13 Movies You Really Wanted To Hate (But Actually Couldn’t)
10. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Despite a strong cast, the first Hunger Games movie was messy, full of uneven satire, garish costume and set design, and bizarre attempts to soften the bleak premise; teenagers being forced to kill each other isn't really PG-13 stuff. It also had the most boring love triangle in cinema history, and the prospect of three more movies sounded like a chore.
Why You Wanted To Hate It: The sequel Catching Fire looked set to be more of the same, with almost the exact same premise. The love triangle would be explored further, and the success of the franchise was leading to waves of similar YA adaptations like Divergent and The Maze Runner.
The Reasons You Couldn’t: Against the odds Catching Fire was a solid effort, and since we got to know and like the characters in the original it was free to open up the scale. The arena in the film was way more exciting than the original, allowing for better action scenes, and the new characters fleshed out the world a bit more.
The subsequent movies didn’t live up to the same standards, but Catching Fire is easily the highlight of the series.