Headscratchers / The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

• How is Katniss able to sneak out of the district and into restricted areas if the president has her under surveillance?
  • Just because Snow watches her doesn't mean he will jump on every instance of her actions. Or maybe he didn't have cameras that far out in the wilderness.
  • Indeed, that's part of just how creepy it is when he shows her the recording. He's implying very clearly that when she thought she was getting out from under his thumb, he knew all along and was letting her get away with it, and could stop whenever he chooses.
  • If you mean the meeting with Gale after the Quarter Quell is announced, her fate is already locked. She knows she's being sent back into the games to die. So in that case she probably doesn't care if Snow has her under surveillance.
• If Plutarch wanted to ensure Katniss's safety then wouldn't it have been easier to just relocate her instead of putting her back in the Games that he would ultimately have to rescue her from?
  • Snow had Katniss under extremely close supervision. If anyone moved to try and get her to go somewhere else then he'd know immediately.
  • Having her in the games also allowed them to do things like evacuate her family and get all the necessary people out while Snow was preoccupied with watching her in the games.
• What would happen if one of the Districts didn't have a male and female victor? Would they find a different way to get Katniss back into the games or just reap a random tribute instead of a victor?
  • Presumably the Capitol took the time to ensure that, yes, each District did in fact have a male and female Victor. If there was any District that did not, then there would probably be certain amendments to it. Either, they take the one Victor that District has and then some poor Tribute of the other gender, or (if any District had this exact scenario) two Victors of the same gender. If the latter scenario did exist, then whether they take two Victors of the same gender or one Victor and one Tribute would probably depend on which idea the Capitol felt was better.
• What was the orginal 3rd Quarter Quell going to be? Is it possible that either the 3rd or 4th was going to be the All-star season?
  • It makes a certain sense to do an all-star season. The 1st Quarter Quell involved electing the tribute to remind the districts the rebellion was thier choice. The 2nd was a double size one to remind the districts they lost for every 1 Capitol causaulty. Taking the best of district does send a message and follows that like of authorian thinking. Other possibilities, reaping only 12 year olds to remind the districts that thier youngest will pay the highest price. What if a quell reaped people at say 5 and the victims speant the rest of thier lives knowing they will be reaped when they turned 18? This would make district wannabe rebels feel like fate is conspiring against them.
• Once the Cornucopia is spun, Heavensbee remarks about wanting to see how the Tributes tell time now. However, they'd already figured out that the easily visible and distinct tree that is hit by lightning (which they have no trouble identifying and finding again later) was the landmark that signified 12 o'clock. Given that they'd also mapped out several of the other wedges in relation to it, simply standing on the shores of the lake should still allow the Tributes to tell the time and direction (in relation to the hourly events), even with the Cornucopia spun.
  • Considering Heavensbee was secretly working against Snow the whole time, the above "mistake" was probably intentional.
    • building in the above, the conspiracy needed the career pack alive because otherwise the rebel alliance would have little reason to remain intact. It’s already a fairly big group (at its peak there’s six, with another two sympathizers still in the arena), and Katniss and Peeta were just a night or two away from splitting off. Spinning the Cornucopia ensured Enobaria and Brutus would live to see another day.
  • In the Book, each segment had an identical tree, so the tributes can't tell time. However, Beetee says that they will see the 10 o clock wave and get back on track.
  • In the film at least, the spin happens right after Wiress gets killed by one of the careers, and Katniss comes very close to being killed as well. So it was actually a move to save her.
• After the female morphling jumps in front of Peeta to save him from an attacking monkey, Peeta then holds her as she dies. When the hover-craft comes to pick up her body Peeta remarks to Katniss that he doesn’t even know the morphling’s name. How is that at all possible? Each tribute’s name is broadcast time and time again from the moment of the reaping up until they enter the arena. He would have heard it countless times, for instance when they are called-in for their private session, when their scores are announced, and when Caesar calls them up on stage during their interview. Even if movie-Peeta didn’t meticulously study all previous victors in the months before the reaping as his book counterpart did, he could not possibly have avoided hearing her name several times, and it would be very out of character for him to not pay the slightest bit of attention.
  • There’s a lot of names to recall and her’s probably just slipped under the radar. Katniss only seems to recall about half of them. Presumably the morphlings were among the more low key victors, it sounds like they stayed at the paint station all week so largely didn’t socialize.
    • I would argue that twenty-two names aren’t that hard to remember when you hear and see them several times, especially since they were all previous victors and therefore the biggest celebrities in Panem. While Katniss might not have been able to recall all the tributes’ names in the 74th games, this time around they would have known all the names even before the reaping, since the Hunger Games are manditory viewing. It’s basically their version of going into the games with Emma Stone, Tom Holland, or Harrison Ford.
• When Plutarch tells Katniss that half the tributes were in on the plan to get her out, does that mean that they secretly volunteered to go into the games by rigging the reaping? We know at least half of the tributes would have been drawn by chance (ie the careers and presumably the others who weren’t in on it), but can we assume that people like Finnick, Johanna and Beetee agreed to go in to the arena and Plutarch made sure theirs were the only names in their respective bowls? The fact that Annie was reaped against her will doesn’t mean that Finnick was. It just seems more logical to me that at least some of the victors who were in on it would have been so from the beginning, choosing to try and protect Katniss and Peeta until they could all escape, rather than Plutarch, Haymitch and co bringing them in once they reached the Capitol for the training week. Especially since some of the other victors from their districts might not have been willing to join in the rebellion, or might have been older and/or less physically adept at keeping Katniss and Peeta alive (although it is definitely possible that some of them might have been the only living victor of their gender in their districts).
  • Since it's Plutarch who persuades Snow to have this year's games consist of former victors, that's very possible. They wouldn't necessarily need to do much rigging, depending on how many tributes which district would have. The ones in the alliance seem to have something very specific that they were chosen for - Wiress and Beetee's intelligence for sure, Finnick having plenty of dirt on Capital people, and Johanna having nothing to lose.