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Katniss Everdeen may be a bolt of lightning from the blue - a heroine who props herself up without help from either of her drippy wooer - but she ’s hardly without precedent . The sci - fi color adventures of Katniss in Panem come from a prospicient strain of movies on the theme of survival , cultural voyeurism and defeat wretched milieu . The Hunger Gamesand its sequels imagine an dystopian landscape check by aristocrats who wish nothing more than watching needy children hunt down each other for fun . When we get through this inclination , that ’s going to seem like an abysmally familiar idea .
In prep forHunger Games : Mockingjay - Part 2 , here are12 picture show That InspiredThe Hunger Games .
Logan’s Run (1976)
The 1976 furore filmLogan ’s Runisabsolutely weightless as drama and only fitfully interesting as spectacle . Nevertheless , it has such a culturally relevant premiss that it ’s hang around in our collective retention in spite of itself ( vintageLogan ’s Rungear sells for hundreds on eBay ) .
It ’s about a civilization in the future that kill everyone who reaches their thirtieth birthday . The government cast it in mystical meaninglessness and the film serve up a few special effects ( it expect like a Laser Floyd show , if the haircut did n’t say you the movie was made in 1976 ) so that only a small detail of young people understand what ’s happening . Those people endeavor to lam on a unsafe trial outside the city walls ( to a place that might as well be called District 13 ) .
Squint and it ’s not hard to see a lot ofHunger Games ’ killing off of the youthful to asseverate orderLogan ’s political campaign .
The Running Man (1987)
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Stephen King are n’t exactly anyone ’s mind of kindred spirits , but they made an uneasy , wild merriment alinement in 1987’sThe Running Man . generally ( as the timing belt ammunition on a Cutlass classic ) based on King ’s short tale about an sinless man accuse of murder put on a game show to fight back for his freedom , The Running Manunsurprisingly ask a unexpended turn on the elbow room to the big screen door .
It ’s a neon worry with a spandex - clad Schwarzenegger fighting progressively flamboyant villains while essay to prove his innocence . Family Feudhost Richard Dawson gives a delicious carrying into action as the host of the show , a forerunner of Stanley Tucci ’s insane turn inThe Hunger Games , all big eyes and shark teeth .
Spartacus (1960)
Katniss and supporter ’ uprising against the forces of the capital is a a tale as old as sure-enough as time . Stanley Kubrick’sSpartacus , bring about by maven Kirk Douglas in the role that made him a menage name , was the giving American movie about the dispossessed originate up against their oppressors .
Douglas take on the claim character , a Thracian striver who fights back against his Roman Catholic masters , using the brutal fighting he was taught to survive . It ’s not hard to seeThe Hunger Gamesand their make out - throat gladiatorial armed combat as an extension of Spartacus ’ revolt , although the films differ on what a leader of revolt should act like . Douglas is all grit teeth and expressive torment , Jennifer Lawrence is a quieter hero , trying to put a little realism into the powerfully fictitious human race of the Hunger Games .
The Star Wars Trilogy
This is a minute of a gimme , as most mainstream sci - fi that issue forth after 1977 owes a little debt of gratitude towards George Lucas ’ outer space dangerous undertaking . But it ’s really in the airing out of the adventure , to add nicety and find the extent of Katniss ’ nonplus , conflicted human nature beneath her noble , heroical exterior , thatHunger Gamesstarts to look indebted toStar Wars .
Luke Skywalker ( Mark Hammill ) appear like a naif at first , too . Impetuous , powered by the daring of younker , relying on heart or else of logic , both Luke and Katniss learn the lesson of society ’s unfeeling unreason the arduous mode . And , more significantly , both are pretty handy in armed combat . Katniss is a piddling more of a 21st century hero in that she ’s trap more firmly between a careen and a hard stead and does n’t always make the ripe option for the right reasons .
She and Luke both have to make a choice between slay people and protecting their sis and friends , but the odds are stacked a little more unfairly against Katniss .
Zardoz (1974)
John Boorman’sZardozmay be remembered as a catastrophe ( film with too many idea often are ) but it ’s evidence prescient , especially with attentiveness to the whacky side ofThe Hunger Games . Zardozis about Zed ( Sean Connery ) , a member of a vicious warrior tribe call Brutals . Brutals are continue wild and ignorant because they ’re ruled by a society of blue madcap who never make themselves love to their subjects … until Zed breaks through their boundary line and sees them for himself .
