Hunger Games NOT for young teenagers

planetX

The 'A' is the key part of that rating, so it's the judgement call of the parent - and a good thing that is too, to move away from censors making all the judgements. With all the internet resources there's no excuse for someone to turn up with a child and be surprised by the content.
My 10 yr old was v keen to see this movie. I was doubtful it was for him, so went to see it first. It wasn't the violence, it was the whole concept I didn't want him exposed to yet. A couple of years would make a huge difference tho, I'd say 12 was spot on. I told him the movie was boring, with lots of kissing - heard no more about it:D

BostonB

This site is useful as a guide.

http://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/hunger-games

recipio

Now that the film is out on dvd I watched it and found it disappointing.
The movie is obviously sanitised and aimed at the pre- teen to 16 year old market. I don't think your daughter would find any of the violence upsetting. She's not going to see anything that isn't on TV every day.
For me , the bland direction and pandering to audience ratings is the usual cynical Hollywood mercinary approach.
For a real ( adult ) chase movie see Mel Gibsons 'Apocalipto' which had me riveted to the seat.

Victor

cynder wrote: »

My 12 year old watched it, and 5 other kids in her class watched it some were 11 think there was even a 5 year old in there... There was nothing major in it, I watched 18 movies at that age. Tbh the film was disappointing could of done with been upgraded to 15 or 18 with more gore and more depth between peeta and katniss. Wasn't as violent as Jurassic park....

No, children understand that dinosaurs are scary and are happy to experience that level of scariness in an abstract situation. Teenagers killing each other is another matter - it is too difficult for children to distinguish from reality and is much more frightening. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=80671757&postcount=823

peppy123

i think the movie is fine most of the "gorey " parts you dont see! they intentional do this movies alot to leave it up to the viewer to imagine what happens, movies have been doing this for the last 40-50 years , "The texas chainsaw massacre" original was all done like this to try get a lower rating. its about bringing in the widest possible audience without affecting the movie too much. That being said this movie was fine, i watched it with my 8 year old sister she liked, she hasn't gone living in the woods and sleeping in tree's or murdering her peers yet , if your child does anything they see in a movie its NOT the movies fault its the parents for not putting it in context for them.

giftgrub

BBC 5 Live's Mark Kermode is a great critic and says its up to the parent to decide based on the information they have...

This is from the Irish Film Classification office

Frequent moderate violence in a sci-fi context.
Note for parents:
Set in a dystopian future, the central premise of The Hunger Games is that of an oppressed society forced to nominate 24 teenagers to fight to the death for the entertainment of their rulers. These ‘games’ are satirically presented in the manner of a reality television gameshow.
While this fantasy/sci-fi setting is firmly established, parents should note that the violence, though not explicit, is often presented in a gritty and realistic fashion.
While the film frames this violence within a positive moral framework and provides a reassuring outcome (i.e., the ‘good’ or ‘heroic’ characters prevail), the intensity of some of the threatening and violent situations make ‘The Hunger Games’ unsuitable for younger viewers.
Films classified 12A have been deemed appropriate for viewers of twelve and over. This particular film is at the high end of this classification.
IFCO strongly promotes the exercise of parental responsibility and encourages all parents to make informed decisions regarding the suitability of films for their children, using the information provided on this website.

Perosnally i think the BBFC's site is better...

I'm not going to post the whole thing but the link is here for you to read....there was a slightly edited version for the UK market

BostonB

Handy link thanks for that.

Interesting the Irish and UK classifications are not always the same. So I'm told by mini people unhappy with my own censorship....

giftgrub

BostonB wrote: »

Handy link thanks for that.

Interesting the Irish and UK classifications are not always the same. So I'm told by mini people unhappy with my own censorship....

I would recommend you take a listen to the 5 Live movie show, they podcast as well. He covers most of weeks main releases and is pretty honest about the content of the movie....and wheter its good or bad!

BostonB

recipio wrote: »

...For me , the bland direction and pandering to audience ratings is the usual cynical Hollywood mercinary approach....

Dunno look at all the kids franchises being reborn as non kids movies, spiderman, superman, batman etc.

BostonB

giftgrub wrote: »

I would recommend you take a listen to the 5 Live movie show, they podcast as well. He covers most of weeks main releases and is pretty honest about the content of the movie....and wheter its good or bad!

