« Hobby Thread - May 9, 2026 [TRex] | Main

Saturday Evening Movie Thread - 5/9/2026

Worldbuilding

When an author decides to tell a story in a world not our own, he or she has two main paths to choose from. The first is the path of Tolkien.

Build an intricate mythology, legendarium, and multiple languages to create a backstory for a world (that includes the transformation of the geology from a flat world to a globe), all that spans thousands of years, includes a creation myth, all of which is the author's real passion which he is then able to include in a sequel to a silly children's book he wrote to entertain his children. Heck, Tolkien directly references the central gems of what his son would put together as The Silmarillion, the Silmarils, in The Lord of the Rings.

Or, you can have a central conceit and create a very vague world around it with generic pieces that don't always really come together. This is how Suzanne Collins wrote The Hunger Games. I really don't think the world she created is any good at all. It's outright bad. And yet, I mostly don't think it matters.

Panem

So, I had The Hunger Games on the brain because my wife decided that our eldest son was old enough to watch it. Watched the original four movies over the course of a few days. It's a series I've seen multiple times, it being a standard bit of entertainment in the house since we first dated (seeing the four in theaters together as dates). So, watching them again, my mind drifted to the worldbuilding and how meager it all is.

It's a country set in a dystopian future that's supposedly built from the ashes of America. Collins does not provide real clues beyond generalized geographic descriptions for where any of the twelve districts that make up the majority of the country's area are or where the capitol is other than being in the mountains. This has led fans to come up with maps that all disagree with each other except on some basic points like District 12 being West Virginia or Pennsylvania and the Capitol being in the Colorado Rockies.

There seems to be little thought into why these places exist, especially when you get to the point later in the series when District 12, presumably their only source of coal, a major source of energy, gets bombed to the stone age, and...no one talks about how the Capitol could be facing an energy crisis. Does that mean that District 12's work was...unimportant? It's very possible. We see a major dam in the third film that gets blown up that seems to have more of an effect on energy than destroying all the coal miners in the country. Does this narrative hole matter?

Within the context of the story, which is laser-focused on the main character of Katniss Everdean, I don't think so. The purpose of the original trilogy of books and quadrilogy of movies is the main character's journey. The world is incidental to that, so a certain vagueness about how things worked on a grander political level is understandable. The point isn't the world, the point is Katniss's journey from no-one to symbol of a resistance. It makes sense.

It doesn't sweep away the fact that the world is kind of...generic and doesn't make the most sense. Couldn't Collins have named the districts? Oh well.

Problems Arising


I think this is only noteworthy because the story did continue beyond the original three books and four movies (don't split the final entry into two, Hollywood, Mockingjay Part 1 is boring). Collins, becoming one of the richest fiction authors in the world, has written nothing but Hunger Games prequels since 2013. The first, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, was published in 2020 and the movie version came out in 2023. The second, Sunrise of the Reaping, was published in 2025 and the movie version is coming out this year.

So, she has this generic world she's barely explored and has the opportunity for a guaranteed paycheck to expand it with prequels. What does she do?

She repeats herself...hard.

Our main character in the first prequel is a character from the original books, President Snow (but this time only as a poor student) while the action is only in the Capitol and...District 12, while a girl from District 12 becomes the Victor of the Tenth Annual Hunger Games. No scenes exploring any other district. Just the Capitol, District 12, and the arena for the Hunger Games. What about the second prequel? Well, it's centered around a character from the original books (Haymitch, Katniss' mentor) and how he won the Hunger Games. So...District 12 to Capitol to Hunger Games arena...again.

Is The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes bad for that? Well, I think the book is terrible and the lack of exploration of the rest of the world is part of that. I think the movie version is okay because it deals with some of my other issues around point of view and pacing while providing spectacle that the books couldn't really deliver. But the frustration with the myopic view of the world continues.

