Last night was no ordinary Thursday evening for many Minnetonka students, as at midnight the long-anticipated film adaptation of Suzanne Collins hit novel, The Hunger Games, premiered. The movie was written and produced by Collins and directed by Gary Ross. Fans everywhere traded in sleep for a chance to be the first to see the spectacle, securing the series’ place as one of our generation’s greatest book-to-movie franchises.

 We all hope that it will live up to our expectations, which, of course, are sky high (after all, Katniss is supposed to wear a dress that resembles fire which will require some top notch costume design).

The Hunger Games, for those of you who aren’t familiar, is the first installment of a trilogy. They are considered young adult science fiction which take us into the dystopian world of Katniss Everdeen who lives in one of the twelve districts of Panem. The highly advanced and incredibly decadent Capitol controls all of Panem and holds an annual event called the Hunger Games. This so called “game” is the government’s way of reminding the nation that they have little control over their own fate. The yearly event involves a boy and a girl aged twelve to eighteen being chosen from each district to fight in a televised competition. But this contest is no Wheel of Fortune; there can only be one survivor, and this survivor wins fame and fortune while the other contestants die in the generated world of the game. In the first novel, we follow Katniss as she volunteers to participate in the Hunger Games in order to save her younger sister whose name was called in the lottery of contestants.       

Soon we will be able to watch as Katniss battles her way through the Hunger Games and faces troubling dilemmas even greater than her own survival. The film stars Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss, Josh Hutcherson as Peeta, and Liam Hemsworth as Gale.