Cheers look forward to that. - seems to be UK only.

BostonB

Podcatcher grabbed it ok. It was just the website that was blocking playback.

Sleepy

I'm reading the books at the moment and would heavily advise against this as a series for younger kids. Unless they really sanitise the sequels you might find yourself having to explain spoilers for later books:

prostitution, torture and nuclear war

.

MagicMarker

OP, you say the movie wasn't suitable for your child. Well, what is your child's opinion? Is she okay? Has she been having nightmares?

Or is it simply your opinion that it's not suitable for her and she didn't mind it at all?

cynder

Sleepy wrote: »

I'm reading the books at the moment and would heavily advise against this as a series for younger kids. Unless they really sanitise the sequels you might find yourself having to explain spoilers for later books:

prostitution, torture and nuclear war

.

Tom and jerry torture each other, road runner and coyote wolf always trying to kill each other off.

Nuclear war is still war, on the news all the time. There are plenty of pg films with war scenes. In 6th class they learn about ww2 in 4th they learned about Anne frank. Most of my daughters class read the books aged 11 and 12.

Some others in her school 9 and 10 read the book, she knows what torture is, she knows what prostitution is, infact you could say all 4th 5th & 6th did. And some younger classes . the schools ex principle was arrested for soliciting.

Most kids know about sex before their parents are ready to tell them.

Sleepy

I'm 32. Am I that out of touch that I'd consider detailed torture scenes,

someone being forced into prostitution under the threat of what will become of their loved ones, vividly described gruesome deaths in fireballs etc

unsuitable for a child under the age of 13? The very purpose of the games in this series is to ensure slaves stay subjugated by reminding them just how much power the Capitol has over their lives: they can make their children kill each other.

I can remember from my own childhood that we know about sex, slavery, prostitution etc. way before our parents had any conversations with us about them. I would, however, have been into my teens before I had any notion of what they really involved. In much the same way that when Jerry arranges for Tom to have an anvil fall on his head, that's funny because it makes Tom dizzy and have a lump immediately grow out of his head. When it's a real person and their head gets crushed leaving blood, bone and bits of brain all over the floor, that's gruesome and unsuitable viewing for most children.

I'm not one for excessive censoring of what our children watch (our 6 year old's favourite movie is Jaws!) but I'm not sure I like the idea of exposing pre-teens to the extents to which man's cruelty to each other can be taken.

The first movie is, like the first book, by far the tamest (and somewhat sanitised compared to the book). When they were initially written of course, this wouldn't have been a problem: the child would have read "The Hunger Games" at 13, "Catching Fire" at 14 and "Mockingjay" at 15. The increasingly adult nature of the books increasing with the age of the child. That's fine, once you know it's there. There'll be about 2 years between each film so that might give your child enough time to mature as the content of the movies do but the books are available for them to get the story ahead of those films. If, like most, you consider it a good idea to encourage our children to read, a parent could be setting up rather a protracted conflict by allowing their child to see this movie.

BostonB

I've not seen/read this series. But the Harry Potter books also do the same thing, get darker as the series progresses. While the intent might be for the reader to have aged a few years between the books, the reality is, a kid will read one after another all at the same age. Some read a lot earlier than others.

Nightmares would be a very simple outcome, but I would think kids acting out things might be more of a problem, especially if a kid is immature and doesn't understand fully the implications of what's going on, and also lack the moral and social restraints of someone more mature.

6yr old Jaws really? Have to say I wouldn't. You'd never get them swimming again. Pretty gory/scary no? You can see the certifications it has globally here. Seems to average 12~13.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/parentalguide

Hunger games rating here
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392170/parentalguide#certification

cynder

BostonB wrote: »

I've not seen/read this series. But the Harry Potter books also do the same thing, get darker as the series progresses. While the intent might be for the reader to have aged a few years between the books, the reality is, a kid will read one after another all at the same age. Some read a lot earlier than others.

Nightmares would be a very simple outcome, but I would think kids acting out things might be more of a problem, especially if a kid is immature and doesn't understand fully the implications of what's going on, and also lack the moral and social restraints of someone more mature.

