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Ivana2804 -> RE: Disagree (4/1/2013 12:57:38 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: owenyunfat
Firstly Battle Royale is not a Japanese splatter movie, it was first a novel then adapted for screen - the same as the Hunger Games.
I know it's adapted from a book. How does that preclude it from being a Japanese splatter movie? Though I guess you could argue whether it can be called splatter and about its amount of gore and violence, which is relatively mild. But it certainly tries to have a lot of violence and blood, even though it's rather cartoonish, and, for me, not shocking or emotionally affecting. (The decapitation scene was particularly badly done, a few of the deaths were just too "pretty" with dying words and love confessions, and the teacher's death was silly.) The scenes of violence and death in THG were much stronger even though none of them were graphic.
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I could easily list how many connections there are between the two books/movies - unrequited love of main characters Shuyas best friend in love with Noriko. The use of previous winners in matches. Villainous characters letting off protagonists or helping them. Post-apocalyptic settings (again, watch the second Battle Royale if you need clarification). A program introduced to promote authority.
You're listing "someone has unrequited love for someone" as a similarity? That's about 80% of all fiction. You may as well say it's a similarity that there are humans in both stories and that they walk and talk. Villainous characters letting off protagonists or helping them? When did that happen in THG? The use of previous winners? How is that a similarity? In The Hunger Games, they don't use the previous winners. The previous winners win fame and fortune and never have to risk going to the Arena again. Until the 3rd Quarter Quell, which was completely different from any of the previous Games, exactly because the previous Victors were reaped - and only the previous Victors, there was never any mixing of the previous Victors and the new kinds - and that's just because Snow wanted to eliminate Katniss and other Victors who would be powerful political symbols of a rebellion.
Post-apocalyptic settings? Just how many books and movies like that are there?
I find it hard to imagine a "kids being forced to kill kids in a controlled game" premise working in some other kind of setting. It's not exactly something one would imagine happening in the neighborhood in a realistic setting.
I could go on and on... but maybe watch Battle Royale and Battle Royale Requim then once The Hunger quote:
Games are all released watch them, I think you will find how much the same they are.
I haven't watched Battle Royale Requiem, but I've watched the first Battle Royale movie, and I've seen The Hunger Games movie and read the entire trilogy, and all I can find is how much DIFFERENT they are. Other than the premise of "kids being forced to kill each other", they have almost nothing in common. The only other thing that's similar is that SPOILER more than one person survives in the end, but the reasons and circumstances are completely different.
Battle Royale is about a generational war: the adults are punishing the teenagers by making them kill each other or be killed.
The Hunger Games is about class differences and conflict between the central power and the exploited territories: the Games are used by the Capitol to punish the Districts for the rebellion, showing them that they can take their children from them at random and that they can't do anything about it.
The Hunger Games is about politics of oppression and about poverty, hunger, exploitation and inequalities between the rich and the poor. Battle Royale is not (or at least there's no indication about it at all in the first one).
In the Hunger Games, the other purpose of the Games is entertainment for the citizens of Capitol. The Games are televised in the entire country and everyone has to watch. It's like a widely popular reality show, and the contestants are treated that way. Winning makes you a celebrity and gives you fame and fortune (but even less freedom, as we see in the second and third book). The contestants always knew what the Games are, since everyone in Panem knows it and knows that they (or a child from their family) can be reaped.
In Battle Royale, the contest is secret, the contestants are kidnapped and dragged to a place where they'll compete and it all comes as a complete surpise to them, and the world at large seems to have no idea what is going on. And the winner doesn't get anything except mere survival.
The kids in Battle Royale are all in one school class and all know each other.
The kids in The Hunger Games are of different ages and come from all the 12 different districts and most of them have never met before.
In Battle Royale, each contestant is given bags with water, food and tampons for girls, and they are never in any danger of starvation or dehydration (they couldn't be even if they had no supplies, since the entire thing lasts just 3 days) or wild animals or natural catastrophes; the adults just want to see the kids hacking and killing each other. They even have houses, beds, medicine and computers and can cook dinners.
In The Hunger Games, they aren't given anything, they even have to fight for the bags at the cornucopia and risk getting killed, and bags may not even contain any water or food. The Arena itself may be the harshest enemy, and the Games are as much about survival in the wilderness or in all sorts of tough conditions that the Gamemakers may throw at them, as they are about killing. The contestants are as likely to die from dehydration, starvation, heat, cold, fire, flood, an attack by mutated vicious animals, poisonous fog, electric fields etc.
In BR, the kids are being overheard by the gamemakers but aren't being watched closely and can even do things like hack computers. In THG, their every move is watched and televised across the country and everything that happens to them is much more strictly controlled.
In THG, one of the most important things for the contestants is to get the viewers to like them. They are prepped, made up, dressed up, paraded, interviewed. They have mentors who advise them and court sponsors to be able to send them medicine, food, or weapons into the Arena.
None of that happens in BR.
One of the main themes of THG is the relation between personal and public: the only romantic plot in the first book/movie is really about showmance, about having to play a role in front of the camera (very much as in a reality show), and about the confusion as to how much of the relationship is real and how much is not. It's a comment on the audience's tendency to focus on romance at the expense of everything else. With everything else that's going on, the wide audience and the media are only interested in violence and romance; sounds familiar?
Battle Royale has no such themes; it has a bunch of romantic subplots, almost every character has a crush on someone and those romances are pretty stereotypical and played straight, with kids confessing their love before they die, etc.
Familial love is an extremely important theme in THG. Katniss' love and protectiveness of her sister is one of her major motivations - her volunteering for Prim is what sets the story.
This is not the case in BR.
Female characters in BR are pretty stereotypical. The two most important female characters are: a "good girl" who's a damsel in distress that men are protecting, and a "bad girl" who's vicious, ruthless killer and a seductress.
In THG - do I have to explain?
A lot of kids in BR commit suicide. Nobody in THG does, at least not that we know of, since the Gamemakers would not allow it, plus the kids probably know that whatever they do may have consequences for their families.
Battle Royale is about the relationships between the classmates and how they develop once they have to start killing each other, about the way their old friendships and crushes affect their actions, and about being ready to kill their friends to survive, out of mistrust and because they're panicking.
In The Hunger Games, it's the opposite: they are strangers to each other and they are all prepared for the fact that they'll have to kill to begin with; the development in the story is about preserving humanity and finding a way not to be a piece in the games. Katniss starts off thinking she'll be able to kill anyone, but finds out she can't and won't, and turns that into defiance. (The kids in BR try to find a way around it but fail, while the main duo actually winds up being saved through no doing of their own.)
SPOILERS:
Katniss and Peeta both survive because they defy the rules, refuse to kill each other and force the Gamemaker to make them both winners. The BR trio survives (one of them temporarily) because this was a part of the plan by the sicko teacher/main gamemaker who has an obsession with Noriko.
After the Game is over, Shuya and Noriko are wanted fugitives. Katniss and Peeta are crowned Victors and big celebrities across the country., and a cause of much concern by the President.
The main story of THG is a larger scale one than BR, and it's about the way that Katniss' actions and the humanity and defiance she shows affects the entire country, makes her a symbol and plants the seed of rebellion.
The game in BR only affects the kids in it, their actions don't affect or change anything, and most of the world seems to have no idea what was going on.
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