3. "Make A Big Show For Sponsors, No Wait Don't... Actually Do, But They Will Not Do Anything At All"
There are some very mixed messages in the Hunger Games: the whole fetishism element is designed to reinforce the idea that tributes can gain sponsors by being awesome or attractive, and that the sponsors will send them things to help them. A big deal is made of this in the first film, and it's set up the same way in the second, when Haymitch reinforces the importance of playing up to sponsors. But what he doesn't mention is that at no stage will any sponsor become invested enough to actually bother themselves to help out. Haymitch sends in the ludicrous water spout, and after that the audience clearly just turn off, forgetting their interactive side of the bargain, despite the fact that the commercials for the Hunger Games probably massively push the message of audience participation if X-Factor is anything to go by. So why make a big deal of the sponsors if they don't even care enough to help? It's a waste of time.
2.The Entire Plan Is Massively Flawed And Ludicrously Risky
Regardless of how clever it is to have a rebel leader sneak into the role of the games maker, and to engineer a grand escape for the heroine and centre-piece for the revolution, all of the intelligence goes out of the window unless he actually tries to stop her being killed. Heavensbee commits to his performance too much, making it almost impossible for Katniss to get through the games, and relying on external factors that he has literally no control over for her to survive. That's not smart planning, that's stone cold luck, and the fact that Katniss is not immediately killed is as much of an accident as it is the combined efforts of the implanted rebels.
1. The Body Recovery Technician Must Have Won A Lot Of Stuffed Toys
Whoever controls the claws that reach down into the Games arena to retrieve the dead tributes must be the most skilled veteran of toy grab games, because having such a deft aim without mangling the quarry, or at least picking up some soil is a major skill. Come to think of it, how does the first ship that retrieves the bodies actually get into the Dome? There are no openings that wouldn't fatally require the dropping of the entire force field, and it would seem a bit stupid to have a flying vehicle just standing around in the arena waiting for the death cannons to sound. Especially when you have 24 hugely skilled veteran tributes around. Did we miss any points that almost ruined The Hunger Games: Catching Fire for you? Share your own observations below.