6yr old Jaws really? Have to say I wouldn't. You'd never get them swimming again. Pretty gory/scary no? You can see the certifications it has globally here. Seems to average 12~13.

my 6 and 5 year old love jaws too!

Im 32, and i can remember what i watched as a kid, as soon as total recall was out on dvd i saw it, in fact i loved all the Van Damme, Segal, Bruce Willis, Stallone, Arnie films. They had an adult theme (including rape) and were violent, yet never had any affect on me and many others, since your the same age Sleepy did you watch any of the above films?

I watched Aliens before my 8th birthday, the bit that stuck out was the alien running across the table... (i know it was before my 8th birthday, as i watched it with my parents in the uk, we moved to ireland just before my 8th birthday) Did not have nightmares, however i did after watching the evil dead, when i was 2 my brother and I put on the VCR and that so happened to be the film inside. My mom tells me we got a good telling off, I had the nightmares for 3 years. I can still remember them vividly.

The only films i wasnt allowed to watch were the horrors. Freddy and chucky and so on.

We had to close our eyes at the sex scenes but not at the violent scenes.

BostonB

cynder wrote: »

....I had the nightmares for 3 years. I can still remember them vividly....

I would think there are effects much less obvious more insidious then turning you into a gibbering wreck. But would have a impact on a kid nonetheless. But you might not notice them if your value system is on a scale of 0 to 3 years of nightmares. Just a thought...

Sleepy

I'd have been 12/13 before I was let watch any of the Arnie / Stallone / Van Damme movies (beyond the Rocky series). I can still remember being allowed to watch my first Bond movie at about 9...

On Jaws, the biggest impact has been a fascination with sharks, they understand that Sharks like warm water and the water in Ireland is too cold for them and love documentaries on them on Discovery, National Geo etc. Though we did get a right laugh when the little fella was once asked did he know any songs and he burst into "Show me the way to go home..."

BostonB

There no instructions in the manual you get with a baby about this kind of stuff at all.

I remember seeing the empire strikes back and my cousin having nightmares about the Han Solo Carbonite scene. Though that scene has never been the same for me since Family Guy did it.

iguana

Sleepy wrote: »

I'm not one for excessive censoring of what our children watch (our 6 year old's favourite movie is Jaws!) but I'm not sure I like the idea of exposing pre-teens to the extents to which man's cruelty to each other can be taken.

Why? All you are doing is hiding a large part of life from children which can make it all the more traumatic when they do learn about it. I was having long relatively detailed conversations about the two world wars that happened and the potential third one from the age of 5. I know it was that age as it stemmed from my fascination with the video for Paul McCartney's Pipes of Peace which came out the week I turned 5. I wanted to know what was happening in the video and my parents told me about WW1, the 1914 Christmas truce, conscription, the horrible conditions in the trenches, etc. They left me ask questions and they answered them honestly and simply, allowing my questions to dictate the level of detail they gave me. The fact that the war was number 'one' made me ask about if there was a 'two' and that led to me learning about WW2.

Then later the following year my dad bought a Luke Kelly/Dubliners tape which led to me learning about WW3 and human caused extinction, thanks to my questions about 'The Sun is Burning' and 'The Last of the Great Whales.' I can't say I was overjoyed by any of those revelations about the world but I wouldn't have been at any age and probably accepted them better and easier as a younger child than I would have if I'd only learned about them in my teens. And it was a lot better for my parents to control what I learned than fob off my questions and let me learn bits and pieces from other sources.

It's done me absolutely no harm, if anything it was a massive boon to me. It let me know that I could ask my parents anything and trust them as source of information. And it turned me into the type of person who can confront uncomfortable truths about the world instead of ignoring them or shying away from them which is a habit that a lot of adults never develop.

movingsucks

I had to be carried screaming out of Roger Rabbit coz of the bit with the shoe being burned to death. I was four or five.
I also had nightmares coz of Inspector Gadget.

Sleepy

iguana wrote: »

Why? All you are doing is hiding a large part of life from children which can make it all the more traumatic when they do learn about it. I was having long relatively detailed conversations about the two world wars that happened and the potential third one from the age of 5. I know it was that age as it stemmed from my fascination with the video for Paul McCartney's Pipes of Peace which came out the week I turned 5. I wanted to know what was happening in the video and my parents told me about WW1, the 1914 Christmas truce, conscription, the horrible conditions in the trenches, etc. They left me ask questions and they answered them honestly and simply, allowing my questions to dictate the level of detail they gave me. The fact that the war was number 'one' made me ask about if there was a 'two' and that led to me learning about WW2.

