By Lauren Gapp

The Hunger Games, the first book of Suzanne Collins’ trilogy, was a huge success across the nation. Both the book and the movie intrigued audiences and made The Hunger Games series one of the hottest hits of 2012. Of course, The Hunger Games is a trilogy, and the second film version of the two remaining books, Catching Fire, just took fans by storm.

Fans immediately started ordering tickets and hitting the box office as Catching Fire opened in theaters November 22. Writer Jason Evans from The Wall Street Journal blog predicted at the time that Catching Fire was about to set the record of making $175 million just in opening weekend.

Of course, there is always the question of which is better: the book or the movie?  In the case of Catching Fire, the movie followed the book so exactly, it even included direct quotes from the book in the movie.

Director Francis Lawrence nailed the book and translated on film exactly how it was written. The characters were terrific and every scene raged with fire. For example, when Katniss saves Gale from being whipped by the Peacekeeper, the intensity in that scene is very thick and, just like the book, the movie left the audience with a cliffhanging scene.

In that cliffhanging scene, Katniss is lifted from the arena and finds out that Peeta was taken by the Capitol. After the Head Gamemaker is forced to inject her with drugs to make her calm down, Katniss awakens with Gale by her side telling her that there is no District 12 anymore.

Additionally, the special effects team did an amazing job with every unrealistic scene in the movie making them seem so realistic. The Cornucopia scene and the Cornucopia being able to spin like a clock was a big shock, even to the actors in the movie. The actors expressed their amazement of the special effects crew during interviews and broadcasts.

During the scene with the poison fog, the special effects were also amazing and so realistic that it was hard to determine whether it was real or not, the special effects crew for Catching Fire did an outstanding job.

The fog and cornucopia were not the only mind-blowing illusions in the movie. The wild vicious monkeys that were chasing after Katniss and Peeta were so believable that no one knew they were edited in until they watched the ‘behind the scenes’ clips.

And of course, the last scene was the heart breaker. Keeping everyone on a note of wonder of where Peeta is and Katniss being lifted by a claw machine out of the arena. This also was special effects with the illusion that she was lifted thousands of feet off the ground.

For those who haven’t read Mockingjay the last scene left them speechless and unable to wait another year for the movie to come into theaters. Mockingjay will take over the charts when it appears in theaters in 2014 and fans cannot wait.