I have to admit that, while I had heard of Suzanne Collins‘ Hunger Games Trilogy prior to the movie coming out, I didn’t expect it to make much of a splash.

My bias stemmed less from the fact that her books are directed primarily at young adults – John Christopher’s ‘The White Mountains’ trilogy are as well, and remain among the best novels, nevermind the audience they were primarly directed at, I have ever read – but I also expected that it was in the vein (pardon the pun) of the ‘Twilight’ movies, which I might see if someone threatened me with bodily harm if I didn’t (and even then I would still have to think about it for a moment or two).

I thought that Gary Ross did OK with the first film, though it felt that he almost had a disdain for the more technologically-inclined aspects of the story (though I should add that I liked his work enough that I purchased the first book in the trilogy).  Ross didn’t return for ‘Catching Fire,’ so the sequel is being directed by Francis Lawrence, a director that is almost the opposite of Gary Ross in that he sometimes appears too enamored of technology, particularly CGI.