There were just so many instances of "I would have done this differently" in this movie I started writing them all down and have a really screwed up version now... actually close to the fake trailer made by Kevin Tanchareon concept trailer.   There was just so much, I don't want to say style without substance but things that didn't work for me.  Did anyone else think the Capitol looked too much like Equilibrium instead of some decadent palace city like Dubai?  And the guy running the games just had the worst sort-of old fashioned villain look to him, like he should have been tying a woman to a train track.  I kept thinking the guy in charge of the show should have been someone like a Bob Balaban, a regular guy whose job is televising killing people, a whole "evil that mundane people can do."

And I had a big problem with the design of the games itself once the Muttations and the wall of flame came into play.  Keeping with that "evil that regular people do," I would have had the Capitol keep their hands clean: "hey, you all agreed to this, WE didn't kill your kids, they kill each other.  We trained them to defend themselves, too.  Want to be mad at someone, be mad at the other districts!" (Because part of the point of the games is to keep the Districts from uniting, isn't it?)

I remember someone saying on Twitter "imagine Paul Verhoeven directing Hunger Games."  Once that thought's put in your head, how can this movie come close?