Should there be more? Can Collins write stories with the same motifs, settings, and character traits and still create good things? Of course, but I don't see any kind of poetic repetition here, I just see imagination-deficient repetition. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that she obviously doesn't care about the world she built.

World Building or Story or Both?


It's not an either/or proposition. You can have both world building and story, but it's obvious that Collins much prefers her story over her world building (her story is...pretty good overall). And I end up creating a comparison in my head.

Collins is writing for teens. Effectively children. What else is for children? Fables. Fables like Hansel & Gretel. Do we need a deep construction of the particulars of geography and history of the Old Forest in the story? Or can "dark, creepy, ancient forest" be enough for the purposes of the story?

That's the proper way to think of Panem, I think. The equivalent wouldn't be Middle Earth, a fairy setting for adults (as Tolkien put it), but the Old Forest and the witch's hut. It's a generalized setting in which to place an easily digested moral that the younger than adult mind can grasp easily.

So when she decides to try and create something a bit more adult, like the creation of YA Dystopian Hitler in the backstory of President Snow, the lack of worldbuilding ends up working against the sudden move into something requiring more nuance since she wants to create a real journey from sympathetic young man to literal Hitler. We're still in fable territory with the world, and I think it clashes with the attempt at a more serious story (which I don't think she really pulls off because she's not really that great of a writer, but much wealthier and more successful than I ever will be, so what do I know?).

A newer approach that actually expanded the story in serious ways, giving us new looks at new districts we've never seen and introducing more complex politics beyond "crazy powermad person at the top" would have helped, and in order to do that you have to be invested in making the world itself feel real.

Conclusion


It's just a thought brought on by recent viewing. How important is world building? Well, I guess it depends on what kind of story you're telling. Would a geneology of the mayors of District 12 have improved the story itself? No. What about a detailed description of how the economies of each district contributed to the Capitol's GDP? Also, no.

But I do think the lack of anything makes the films and books feel a bit emptier than they are and harder to expand when, ironically, that should make it easier. Collins hadn't written herself into a box. She could expand in a whole host of ways, and yet...she just keeps going back to District 12.

Oh, well. She's making bank doing it.

Movies of Today

Opening in Theaters:

Mortal Kombat II

The Sheep Detectives

Movies I Saw This Fortnight:

The Men of Sherwood Forest (Rating 3/4) Full Review "It's a modest entertainment that understands the assignment and reaches no further beyond that." [Library]

Third Party Risk (or, The Deadly Game) (Rating 2/4) Full Review "It's an unremarkable, thin wrong man adventure that flitters from little sequence to the next, its central star doing what he can to elevate things, and largely disappearing from mind before it's even over." [YouTube]

The Lyons in Paris (Rating 2/4) Full Review "Still, it's really just silly antics with performers doing their utmost to get some laughs. I almost chuckled a few times." [Library]

The Quatermass Xperiment (Rating 2.5/4) Full Review "Still, the horror is halfway decent and there's surprising emotionality hidden in the middle there, all while it looks pretty decent and has solid supporting performances." [Prime]

X the Unknown (Rating 2/4) Full Review "It's still largely an kind of dull monster flick with a disappointing monster in the end. But the use of music and the implication of the danger for a good stretch are nice." [Archive.org]

The Curse of Frankenstein (Rating 2.5/4) Full Review "And yet, while it plays out, I may not feel much, but I do end up with a modestly good time watching this vibrantly colored take on a well-worn story." [Max]

Quatermass II (Rating 3/4) Full Review "I was fully on board, and it's just a disappointment that it doesn't end at the same level as most of the film operates." [Plex]

The Camp on Blood Island (Rating 3/4) Full Review "A pleasant little surprise, even if it really does only exist because of David Lean's other movie." [YouTube]

Contact

Email any suggestions or questions to thejamesmadison.aos at symbol gmail dot com.
I've also archived all the old posts here, by request. I'll add new posts a week after they originally post at the HQ.
My next thread will be on 5/30.