Also: Peeta doesn't lose his leg, which makes me want to say that at the end of movie 3, they're going to keep Prim alive and just have Kat shoot Snow... I realize that's probably a pretty big leap, but that's just the feeling I got.

Didnt they fix up Peeta with an artificial leg that is just as good the real one? Kinda like Luke and his hand? Its been a while since I read them. But if they did, its like "might as well not even bother since he will just be on his leg for the next movie anyway"

I thought that the artificial leg was more or less like modern prosthetics? I seem to recall him being rather heavier on it, not able to keep up at full speed, etc... maybe I'm wrong? Eh, if that's the case, I could just be jumping to more wild conclusions than I already have, hehe.

I looked it up and it appears the leg is more like a modern prosthetic one than say Lukes hand, but I think its still supposed to be more advanced than now. It says that he isnt able to be a full part of the future rebellion teams because of it. But its still easy enough to cover up just drop in a line like "It was too torn up from the first Games" and they are good to go and dont have to worry about the makeup/CGI to deal with it.

Two concern I had were how little they downplayed the tracker jackers and the complete lack of Katniss's prep team, minus Cinna himself. While in the first book both aspects were not really that important, in the third book the tracker jacker mindwashing of Peeta was a pretty big deal, and Katniss's discovery of her prep team in chains was something of a turning point for her thoughts about the District 13.

Also, the three fingered salute - as I recall that was unique to a different district (Rue's, right?), so having District 12 use it at the beginning was kinda lame. Am I remembering that wrong? I also felt a bit cheated in seeing the uprising from Rue's district, since I do not think we were supposed to know about that until either book two or three.

Three finger salute is a District 12 thing. They do it to Katniss when she volunteers.

Or did Rue's district also do it when Rue died?

That the salute is from District 12. Maybe I missed that part when I read the books, cause I remembered it being a District 11 thing as well.

Most glaring issue I had was how they handled the Mutts. I was SOOOOO looking forward to seeing mutated dead tributes, most hauntingly the Rue mutt, but instead we got poorly CGI'd pit bulls. Bleh. That sucked.

In the book she says it's a show of respect, love and way of saying goodbye in her district... but remember common citizens can't travel between districts. So whether it means something similar in other districts... she would have no way of knowing. The citizens in 11 seem to recognize at least the gesture but everything is told from Katniss' perspective in the book and she doesn't know much about the other districts. In the movie Rue's district does do it as a response to seeing Katniss doing it for Rue on the screens. In the book you don't hear about that uprising until into the second book when Katniss starts to see with her own eyes what's been happening outside of the games. It is indicated there that even if they may not share the custom... they at least recognize it's intent as a show of respect for Rue, since in the books the Capitol edits out that she surrounded Rue's body with the flowers.

More on Cinna's team, just one little scene showing how they view Katniss more as an object and how shallow/self-obsessed they are goes a long way towards showing why Katniss connects so well with Cinna, how he's the first person in the Capitol who treats her as a human being rather than as a thing. Without that contrast Cinna does come off as slightly creepy.

Remember they're going to split the third book into two movies, so there will be more time to sell that while district 13 is the center of the rebellion they're just as much about using and controlling people as the capitol. I'm worried they'll let Prim live, but more worried they'll have Katniss kill Snow - it's such a huge part of her story that she's coming to realize that she may just have switched one dictator for another and in the end she doesn't go for the revenge in favor of stopping those future wrongs. It just wouldn't make sense to make her story more disneyesque happy ending after all she's been through at that point, even if Prim is alive there's just so much death she's seen by then. If you keep Prim alive you can at least try to sell that idea of the happily ever after, so that will be a tempting thing to keep in. I really hope Collins puts her foot down on that if they want to push it in that direction.

I see what you were all saying about the announcers and the trackerjackers. They either needed to have the announcers cut in and explain more often so it didnt seem so obvious, or my thought was, why not have Caesar Flickman explain it a tiny bit more in her hallucination. He already was talking about it during the hallucination anyway.

Really liked seeing the riot in 11.

I forgot to mention, I was sorry to see they saved the Avox content for the next movie (I assume). It could have added another nice creepy element to the movie

You're right about the three finger gesture, it's one of the things that distracted me when they showed that. Also how Katniss gets the Mockingjay pin from the Hob... though I completely understand cutting out Madge to make the story shorter/less complicated for film

I don't expect many here to appreciate this, but... I was also disappointed I had to wait all the way until the credits to finally hear the Taylor Swift song she did for the movie. Hello? Why not actually use it, you know, in the movie...

Rue's death. The POV of her death with Catniss singing above her in the corner of the screen was pretty brilliant. I was moved. They had to retain a PG-13 rating, so I understand some of the shaky cam stuff rather than ultra detailed gore/action scenes.

Without district 13's tech the other districts wouldn't really stand a chance in an armed conflict. But even without that, the districts wouldn't have to beat Capitol in a shooting war. Capitol is completely dependent on the districts for food and other resources. In book 2 people in Capitol start to complain because they can't get so and so luxury foods they've become accustomed to, that's after fairly minor uprisings compared to what starts to happen in book 3. That's why they have to maintain such an iron grip on the districts, all it would take would be enough of a conflict in all the food production districts for an extended period of time and Capitol's food supplies runs out - and long before that it risks it's spoiled citizens rebelling. That's why they have to maintain their hunger games, they can't risk people realizing just how vulnerable their dependency on the districts has really made them.

As for why don't they use their awesome tech to feed themselves. Well, it's mostly smokes and mirrors. As you see in book 2 (and in the movie in the games control center) a lot of what's happening in that arena isn't real. It's a cross between a high tech movie set and a star trek type holodeck. Even the genetically engineered mutations they have created they don't have great control over, what with the mockingjays being the result of breeding between one of the mutated weapons and ordinary mocking birds. Both the people watching and the tributes of course believe this to be real - Katniss herself in book 2 seems surprised when she finds out that it was all a lie, that the flights they took to the arenas were fake and the arena was always the same arena no matter how different it looked.

There's never any indication that they have advanced robotics, refined enough genetic engineering to create a pliable enough servant creature that it would be usable on a mass scale or that they have matter replication mastered. And of course historically having access to easy slave labor doesn't tend to motivate people to do anything other than perfect means of controlling their slaves.