9. There's A Pretty Major Twist In The Games
Because this year is the 75th Hunger Games, the silly named Quarter Quell comes into practice, allowing Snow and Heavensbee to basically just do what they want with the rules. They take the opportunity to temporarily scrap the traditional lottery element of tribute selection and draw the tributes instead from the pool of past Victors, ensuring that Katniss is selected again, and putting both Peeta and Haymitch back in the pot for selection. Ultimately Haymitch is selected, and Peeta volunteers in his place. It's a cruel twist, which feels like one of those moments that grabs you behind the navel and makes you outraged at the same time as being excited and appalled at the implications - like hearing an elderly relative call you a name behind your back. In that respect it is completely successful, but as a result of the selections, and the way the Games are framed, there's less focus on the futility of the tributes' deaths, to the film's detriment, and it's hard not to feel like octogenarian mute tribute Mags isn't shoe-horned in to try and recapture that feeling a little (especially when she pulls a Scott of the Antarctic and kills herself to allow others to live.) The selection process upsets the majority of the Victors, who take their pre-event TV appearance to either bemoan the screw-job or attempt to make the Games organisers reconsider their value and cancel the Games entirely. Neither has any effect, since Snow has been convinced by Heavensby that the Victors will unwittingly become key elements in any rebellion, and they're all forced to once more head into the arena, despite a valiant display of solidarity where they all hold hands (and stumps) - despite the fact that at least four of them (the so-called Career Tributes) are frankly delighted to be in the spotlight again..