The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Is the Anti-Fascist Jewel in the YA Crown

If you were part of the target demographic for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire—that is, you watched it as a teenager when it was released 10 years ago—then any subsequent watch of the Hunger Games sequel will effectively transport you back to The Young Adult Zone. The YA Zone, of course, is that peculiar emotional state felt when watching an above-average fantasy, sci-fi or romance film, a reaction to fiction executing its rudimentary but clearly defined themes with cheer-worthy confidence. You feel like you’re 14 and you’ve just watched the smartest thing ever—and part of the reason it’s smart is because of how much it made you feel.

A great YA fantasy will seamlessly mesh ideas with emotion. This invites you to read deeper into uncomplicated messaging and feel more passionately about something that, if you’re lucky, reflects onto real-world history. In continuing the already zeitgeisty Hunger Games saga, Catching Fire posed questions about long-term survival within the parameters of fascist dominion, and how political structures are designed to poison solidarity—all while enriching characters who are bonded through shared trauma. It holds up as fist-pumping, chest-beating excitement for every “didn’t realize they were a radical yet” Tumblr-era internet teen, and the benchmark for teenage Battle Royales that The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes now has to beat.

After both surviving the 74th Hunger Games the year before, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) now reside in the Victors’ Village of the most impoverished district, District 12. It’s an empty, hollow luxury, with only their bitter former mentor Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) for company. Immediately, Catching Fire’s improved budget (an increase of ~$50 million) and change in director (Constantine’s Francis Lawrence) are apparent; the film looks gorgeous, with a vivid, textured color palette and dynamic lighting replacing the frenetic, handheld appearance of director Gary Ross’ first film.

Katniss’ struggles to slip back into normalcy are disrupted not just by traumatic flashbacks to last year’s violence (cue Jack Quaid jump scare), but by the victory tour that the fascist Capitol makes her and Peeta embark on. As the pair visit each and every district, they see the steely faces of communities who have just lost two of their young—in some cases, at the hands of Katniss and Peeta. This confronting tension is by design: The Capitol parades around recent victors to funnel the blame felt by mourning districts onto the individual(s) that won the games. Putting traumatized Katniss and Peeta on a stage gives the sense that death was not caused by systems, but by lone tributes with total agency over their violence.

But revolution is brewing in the Capitol, and President Snow (Donald Sutherland) has made it clear that he will punish Katniss’ family if she does anything to stir up anti-Capitol sentiment. This includes theming the 75th Hunger Games (a “Quarter Quell”) around previous game victors, putting Katniss and Peeta back into the arena with generations of former winners from all 12 districts. The moment Snow makes the Quarter Quell announcement is titanic: Watching Katniss, Peeta and Haymitch crumble, betrayed and powerless, is so emotionally rich—and a stirring reminder of the false security offered by fascist powers. 

Our characters did what the Capitol asked of them; they performed acts of stunning brutality to save their own skin, potentially losing their humanity in the process—all with the guarantee that they would be safe for the rest of their lives. But this bargain wasn’t made on equal grounds. The Capitol wields the ultimate power to do whatever they want with their oppressed subjects. Do not accept the terms of a compromised or conditional freedom—history has shown us that they will be freely rescinded whenever it benefits the oppressor.

To add context to this political atmosphere, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire gives us more insight than before into Panem life outside of Katniss’ perspective; the introduction of gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) shows us the machinations of brutal rule outside of Panem’s televised slaughter. We’re also given more opportunity to connect and empathize with the Hunger Games’ other tributes—including the inscrutable Johanna (Jena Malone), tech wizard Beetee (Jeffrey Wright), and uber-charmlord Finnick (Sam Claflin). 

Despite their differences, there exists a solidarity between the victors—everyone’s furious about being drafted back in, and no matter how much they’ve enjoyed their spoils since they won the games, many of them are now completely disillusioned with Capitol life. In a moment that’s stunning in its simplicity, the tributes hijack their televised interviews by joining hands and raising their arms in defiant unison. The look on TV host Caesar Flickerman’s (Stanley Tucci) face spells it out even more clearly—solidarity against the Capitol is the gravest threat to its power.

A sidenote: Josh Hutcherson is absolutely fantastic in these films. Peeta is a much more fascinating character than the “love triangle” discourse around him and Gale (Liam Hemsworth) gave him credit for; a meek, fairly uninteresting man whose fantasy about being connected to Katniss for life becomes real in a terrifying way. His moments of softness speaking with Katniss about their PTSD are pulled off with grace, and the Five Nights at Freddy’s actor devours the scenes where he has to explain a fake relationship with Katniss. “If it weren’t for the baby…” is an astute political ploy to test the morality of the Capitol’s bloodlust with Oscar-worthy delivery.

As the games unfold, it quickly becomes clear it’s not tributes vs. tributes, but tributes vs. arena. There are so many more hazardous traps than the previous year’s games—mutants, poisonous fog, tsunamis—all occurring in timed, clockwork intervals, making the arena into a sick doomsday clock. The allied tributes try to use a regular lightning strike to zap the remaining tributes, but at the last moment Katniss wordlessly adapts her plan to something more seismic. She ties the metal wire intended to carry the lightning’s current to the beach to an arrowhead, and just as the lightning strikes, she fires it up into the ceiling of the arena dome—exploding it wide open and destroying all Capitol power. 

There’s nothing subtle or sophisticated about this climactic imagery, but Catching Fire thunders down its driving argument with terrific power. Turn your weapons away from your comrades, turn them on the instrument of your oppression. Don’t fight in the Hunger Games, fight the Hunger Games.

In an era of cynically produced young adult adaptations that pandered to the reductive standards of previous hits, Catching Fire stands out as a film that may have simplified its revolutionary ideals for a teen audience, but still delivered them with no less passion than they deserved. Every step in this mounting wave of resistance is actualized on a supercharged scale; solidarity, empathy, even the reshaping of public opinion all play a massive part in a story that finds its anti-fascist motivations in thoughtfully sketched-out characters, with emotional journeys that are performed to perfection.

Of course, the flaws of The Hunger Games series’ revolutionary politics are varied and deep-set: A massive-budget blockbuster produced by a major (if independent) studio runs the risk of aestheticizing actual revolutionary histories, and the cis-het whiteness of our band of oppressed rebels can’t be overlooked, especially when the series refuses to engage with the racially segregated nature of the districts.

Rather than a definitive anti-fascist teen text, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire remains as a curio in a bloated dystopian market—a franchise story clearly engaged with the emotional power and internal mechanisms of large-scale resistance. Ten years on, Catching Fire exists as a unique form of nostalgia: A reminder of one of the first times a YA film this vast and exciting showed us politics that were just as vast and exciting.

Rory Doherty is a screenwriter, playwright and culture writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. You can follow his thoughts about all things stories @roryhasopinions.