The Hunger Games

[Taelin]

People who think that the "love story" in the Hunger Games is the same as Twilight have...low reading comprehension?

First of all, there is NO LOVE PLOT in the first book, apart from Peeta's crush on Katniss. The whole "star-crossed" lovers thing was an act to gain sympathy from the Capitol audiences and sponsors.

If I remember correctly, the feeling don't become mutual until the middle of the second book.

[ckamo]

ps. I'm just sayin' but I got a girl crush on JLaw, she's pretty awesome...

[:D]

Saw it last night... was OK.

Battle Royale for white people.

[:D]

Brandon Hughes says:

I'm not dismissing the similarities of the central concept of a death game originating before Battle Royale (though I'd argue with you including Enders Game and The Giver in there and will conceed to having never heard of Maze Runner), as I point out above... the broad strokes of her story follow Battle Royale pretty closely, with the exception that Collins lets her characters prepare for the game instead of being thrown into it. ( Government trying to oppress people, game of teenagers killing themselves, protagonist beats the game instead of winning, goes on to lead a resistance movement against the government, involved in a second game in a government attempt to stop them...)

My argument is very simple. An author has an idea. They do not sit down and write a novel without doing research, which often includes seeing if what is in their head has already been done. Regardless of whether she went so far as to google to central idea of her book, looking into games of kill or be killed, will invariably bring you across BR. It's not like it's an obscure book (which is a distinction I think only The Running Man shares when it comes to books with this central conceit) and it's entered into geek culture pretty pervasively, I'd say becoming more popular among contemporary Americans than any of the other works in the specific genre.

I'm sorry but it's easy to see several MAJOR differences between Battle Royale and previously published work like Running Man. But to really get at differences between BR and Hunger Games, you have to get into specifics, which, I firmly believe, indicates a familiarity with BR during the creation of Hunger Games.

Mvargus says:

Supposedly Suzanne Collins has never read or heard of Battle Royale, but I find that extremely doubtful. This book is a unemotional, poorly written simplification of that great book.

Sadly, few people in the US had read Battle Royale, so there wasn't a large outcry about the obvious plagarism involved.

Eric D. Shepard says:

I will not postulate on whether or not the author plagiarized Battle Royale. She claims she never read the book or saw the movie, and there is enough other material like it ("Ender's Game", "Running Man", etc.) that I feel uninclined to call her a liar. It is possible that the idea for this book originated without her ever having been exposed to Battle Royale. She lists both "1984" and "Lord of the Flies" as influences and I can definitely see that in her work.

With that being said if she did not plagiarize this from Battle Royale I feel really sorry for her, because this looks on the surface to be a complete retelling of the same plot with the only changes being the characters and the setting. As Brandon Hughes pointed out she hits all of the major plot points with only cosmetic changes made.

[Apricot]

I had no idea you were a girl, lol. (I generally associate people with their avatar/sig....so I guess I always assumed you were Barney LOL) . But I agree. Jennifer Lawrence was absolutely amazing. And she seems like she's really down to earth.