What makes The Hunger Games an effective adaptation is that the filmmakers seemed to care little if you hadn’t read the book, and seemed to make the film assuming that you did. There are few surprises, a couple of big changes, and quite a bit left out, but at 2 hours and 20 minutes they managed to cram in quite a lot.

I’ll talk about the adaptation from book to script more in a minute, but I’d like to write briefly about a couple other aspects of the film that I think helped to make it such a strong film. The first of those is Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss. As anyone who saw her excellent performance in Winter’s Bone can tell you, this is an already outstanding actress who is set up to have a marvelous career. Like in Winter’s Bone, her performance in The Hunger Games is subtle, yet powerful. She’s confident without being aloof and sensitive without losing her strength. She makes Katniss everything that Lara Craft and Bella Cullen can never be because she has the tools to make the character strong and likable.

The Production Design is often an overlooked aspect of film making, but The Hunger Games has a great look that draws the audience into the world that the filmmakers have created and makes them feel like they’re a part of it.

As far as the adaptation goes, I felt like they did a very good job for the most part. They didn’t put anything in the movie that didn’t happen in the book, and for the sake of keeping it at PG-13, a lot of the violence was toned back, and the demon dogs at the end weren’t quite as disturbing in the film as they were in the book.

I did feel that they rushed a couple of scenes, specifically the Reaping scene and the training sequence. Yes, the movie played for about 2 hours and 10 minute when you take out the credits, but they probably would have had to only add 6-7 minutes to the running time to make these scenes feel a little more complete. The Reaping is especially important because that’s where Katniss volunteers to take her sister’s place in the Hunger Games. It’s a very dramatic and important point in the story, and it felt to me that it wasn’t given its dramatic due. Also, the training chapters in the book were great places to learn the dynamic between Katniss and Peeta, as well as learning about the other players in the game. In the movie, we did get a good sense of the relationship between Peeta and Katniss, but we didn’t really get a good sense of the other players. They were introduced, but none of them were really shown as huge potential threats, other than a few words of dialogue and a couple of throw away shots.

Otherwise, this was a very good adaptation. The story was well told, well shot and well acted. The scene where Katniss goes up the tube to the arena was particularly striking to me, as Jennifer Lawrence really looked terrified as she was elevated to the arena. The structure of the script didn’t really feel like it followed the traditional 3-Act structure, but the filmmakers had to make a choice between following tradition or being faithful to the book and they seemed to pick the latter, which works for this film, and is another indication that they were making the film with the idea that it would be seen mainly by people who had already read the book.

That said, this could still be an entertaining film for people who hadn’t seen the book. Yes, it’s anecdotal but I have talked with a few people that saw the movie without reading the book, and they all liked it.

Overall, The Hunger Games is a very good film that is worth seeing, especially if you’re an aspiring writer who wants to see an example of an effective adaptation of a novel to a screenplay.