I get the parallels with Battle Royale, but it was on a smaller scale compared to what Hunger Games was trying to say. Battle Royale was about controlling students from being too wild in the Japanese school system. Hunger Games was about controlling an entire populace with menace. Same concept, but Hunger Games had more to say about it and expanded outward where Battle Royale mostly stayed on the island.

To be fair, I think Twilight gets as much hate as it does because of how problematic it is and that it's target audience buys wholesale into the idea that this is what romance should be (when in fact it's borderline abusive).

This is the same as teenagers saying Romeo and Juliet is the greatest love story, when... No kids, everyone ends up dead at the end. They tell you right at the beginning that it's a tragedy and not a model to emulate!

I give books to people I know will appreciate them. I think last Christmas I gave A Humument to my friend whose an artist because I knew he'd appreciate the style of it.

I haven't read the book, but I did peruse the wiki before I went to see the movie. I actually really liked the ending the movie took and felt it was done in a way that tugged the heart-strings, but also let you laugh at the absurdity of it and grieve with the partner and his daughter. I think (and this might just be me) American audiences don't really like ambiguity and M. Night opted to give a rather definitive answer. We were definitely talking about it after the movie and it gave me food for thought for days, whereas the darker ending of the book probably wouldn't have played the same way (at least to me) and I would have left the theatre feeling cold and empty.