I am not usually a person who follows "Hype", most times I just steer clear from any movie or book that receives too much attention but my interest was piqued with The Hunger Games. I think what makes this trilogy interesting is that you can see a country, say North Korea, doing something like this to their people...starve them, in slave them, break them down into Districts where each resource (coal, grain, fishing, etc.) from the District feeds the capitol, make a game out of their despair and misery and in the end an uprising.
Though I enjoyed this trilogy I did struggle with liking the main character Katniss. By book 3 I pretty much just wanted to know what happened to the other people who played a vital role in her life and really didnt care to know what happened to her. I felt her character was too self loathing. Its hard to read a series and slowly dislike the main protagonist. But through it all I felt the story was thought provoking and the futurist aspect very interesting.
The movie was great and it followed the first book very closely. Matthew McConaughey playing Haymitch was a suprise to me, in my mind I pictured someone sloppy and sloth like (two things Matthew is not) but he did a good job and I thought the casting of Lenny Kravitz was perfect.