ON THE ROAD: The Hunger Games (2012)

FREE COMMUNITY SCREENING AT STARKEY RANCH THEATRE LIBRARY CULTURAL CENTER
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Join Tampa Theatre at Starkey Ranch Theatre Library Cultural Center for this very special free presentation as part of our Big Picture film series, on the road and out in the community.
Tampa Theatre On The Road screenings are FREE and open to the public. Ticket not required for this event, but seating is limited.
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2h 22m / PG-13 / Action, Thriller, Sci-Fi
In the grim future of The Hunger Games, the political body of North America has transformed into Panem, a nation divided into twelve largely monocultural districts. Panem is controlled by a ruling class of disconnected aesthetes from a city called only the Capitol, which requires each district to select two people each year to compete in a violent televised game of survival until only one survivor remains. This year, District 12 selects Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) and Primrose Everdeen, until Primrose is saved by her older sister Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) volunteering to take her place. The sponsors and organizers of the games see big ratings in exaggerating the love story between Katniss and Peeta, and so change the rules to allow two survivors if they both hail from the same district. With erstwhile mentor Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), the alcoholic and traumatized past winner from District 12, in their corner, Katniss and Peeta must win against pairs from around the country, all of whom are better trained and supplied than they are. But Katniss has a fire in her heart that none of the other contestants can match.
Every generation gets its own foundational post-apocalypse, and late millennials/early zoomers got the book and film series The Hunger Games. No longer concerned with the circumstances of the apocalypse itself, unlike the nuclear wastelands and pandemic disasterscapes of Gen X, The Hunger Games accepts as given that the destruction itself was inevitable. What remains is the human-scale process of dealing with the hand you’ve been dealt: resource wars, crushing inequality, the invincibility of the human spirit, and the knowledge that positive change will come not from the top down but only ever from the bottom up.