This is a move that one thought would be an improvement as Ross is more of a traditionalist, not a director whose oeuvre seems to cry out as someone with an ear to contemporary teen voice or a blockbuster or action movie bent. For reasons unclear, Ross declined to sign on for the sequel. The sole exception is original director Gary Ross. With Catching Fire, everybody present from the original (at least who was not killed off) has returned.
The original was an effective enough film, although you feel that its human bloodsports future is not a particularly original premise if one had seen enough science-fiction films – see the smiliar likes of The Tenth Victim (1965), Punishment Park (1971), Rollerball (1975), The Prize of Peril (1983), The Running Man (1987), Battle Royale (2000) and Series 7: The Contenders (2001), which are dealt with in more depth in the essay Films About Human Bloodsports and Death Games. With studios snapping up the rights to all manner of Young Adult book series in the hope of lighting upon the next Harry Potter or Twilight phenomenon, The Hunger Games proved to be one amid a string of non-starters that took off with audiences in a big way. It is in turn based on Suzanne Collins’ Catching Fire (2009), the second in her trilogy of Young Adult novels. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire was the first sequel to The Hunger Games (2012), which proved to be a runaway box-office success. Katniss and Peeta are chosen as the Tributes from District 12 in a competition that will place them up against other seasoned winners. Snow responds by announcing the 75th Hunger Games, the Quarter Quell special that allows him to do something different, where it is decided that the contestants will be made up of former Hunger Games winners. Instead, Katniss’s intervention to stop a Peacekeeper flogging Gale ends up being televised and further adding to the social unrest.
To try and convince President Snow that their relationship is genuine and not bring reprisals against her family, they announce their engagement. Instead, Katniss sees that their presence has become a symbol that is stirring the flames of rebellion among the masses and that this is being brutally crushed by the Peacekeepers. In the aftermath of winning the Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark are forced by President Snow to keep up the fiction that they are in love and conduct a tour of the twelve Districts.