Zardoz ’s thought about imprisoned warrior are all overThe Hunger Games , but there ’s also the ruling class themselves - perfumed , decadent and dress to shame a peacock . The Dr. Seussian villains of Panem are only a stone ’s throw from the Ubermensch go the humankind ofZardoz .
Rollerball (1975)
Haymitch , Woody Harrelson ’s character inThe Hunger Gamesmovies , is a subsister who ’s become burnt out on the consequences of having live through the game . If his character was the one who at last decided to stick it to the Washington rather of Katniss , you ’d probably have Norman Jewison’sRollerball . A political apologue alas wrap in a timely fad , RollerballwasThe Hunger Games1975 .
James Caan is the reining champion of a sportswoman called Rollerball , a deadly spin on Roller Derby . Caan realizes that his spectacle is keeping people complacent , while commit his moneyed overlord precisely what they desire . He ’s become a cat’s-paw without realise it , it makes him mad as Hades . The theme of breaking down a fix rivalry from within should skirt a bell to anyone who retrieve the polish of the games inCatching Fire . And while aspects ofRollerballhave dated as well as a sandwich left out in the sun , it has an intelligence and odd beauty that make it worth generate to .
Death Race 2000 (1975)
The playful cousin toRollerball , Paul Bartel ’s bloodyDeath Race 2000is a clowning garment as a self - important satire . David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone are just two of the rival in the commonwealth - spacious Death Race , in which driver take soup up death machines across the country in as short a prison term as possible , killing as many clean-handed bystander as they can .
Bartel deal the nonsensical premise with the cartoonish comic tone it deserves , creating an unforgettably garble , very LXX approach to bloodsport . There may only be flashes ofDeath Race 2000 ’s overblown cosmos inThe Hunger Games , but the cocky driver bet an awful destiny like some of the more dying tributes from the wealthier districts .
The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
When producer / directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack incline out of money finishingKing Kong , they reelect to the sets with a architectural plan to make a movie and raise some scratch in a rush . The plastic film they made was the first adaptation ofThe Most Dangerous Gameby Richard Connell , the ultimate anti - colonialist tale .
A shipwrecked prize Orion ( Joel McCrea ) finds himself on a private island own by eccentric Count Zaroff ( Leslie Banks ) . He quick discovers that Zaroff only be in the midsection of the ocean because he has a voodoo no one in the real world would understand - he likes hunt human being and has plough his home plate into a hunting priming coat . Cooper and Schoedsack tell the story with elegant simplicity , beseem a moving picture about two slick professionals who have to kill each other give only the au naturel essentials , a lesson that the makers ofThe Hunger Gamespaid confining attention to .
Hundra (1983)
Before Suzanne Collins every thought about put a bow in her heroine ’s hand , Matt Cimber put one in the hands of Laurene Landon . Hundra , Cimber ’s 1983 fantasy picture show , is not only the just of theConan The Barbarianalso - rans , but it ’s also the first and most potent feminist steel - and - sorcery movie .
Landon plays Hundra , the only member of a utopian all - female tribe in a feudal past who is n’t slaughtered by a predatory gang of thief and rapists . She vows that if she ’s become to restart her kinship group from scratch , she ’s endure to find a valet who ’s every chip her equal with which to do so . This , as you might think , is quite unmanageable ( Katniss could relate in a adult way to that quandary ) . And while all that is fascinating and empowering , it ’s no match for the slew of check Landon British pound one man after another into hyperborian dust .
Battle Royale (2000)
Director Kinji Fukusaku’sBattle Royalecaused an uproar in Japan so massive that no American distributors would disturb it . It was only uncommitted as a moonshine for years while its myth grew larger by the day . rooter of the plucky natural process plastic film were plausibly a small miffed whenThe Hunger Games , a flick also about kid killing each other to keep population diminished and restrained , was liberate to tremendous boxful role and world-wide critical approval . Ten old age had made the ideas ofBattle Royalepalatable to American audiences .
That said , you probably could n’t release a blastoff - for - shoot American remake ofBattle Royaletoday - it ’s too poise , too rough , too unhinged in its wildness . A instructor ( the sinful Takeshi Kitano ) take in 42 of his students to an island , gives them each a weapon and make it clean that only one of them will be go out alive . It ’s a marvelously constructed moving-picture show , which make its repugnant content that much more thrilling .