Then later the following year my dad bought a Luke Kelly/Dubliners tape which led to me learning about WW3 and human caused extinction, thanks to my questions about 'The Sun is Burning' and 'The Last of the Great Whales.' I can't say I was overjoyed by any of those revelations about the world but I wouldn't have been at any age and probably accepted them better and easier as a younger child than I would have if I'd only learned about them in my teens. And it was a lot better for my parents to control what I learned than fob off my questions and let me learn bits and pieces from other sources.

It's done me absolutely no harm, if anything it was a massive boon to me. It let me know that I could ask my parents anything and trust them as source of information. And it turned me into the type of person who can confront uncomfortable truths about the world instead of ignoring them or shying away from them which is a habit that a lot of adults never develop.

A fair question. We do answer our kids questions in a similar fashion but while I'd discuss history with them I'd leave out the gory details. I'm presuming your parents didn't get into any of the really grisly details of either war?.

The later books touch on some really nasty stuff. Probably fine for a 14/15 year old but not a pre-teen imo.

cynder

1 of my great uncles died in ww2 in le harve 96 days after d-day he served in the blackwatch 7th battalion and is on the roll of honor. Another was shot in Germany, another one was based in France . My grandad failed his medical but was part of the night bomb/ fire watch in his area. My great grandad shares the grave of my great uncle that died. An army grave. I visited the grave with my mom ever since I was a baby. My grandads grave is 5 meters away.

My cousin was paralysed in operations in Kuwait when I was 7.

I pass all this info on to my kids as my parents did with me, my eldest has met my paralysed cousin in the UK, he only has slight movement in 1 arm and his speech is slured, he had an injury to the back of his head damaging the part of the brain that controls muscle movement. At school she wrote up a report on her ancestors role in ww2. She has been to visit the graves, when I bring my 2 boys over they too will visit the graves and they will hear the ww2 stories.

iguana

Sleepy wrote: »

A fair question. We do answer our kids questions in a similar fashion but while I'd discuss history with them I'd leave out the gory details. I'm presuming your parents didn't get into any of the really grisly details of either war?.

The later books touch on some really nasty stuff. Probably fine for a 14/15 year old but not a pre-teen imo.

We discussed certain grisly details. For example I learned from them that in the event of a nuclear war you would be better off to die in the initial strikes as life for the survivors would most likely not be worth living. But what really blew my mind was the idea that that wars didn't have good guys and bad guys. That a lot of the time people fighting didn't want to fight at all but had no choice due to their own governments.

We didn't talk about anything sexual, so things like forced prostitution, rape etc, weren't mentioned. But at that point I didn't really have any idea about sex at all and so I wouldn't have asked any questions that would have led to those details. By the time I was 11-12 however I would have started to have been becoming aware of that sort of thing. I used to really enjoy revolution/war fiction at that point and while I mostly read YA fiction, I'd sometimes get adult books from the library/secondhand shops which did often deal with those part of certain wars. I also read newspapers and at that point reports of Serbian rape camps were starting to emerge. So by the age of the kids who might go see this movie I doubt I'd have been overly traumatised by it.

BostonB

Theres a bit of contradiction there. Saying you were told about all the grisly details, then saying it was sanitised for you. Thats also different to watching something on video that isn't sanitised in anyway.

I wonder perhaps were you very advanced for your age, but the 5yr old's I'm around, that stuff would be very much beyond them. These are kids starting school etc, so they are at a very basic level. I find that hard to reconcile with such advanced concepts you're describing. TBH its only just in the reach of 8~9yr olds I know, a few of whom are very advanced in reading and comprehension.

iguana

BostonB wrote: »

Theres a bit of contradiction there. Saying you were told about all the grisly details, then saying it was sanitised for you. Thats also different to watching something on video that isn't sanitised in anyway.

