With the recent uprising with the beloved dystopian series, The Hunger Games, many fans are confused with the books, movies, and theories. So, here is a survival guide to get new or even older fans started!

Background

The Hunger Games is set thousands of years in the future in a dystopian world. Some games are held every year since the terrible uprising of the once 13 districts, which are now 12 because the 13th one was obliterated–or so they thought. Each year, one male and one female tribute are drawn up in a battle of survival; after winning, one person gets to live and win a boatload of money. 

The book series has so many details that aren’t incorporated into the movies, leaving some new fans confused. The book that started it all, The Hunger Games, has numerous crucial information that fans can only find by reading. 

Book V.S. Movies

A disturbing thing not included in the movies was the mutated mutts Dr. Gaul had obtained. They had the tribute’s eyes and, I believe, features. Many theories have circulated the web that the tributes’ dead bodies were not returned to their family but used for experimental mutants. This is creepy and goes to show how twisted she was. Even though we see it in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, it also indicates President Snow had a chance to be good. Still, with every opportunity he had to show he was genuinely good and could persevere, he chose bad, and it was all thanks to Dr. Gaul, who pushed him over the edge. 

Katniss’s lovely prep team plays a much more important and prominent role, and it’s not just her leading stylist who gets attached to her; it’s the entire team. If this crucial detail were included, fans would realize how many hearts she can touch in the first movie. This isn’t as major of a difference compared to Peeta losing his leg in the book. The bookshows how bad these games were to even those who survived. In the movie, it seems as if the survivors were left with severe mental and emotional trauma, but in the books, everything was exemplified. Survivors held not only emotional wounds but also physical ones, which would never be healed again. 

The new movie, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, shows Sejanus and Katniss’s similarities and the parallels between Katniss and Lucy Gray. The new prequel movie accentuates just how much President Snow is traumatized by Katniss because she has all of Sejanus’ underlying charming qualities that made them best friends, to begin with, but also parallels between the songs Katniss and Lucy Gray sing. Not only are the songs the same, but Katniss is a hunter forced to perform, and Lucy Gray is a performer forced to hunt, so President Snow is ever so haunted by Katniss and Peeta. 

Along with the numerous parallels, in the book versus the movie, it was much more apparent that President Snow had more psychotic tendencies. In the film, many fans were confused about how young Snow turned out so cruel and became evil. Still, in the books, there were already psychotic tendencies, like when he would talk so badly about his cousin Tigres or when he said his grandmother taught him the important lesson of patience by putting up with her every single day.

Although these are just the main details that the movie did not grasp, so many little details contributed to it all that made the book sensational.