Photo Credit: Sarah Underwood
By: Sarah Underwood
Milligan students flooded the doors of Carmike 14 in Johnson City Thursday night to show their enthusiasm of the new book series-turned movie, The Hunger Games.
The obsession with The Hunger Games has proved bigger than even the Twilight series, according to a report by the Daily Beast.
“Tracking estimates show that Hunger Games might pull in a total of $140 million its first weekend based on presale figures. Breaking Dawn of the Twilight trilogy had ticket sales for the first weekend that reached $138.5 million,” reported the Daily Beast.
The Daily Beast also reports that, “Hunger Games has sold out 2,000 theaters nationwide.”
Carmike 14 was one of those who sold out earlier this week.
Many Milligan students attended the event, including Katie Smith. She expressed her excitement and encouraged others to go see the movie.
The Hunger Games provides much entertainment relief for college studies; however there seems to also be a humanities twist in the plot.
Dr. Robert Wetzel, professor of humanities, brought up the subject in class where he was met with much enthusiasm. He then began to suggest that there is more to the story than just a teenage girl overcoming social difficulty.
Wetzel commented, “earlier today in reading an interview with Suzanne Collins, I found it interesting that she wrote the novel to ‘continue to explore the effects of war and violence on those coming of age.’ As a humanities teacher, I found it especially interesting that Ms. Collins was influenced by the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotar as she developed the story in her mind.”
Another interesting fact that Dr. Wetzel mentioned was that “the setting in Panem with its futuristic gladiatorial combats is in fact a futuristic classical Rome. ‘Panem’ itself is derived from the Latin expression, ‘Panem et Circus,’ bread and circus.”
As it turns out, going to the movies can prove to be more than just an entertaining relief from homework. The Hunger Games has also aided in educating Milligan students and connecting faculty to their students.
Wetzel said, “Now I await a copy of ‘Hunger Games’, which I want to read before I see the film. In the meantime I shall depend on a film review from my students.”
milliganstampede
