Three movies to see before ‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’

Will Perkins
·Blogger

If the “Hunger Games" franchise has done one thing right, it’s revitalizing movies about people who are either forced to kill for entertainment or hunted for sport. The distinct subgenre has been a mainstay of Hollywood for decades, but is now back in the limelight thanks to the huge popularity of the "Hunger Games" series. Here are three similarly themed action movies you should see before checking out “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" this weekend.

“Battle Royale”
Forty-two high school students; three days; one survivor. "The Hunger Games" series shares a few similarities with Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku's cult classic "Battle Royale." Both based on bestselling novels, the two movies both centre on a group of teenagers forced by their government to kill one another in a deadly competition. However, "Battle Royale" – which filmmaker Quentin Tarantino calls one of his favourite films of all time – is hardly meant for kids. “Battle Royale” is a brilliant piece of social satire, filled with tonnes of gore and countless ultraviolent on-screen deaths. This twisted competition makes the Quarter Quell look like child’s play.

“The Running Man”
The strangely prescient 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film “The Running Man” takes reality television to its natural and some might say inevitable extreme. Set in 2017, the dystopian action movie centres on a popular game show called "The Running Man," a brutal televised competition where convicted criminals and political dissidents called “runners” are pitted against gladiator-like "stalkers" and are executed in the most entertaining and violent ways possible. Winning means a chance at freedom; losing means certain death. Wrongly convicted Ben Richards (Schwarzenegger) is forced to become "runner" on the game show, and is determined to prove his innocence, one slayer kill at a time. Fun fact: "The Running Man" is based on a novel written by Stephen King under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, but the movie makes many, many changes from the author's source material.

“Gamer”
And you thought kids who played “Call of Duty” were bad? The future of first person shooter games isn’t so much a game as it is a real-life deathmatch, using actual people as in-game avatars. Thanks to advances in nano-technology, Kable (Gerard Butler) is a death row inmate controlled by a teenage gamer named Simon (Logan Lerman) and forced to compete in the wildly popular “game” called “Slayers.” If an inmate survives 30 deathmatches, he wins his freedom. With 27 victories, Kable is the most famous of all the avatars in "Slayers," and only Simon's skills as a gamer stand between him and freedom. “Gamer” is an action-packed send-up of our video game and reality TV obsessed culture.

If you're planning to see "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" this weekend, you might also consider watching the original "Hunger Games" movie first for a bit of a Panem refresher. That film, along with any of the movies listed above are sure to get you into the sporting mood. May the odds be ever in your favour!

"The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" hits theatres on Nov. 22.

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