What Did Mitt Romney Like About 'The Hunger Games'?

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Hey, America. You have something in common with Mitt Romney. Like you, he had a good time watching The Hunger Games movie this weekend. In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Romney said, "I enjoyed it. I actually read the books too. That was a weekend fun." He took his grandkids, too! Presuming he's not about to flip flop, what can we assume that Romney liked about the reality-TV-informed series featuring kids killing other kids and female survivalist Katniss Everdeen? Here are just a few of the many interpretations of what the film is about, as seen by various people and (politically minded or not) organizations. Which of these do you think Romney found so fun?

It's a Christian allegory about the importance of finding Jesus. "This is not simply romantic love, but the kind of love that nurtures and sustains life. Those familiar with the teachings of Jesus would recognize it as the sort of love he requests of his followers," writes Julie Clawson, author of The Hunger Games and the Gospel. 

It's a cautionary tale about big government. "Games is not just another slasher/horror scream flick--but rather a furious critique of our political system, in which the central government grows rich from the toil of the masses, even as that same political elite finds entertainment in the contrived and manipulated death of its subjects," explains Fox News contributor James Pinkerton. "Taken figuratively, the film is an Anthem (novella) for our time, a well-crafted cry from the heart against top-down injustice and oppression. Nobody has made a rallying-cry of a movie that’s this effective in a long, long time."

It's an Occupy Wall Street metaphor. "It's the one percent [killing the kids]," Penn Badgley told New York Magazine at a premiere after-party. "I think you'd have to be blind to not see that. I was shocked to see all that in there."

It's a cautionary tale about politics in general. As Danny Keener writes in PolicyMic, "In the current Republican political primaries, there are only a few contributors backing the candidates....The point is that the Gamemakers in the novel are much like the real gamemakers in the political realm in America, pitting (for sport) one candidate against another. And the real sport, the one with real lives in the balance, is each district pitted against another, not just in the Hunger Games, but in everyday life."

It's about global warming. "[The mayor] tells of the history of Panem. He lists the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much of the land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained. The result was Panem, a shining Capitol ringed by thirteen districts…” "Sounds a lot like global warming," writes Joe Romm of Think Progress, "though the books do not flesh out what happened."

It's a love triangle. Team Peeta!

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