By Charles Pan ’18, Middle School Editor

Catching Fire: Did it Catch Fire?

As 8th grader William Hayward entered the Summit Bowtie Cinemas to watch the sequel to The Hunger Games, he knew he was in for a good movie.

Catching Fire, the second installment in The Hunger Games trilogy, released on November 22nd, 2013. It was an instant hit. It received an 8.2 rating from IMDB and 89% rating from Rotten Tomatoes, and it passed Iron Man 3 as the best domestic and highest-grossing movie of 2013. It was the first film with a female lead to lead the annual box office in 40 years. It marks the first time that the first two installments of a franchise had each grossed more than $400 million in the box office. It had set records for the biggest November opening weekend ever, at $158.1 million. Some fans went as far to wait outside theatres for days in tents, waiting for the premiere of the movie.

6 months after winning the Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) must go on a Victor’s Tour throughout all 12 districts, where they discover a possible uprising and rebellion coming. 6 months later, Katniss is tragically chosen to compete in the Quarter Quell, or the 75th Hunger Games. Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson) decides their best chance is to make an alliance with all the other victors to survive. They form an alliance with the victors from District 4, Finnick Odair (Sam Claflin) and Mags (Lynn Cohen) in the arena. Katniss, Peeta, and Finnick survive until the final eight before tragedy strikes, separating all the victors and creating chaos, before Katniss discovers a way to destroy the force field around the arena.

The movie received positive reviews from the Newark Academy audience as well. John Funda, an 8th grader at Newark Academy, said that “the movie definitely lived up to the hype and it surpassed the first movie by a lot. There were a lot more action and less talking in this one. My favorite part was the clock mechanism, because I thought that was really clever.” Jake McEvoy agreed. “Catching Fire kept up with the book more rather than going off the plot. Jennifer Lawrence was simply ‘delightful’ in her acting. It definitely lived up to the hype that it received.”

In Catching Fire, there was a controversial scene of Johanna Mason (Jena Malone) stripping down. Surprisingly, Jena Malone commented that she was “disappointed” that couldn’t strip down fully and was only limited to partial nudity, although viewers know that the movie has to remain PG-13. There has been mixed reviews from the Newark Academy community about this scene. Some said that it was “very good” while others, such as Jake McEvoy, said it was rather “creepy.”

The sequel to Catching Fire, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, has been set to release on November 21, 2014. The movie is positively anticipated, expected to be another amazing continuation in the Hunger Games trilogy. Viewers will have to wait until November to find out.