Pulp Fiction and Battle Royale Versus Hunger Games

Thanks for that laugh The BDag!

In case you don't get the joke... There is a spectacular book and film from Japan called Battle Royale!

There is also this novel from America called The Hunger Games that has a cult following of teenage girls (who I suspect are so ashamed of having been 'tweens' they need something 'cool' to identify with) and has now become a blockbuster film.

(Picture Source)

Battle Royale is an art film that glorifies the spectacularly violent deaths of each individual child in the narrative and appeals to a savage, boisterous and drunken audience.

(Picture Source)

The major theme of the film is hard to pin down beyond the idea that glorified violence can be spectacular and fun, perhaps one could look deep into the plot and compare it to Lord of the Flies...but that's beside the point.  Sadly the film went largely unnoticed by the international film community and never found a distributor in North America until the buzz of Hunger Games found its momentum.

Hunger Games (published 12 years after Battle Royale) is the exact same narrative as Battle Royale just told in a different setting and context, kids killing kids for survival on a television show.  When you compare and contrast the two it is extremely hard to not see the similarities.  The major themes and/or messages in this one is that bows (and girls using bows) kick coccyx, and that love is the trump card in the game of 'The Running Man meets Lord of the Flies'...

But I suspect there is a deeper message here of revenge against the Asian film industry for pirating so many Hollywood films...

Moral of both stories combined... If your enemy is making cheap photocopies of your crappy big budget product, photocopy their excellent low budget product and market it as an original big budget product.

Ladies and Genital Men, let the battle games of Hollywood Cinema and Asian Cinema begin!