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| "Battle Royale" -- is "Hunger Games" a ripoff? |
Of course, I’m getting on the “Hunger Games” bandwagon. It’s
the most highly pimped movie of the year, and so far reviews are by and large
favorable. The adaptation of the first of Suzanne Collins’ trilogy of
young-adult dystopian adventure looks as though it will be a hit, regardless of
its inherent merit or its faithfulness to its source material.
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| Jennifer Lawrence in "The Hunger Games." |
Collins has been given some guff for her book’s remarkable
similarities to Koushun Takami’s 1999 novel “Battle Royale,” and the immensely
popular film version directed by Kinju Fukasaku the following year. (The film,
although it is one of the top-10 highest-grossing films in Japanese history,
took 11 years to be distributed in the U.S., and is still largely unknown
here.) Read Neda Ulaby’s NPR report on the controversy here.
But the tradition of a coerced hero or heroine forced to
kill or be killed, especially in the context of providing vicarious thrills for
onlookers, is as old as gladiatorial combat. The high-noon showdowns of the
American Western are a variant, and many of the hundreds of pepla (Italian
sword-and-sandal film epics of the period 1957-1965) give us oiled-up
body-builder protagonists – Hercules, Maciste, Samson, Goliath, Ursus -- who
must fight monsters, destroy entire armies, and dethrone despots.
The first and most important influence is the 1924 short
story by Richard Connell, “The Most Dangerous Game” – required reading for most
schoolchildren, and possibly the most anthologized short story of all time,
save for the equally gruesome “The Lottery,” also a distinct influence on the
genre.
In “Game,” a big-game hunter, Rainsford, falls overboard at
sea and finds himself on an island dominated by a master hunter, Count Zaroff,
who has grown bored hunting animals and now hunts men instead. Rainsford finds
himself elected as the next prey. It doesn’t spoil the pleasure of reading it
to know that evil is defeated in the end.
In fact, one of the great pleasures of the genre is the
liberation that self-defense grants to the hero in these stories. Once it’s
been established that he or she must act ruthlessly in order to survive, the
audience members can completely give themselves over to the vicarious
satisfaction of seeing rough justice done, without a whiff of guilt.
The story has been adapted more and far less faithfully
nearly two dozen times; the best version is the first --
The Most Dangerous Game
Dir: Irving Pichel, Ernest B. Schoendack
1932
The next major development in the idea came from Robert
Sheckley, whose 1953 short story “Seventh Victim” became the Italian sci-fi
film “The 10th Victim” a dozen years later. Now the game of human
hunter and hunted is big business, a globally popular entertainment that has
proved so satisfying that it has effectively eliminated war. The antagonists,
played by Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress, of course have conflicted
feelings about each other, and the camp value is deliberately high.
The 10th Victim
Dir: Elio Petri
1965
Peter Watkins is a radical film and television directors
whose projects criticize the system in all its aspects – and specifically
attacks the media’s complicity in preserving the status quo in the following
two features:
The Gladiators
Dir: Peter Watkins
1969
Punishment
Park
Dir: Peter Watkins
1971
Paul Bartel’s ludicrous “Death Race 2000,”based on Ib
Melchior’s short story “The Racer,” definitely takes the low road . . . so to
speak. Still, the dystopian theme and the idea of bloodsport as a nationally
followed pastime is there. Brought to us by the inimitable Roger Corman! With David Carradine! And Sylvester Stallone!
Death Race 2000
Dir: Paul Bartel
1975
And the same year’s “Rollerball.” Ah, yes. Ridiculous – and
one of my favorite guilty-pleasure movies ever. Rich people blow up the few
remaining trees for fun, corporations control everything – and I cried when
they killed Moonpie.
“Corporate society takes care of everything. And all it asks
of anyone, all it's ever asked of anyone ever, is not to interfere with
management decisions.”
Rollerball
Dir: Norman Jewison
1975
Another Sheckley story, “The Price of Peril,” written in
1958, eerily predicts reality shows. “Le prix du danger” is the first
adaptation of it.
Le prix du danger
Dir: Yves Boisset
1982
Oh, dear. Stephen King’s take on the template became one of
Arnold Schwarzengger’s worst films, including the worst death-puns in recorded
history.
The Running Man
Dir: Paul Michael Glaser
1987
The most searing and pointed of these films, and the most
successful to date, is “Battle Royale.” Its bleak vision of society, and its
focus on the teenage victims of its contest, makes it almost impossible to
think that Collins did not derive something from it.
Battle
Royale
Dir: Kinju Fukasaku
2000
Another worthy mention is “Series7: The Contenders,”
starring Brooke Smith, best known for her role as Buffalo Bill’s final,
would-be victim in “The Silence of the Lambs.”
Series 7: The Contenders
Dir: Daniel Minahan
2001
In all these films, the central figures have to fight not
only others, but an oppressive system that uses violence as entertainment.
Maybe the question here is not whether Collins is a plagiarist, but why this
very specific kind of fantasy is so prevalent in the zeitgeist.
State-sanctioned killing, a rigged system, murder turned to righteous and even
revolutionary ends, compulsive mass passive participation – and of course, the
irony that the watchers of any of these given films is an echo of the complicit
onlookers inside the films. Perhaps these movies are sketches for realities
that haven’t been invented yet -- or are just an encoded revelation of how we
live right now?
Other entries: a miscellany
Bloodsport
Dir: Newt Arnold
1988
Arena
Dir: Peter Manoogian
1989
Final Round
Dir: George Erschbamer
1993
Hard Target
Dir: John Woo
1993
Surviving the Game
Dir: Ernest R. Dickerson
1994
Slashers
Dir: Maurice Devereaux
2001
Reality Kills
Dir: Rafal Zielinski
2002
Subterano
Dir: Esben Storm
2002
Battle Royale II: Requiem
Dir: Kenta Fukasaku, Kinji Fukasaku
2003
El Nominado
Dir: Nacho Argiro, Gabriel Lopez
2004
Dot.kill
Dir: John Irvin
2005
K.Y.E.: Kill Your Enemy
Dir: Max Law
2007
The Condemned
Dir: Scott Wiper
2007
Senseless
Dir: Simon Hynd
2008
Gamer
Dir: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
2009
The Tournament
Dir: Scott Mann
2009
