After decades of science fiction epics that are either tired father-quests shoved down our throats with a lightsaber in the wake of Star Wars, or weary New Testament-inspired stories of "the Chosen One," it's amazingly refreshing to see a film where the hero's journey is one of ethics and choice—what does it take to be good in a evil world?—a struggle real people can sympathize with, not just gawk at. As action, as allegory, as cinema,
The Hunger Games is the best American science-fiction film since The Matrix, and if Ross and his crew stay with the series for the next two books, we may get that rarest of things: a blockbuster franchise that earns our money through craft, emotion and execution, not merely marketing and effects.