conjured up by things like "The Hunger Games" or "Harry Potter" franchises, so those outside elements act as a way to broaden and expand what is a relatively contained environment.
The story clearly harkens back to dystopian classics such as Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm, but contemporary viewers will probably judge it only as a less sexy version of The Hunger Games.
It combines elements of “Lord of the Flies” with the Minotaur and Orpheus myths, but it plays as something closer to “The Hunger Games” experienced through a dissociative fog.
The inspiration for and the aspirations of the Baton Rouge-shot " The Maze Runner " are so simple and so transparent that both can be summed up in but three words: "The Hunger Games.
Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen is a compelling heroine in The Hunger Games , while Divergent , though a mixed bag, has a lead to root for in Shailene Woodley's Tris Prior.
Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015)
Directed by Wes Ball
influenced by The Hunger Games (2012)
Plot Themes
The filmmakers of course copy as much as they can from The Hunger Games, Divergent, even Ender's Game.
From the outset, it looked like it was just a lazy, brazen attempt by Fox to copy Lionsgate’s success with The Hunger Games.
If the original Maze Runner was a cross between Lord of the Flies and The Hunger Games, this next instalment, based on book two of James Dashner's young adult trilogy, channels Mad Max and Divergent - the fight for survival now takes place among demolished cities and desert landscapes.
Some good people pop up here and there in “Scorch Trials” — Patricia Clarkson, Lili Taylor, Barry Pepper, Giancarlo Esposito — echoing the current trend of mixing respected actors into young adult franchises (Naomi Watts and Kate Winslet in “Divergent”; Julianne Moore and Philip Seymour Hoffman in “The Hunger Games”).
2014's " The Maze Runner " (based on the first in James Dashner's three-part YA fantasy book series) separated itself from the onslaught of dystopian book-to-movie adaptations such as " The Hunger Games " and " Divergent " by opting for mystery over exposition, told from the perspectives of characters stranded in a labyrinth-surrounded glade who had no memories beyond their first names.
If you're not fed up with the sci-fi subgenre where brave, photogenic teenagers in a dystopian future fight the never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American Way, this one is passable enough—The Hunger Games without Jennifer Lawrence, Divergent without Shailene Woodley.
It’s a game called Nerve that operates through a smartphone app — though it could just as well have been devised by a savvy TV producer who loved “Fear Factor” and “The Hunger Games” and ordered up a show that was a cross between them.
This silly, ultimately completely square tale, based on a YA novel by Jeanne Ryan, apparently wants to be an urban version of “The Hunger Games” but fails miserably.
Everything about the third act proves preposterous, including a ludicrous arena showdown obviously meant to evoke the bread-and-circuses theme of The Hunger Games.
And for all of its “of-the-moment-ness,” this film brims with High School Movie Cliches and borrows just a tad here and there from other (and much better) action thrillers, from “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome” to “The Hunger Games.”
Earlier films such as The Hunger Games (and its precursor, 2000’s Battle Royale), 2009’s Gamer, 1987’s The Running Man and 1975’s Rollerball reverberate – but here, the puppet master pulling the strings isn’t some overarching corporate villain.
“Nerve” isn’t on the same scale as “The Hunger Games,” but has a similar theme in the way a larger force exploits and manipulates teenagers, as they’re watched by a crowd that cheers and jeers.