I SAW a former student in the theater lobby in my way to see The Hunger Games.  When her mother asked if I had read the books, the graduate proudly proclaimed that I was the kind of reader “who didn’t read new and popular books.”  I read new books.  I even read the occasional popular books.  But she was right: I had not read any of the trilogy of books concerning teenage Katniss and the post-apocalyptic land of Panem.  I had decided about a month ago to stay away from the novels, letting the movie stand on its own.  I don’t regret that decision at all.

My thoughts after sitting through 2 hours and 22 minutes of dystopia: If even one person (especially younger person) walks out of The Hunger Games and realizes that such a future should never become a reality, then the story will have done a truly amazing thing.  That what I walked out feeling: how close we could be at any moment to a world where kids are killed as sport.  I watch reality TV, usually what I consider the classier kind.  But it is “reality” just the same.  It’s a fine line: choice and coercion.  And for all of the heroism of Katniss or Peeta, I couldn’t help but think and feel: they shouldn’t have to be in such a position in the first place.

Anthony Thisselton once wrote that history reminds us of what is possible while fiction reminds us of what is true.  I got a good dose of some kind of truth in the theater.  I think it was heightened for me because I had not read the story, because I wasn’t using the 2:22 to assess the damage a movie can do to a novel.  Instead, I experienced a fresh immersion into story, and a sobering one at that.  I felt the loss, the frustration, the hope, but also the pervasion of complicity that every single character in the story could not help but feel themselves.

I’m not sure if I’ll go back to the theater to see the movie again, but I know I’m not done thinking and talking about it.  And I think I’ll wait til the movies are done before reading the books.  I look forward to seeing this version of a sobering story told well play out.  I hope others see and feel the same things I did.