Truby's Screenwriting

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The Hunger Games
Spoiler alert: this breakdown contains crucial information about the plot of the episode.

In spite of The Hunger Games’ massive success at the box office, many viewers have complained that the movie is not as detailed as the original novel. I always find this comment ridiculous. While novels and films share hundreds of techniques that make for a good story, they also have at least one major difference: novels are a narrative medium while film is a dramatic one. When people dismiss the movie for not being as “good” as the book, they fail to see the key story elements, found in book and film, that make this a worldwide story phenomena.

The Hunger Games is the latest example of a huge blockbuster hit constructed by combining the myth genre with video game story elements. In my Genre classes, I have long pointed out that Myth is the basis for more blockbuster hits than any other genre by far. Book author and screenplay co-author Suzanne Collins understood this powerful technique right from the premise. In one of the most important of all Greek myths, Theseus and the Minotaur, every year King Aegeus must send seven young men and seven young women to be eaten by the Minotaur in ritual payment for a crime.

Like J. K. Rowling in the Harry Potter stories, Collins has woven myth elements throughout her story. Main character Katniss is based on one of the major Greek goddesses, Artemis (aka Diana), the huntress. When she and her fellow tributes show up in the arena, they are driving chariots. Like Romans watching gladiators kill gladiators and animals slaughtering Christians for sport, the rich dandies of the Capitol watch on live television as children butcher children. When Katniss shoots an apple with her arrow she repeats the act of legendary freedom fighter William Tell.

All of these mythical and ancient historical references give the story an appeal that can transcend age, gender and cultural boundaries. But that’s not enough for a hit. While myth is the foundation of more blockbusters than any other genre, it is almost always combined with one or two other genres to unify and update the myth form. In the case of The Hunger Games, Collins has combined myth with science fiction. This mash-up of ancient past with distant future gives the audience the sense that this story isn’t specific to a particular time and place; it is universal. It is the essence of human beings.

Collins also uses science fiction to take the capitalist foundation of America society to its logical extreme, where competition for show and money has taken on life and death stakes. Like Rollerball and Westworld, the players in this competition are pawns to the big corporate money, and if you lose you die.

One of the biggest mistakes that science fiction writers make is that they create a futuristic world that is so bizarre, so unlike anything we know today, that the audience is alienated from the story almost before it begins. They may continue to watch but they will have a clinical attitude to the story throughout. And this is the kiss of death, in fact the single biggest reason that many science fiction films fail.

Collins has avoided that problem by creating a recognizable future world. Again her technique has been to connect past to future. The rural mining town of Katniss’ District 12 reminds me of 1930’s America, with the film’s shooting style reminiscent of Margaret Bourke-White’s photos of the drought victims of the Dust Bowl. This familiarity gives the audience an emotional connection to the story world. Although there are many elements that tell them this is a futuristic abstraction, the multiple references to America’s past, and in some cases present, tell them this is a story about today.

Besides founding the story on the myth genre, the other key to the huge success of The Hunger Games is its deft use of video game elements. Video games are a relatively new story medium, and their massive influence on novels and film is just starting to become clear. I’m not talking about transmedia here, where a specific video game is turned into a novel and/or a film. More >>

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Screenwriting

Over the course of 3 decades, John Truby has taught more than 30,000 students the art of screenwriting. Providing the knowledge and expertise he has applied as a consultant on over 1,000 movie scripts, Truby offers an approach to storytelling that has earned acclaim for his instructional classes and screenwriting software from students and critics alike.

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