There is no contradiction because at no point did I say I was told all the grisly details. Read what I wrote again. I said certain grisly details, like the conditions in the trenches or what would happen to survivors of a nuclear war. We didn't talk about the sexual violence as my parents answered my questions and I didn't really know anything about sex when I was 5, so I didn't ask any questions that would have led to those answers.

Maybe I'm wrong but I'm not convinced that being academically advanced has much to do with what children can understand when their parents answer their questions honestly. I think people seriously underestimate what children are capable of taking on board and what worse things their imaginations can invent in place of the truth if they only learn bits and pieces of information.

BostonB

I'm not really seeing a qualitative difference between all and certain grisly details. Grisly is grisly. In the context of seeing everything or something in a movie and what us suitable for kids considering the numbers of people admitting to nightmares and phobia's from much lighter stuff.

I was talking about a child's comprehension level, not academic ability, which is different, but not unrelated.

I'm not drawing a line in the sand. Its just interesting the differing opinions on it.

iguana

BostonB wrote: »

I'm not really seeing a qualitative difference between all and certain grisly details. Grisly is grisly.

Really? That's your understanding? You don't understand the difference certain and all? Those are two words with completely different meanings? It's kind of unbelievable that you think otherwise. I think you skimmed over what I wrote and tried to make a smart comment because the way my parents dealt with my questions is outside of your ken.

In the context of seeing everything or something in a movie and what us suitable for kids considering the numbers of people admitting to nightmares and phobia's from much lighter stuff.

My parents didn't 'sanitise' anything. They answered my questions based on what they knew I could handle. And yes plenty of that was very 'grisly.' Their descriptions of life in the trenches was certainly accurate and if you know anything about life in the trenches you'd know just how grisly that was. I haven't seen or read The Hunger Games but I doubt the violence is much worse than being forced to go to war, live in a stinking, wet cesspit for months or years on end, eat mouldy rations supplemented with the rats you catch, getting trenchfoot, being forced over the top and watching hundreds of your friends be slaughtered while you participate in the slaughter of those on the other side.

And if you know anything about what would happen to survivors of a nuclear war, you'd know that the life that would follow would most likely be far worse. When I asked if our neutrality would protect us in the case of WW3 I was told that would be unlikely, that Shannon airport, which was about 25 miles from our house, was most likely a target. We talked about how in a lot of ways we were in just about as bad a place as possible as we wouldn't die immediately but would likely die horribly within a month of the detonation. We discussed how the best course of action would probably be to loot a chemist for sleeping pills and die as peacefully as possible. Like I said the WW3 conversation stemmed from me hearing the song, The Sun is Burning, the lyrics of which contain "Now the sun has come to Earth, Shrouded in a mushroom cloud of death, Death comes in a blinding flash, Of hellish heat and leaves a smear of ash, And the sun has come to Earth. Now the sun has disappeared, All is darkness, anger, pain and fear, Twisted, sightless wrecks of men, Go groping on their knees and cry in pain." Again I'll go out on a limb and guess that nothing in The Hunger Games is much more 'grisly' than that.

So no. The fact that we didn't discuss sexual violence, based on the fact that at the age of 5 I didn't know enough about sex to ask any questions about how sex is used in war, isn't a contradiction of any type and doesn't mean that anything was sanitised for me. It wasn't exactly the nicest thing to learn about, especially the idea that the whole world could be destroyed in a matter of hours if a small amount of people decided to do that. But we didn't just talk about the horrors, we also talked about how my parents didn't really believe that it would ever happen. That in a lot of ways having those bombs exist meant that we were unlikely to have another war on the scale of WW1&2. I was never especially afraid of nuclear war precisely because we talked through the worst that could happen along with the likelihood of that worst happening. Yet I know a lot of other children of the '80s who were terrified of the idea because their parents fobbed them off when they asked about it, yet they had seen or read about movies like Threads and their imaginations were creating worse scenarios for them than an honest discussion with their parents would have.

BostonB

iguana wrote: »

.My parents didn't 'sanitise' anything. They answered my questions based on what they knew I could handle. And yes plenty of that was very 'grisly.'.

For me that is filtering, sanitising, and thus contradictory in itself.

Personally I wouldn't think dying horrible gruesome deaths, and suffering, and looting for drugs is suitable material for low infants age group. It wouldn't be my first choice off the book shelf anyway.