After four movies, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 marks the time to say good-bye to Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and the rest of Panem. (At least, until Lionsgate figures out a way to continue its hit YA sci-fi franchise.) For now, if you need something else to watch or read, we’ve got some recommendations for The Hunger Games fans to check out next.
Minotaur
Collins was inspired by the ancient Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, which involves young tributes regularly sent into a labyrinth to be devoured by a half-man, half-bull creature. That is, until the hero Theseus offers himself in place of one of the kids so that he may kill the beast. The tale can be found in numerous mythology books, and it’s been depicted onscreen, too, most recently in a 2006 fantasy film also from Lionsgate and starring a young Tom Hardy: Minotaur.
The Running Man
Long before Katniss turned her triumph on a fight-to-the-death game show in a dystopian future to the takedown of the government, Arnold Schwarzenegger played a wrongfully accused man who leads a rebellion against a TV network producing a similarly brutal competition program in a totalitarian future. The difference in this 1987 adaptation of a Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) novel is that the players are convicted criminals and their broadcast deaths are part of the punishment.
Battle Royale
Collins claims she wasn’t familiar with this Japanese novel, nor its comic and film adaptations, when she wrote The Hunger Games. But her setup does seem awfully close to the one written earlier by Koushun Takami: Both books deal with kids being sent to a location by a totalitarian government for a lethal competition where only one victor is supposed to be left alive in the end. Battle Royale features many more players, though, and on the page and on the screen it’s a whole lot bloodier.
Series 7: The Contenders
This indie film features a mock reality show on which randomly selected citizens are forced to hunt each other for a television audience. While most big-screen satires of the gladiatorial nature of modern sports and contests have been set in the future, this one, also shot and presented as if it were an actual reality program, drives the point home by imagining a deadly game show being produced in this day and age.
Capture
And then there’s the actual 2013 reality TV show that involved people hunting one another in a remote forest surrounded by an electronic fence. The CW’s Capture was immediately referred to and also embraced as a “real life Hunger Games.” But it doesn’t feature kids as the competitors, and the hunting is all done with electronics, like Laser Tag.
Brave New World
George Orwell’s 1984 might be a little more famous as far as classic dystopian fiction is concerned and it’s one of Collins’ admitted favorites, but Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World arrived decades earlier and is closer in its view of the future to The Hunger Games. Huxley conceived a world with a population restricted to and defined their designated place, like Katniss is in District 12, and all of them are distracted by entertainment and consumption. The totalitarian state of The Hunger Games is more oppressive and also uses the “entertainment” of the games to put additional fear into its people.
The Most Dangerous Game
Richard Connell’s short story, originally published in 1924, is an influence on many works of dystopian fiction, despite it not being set in the future. The plot concerns a man marooned on a private island owned by a wealthy big-game hunter, who intentionally lures people to his property for the purpose of being his next prey. It’s been directly adapted to the screen a number of times while also inspiring such movies as Predator, Hard Target and Mindhunters.
Winter’s Bone
The Hunger Games made her an international box office sensation, but Jennifer Lawrence was already an Oscar-nominated movie star when she was cast as Katniss, thanks to her breakout performance in this 2010 indie drama. Looking at her role in the Sundance winner, it’s easy to see why she was well suited to play “The Girl on Fire.” Both characters live in mountain country with their single mother and siblings and hunt wild animals to help feed their poor family.
The Adventures of Robin Hood
With her talent for archery and eventual takedown of her nation’s oppressive and greedy ruling powers, Katniss is a kind of Robin Hood of the future. While there are plenty of movies based on the legendary robber of the rich and giver of the poor, this 1938 adaptation starring Errol Flynn as Robin still holds up as the most entertaining. But if you want something even closer, specifically with a female action hero, there’s Disney’s 2001 made-for-TV feature Princess of Thieves, which stars Keira Knightley as Robin Hood’s daughter, Gwyn.
The Hobbit Games
There are a lot of Hunger Games spoofs, some of them short and solely for an Internet audience, others feature-length comedies released in theaters. This one, a short film in the form of a fake trailer, mashes the franchise with another: The Hobbit. And it’s arguably the funniest of all the parodies. It also might introduce some of you to Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth movies, and those should occupy a good amount of your time, maybe enough to last you until they remake The Hunger Games.
