Everyone needs to STFU about Battle Royale. Pretty sure the Japanese didn't invent the idea of sending kids to an island to kill each other.
The significant difference between Battle Royale and The Hungry Games isn't the plot, it's the themes. The plots are very similar, but both stories approach the subject matter from different perspectives with different goals. In Battle Royale, the kids all know each other because they're all from the same class in school. The story poses the question: if you had to, could you kill your friends? In the book and manga (not so much the movie), almost every character is fleshed out and developed enough for the reader to appreciate the different ways they respond to the situation and to feel an emotional response when they're inevitably killed off.
The Hungry Games is more of a commentary on Americans' preoccupation with reality TV and violence as entertainment, as well as an ethnocentric disinterest in violence and poverty in foreign countries. The Hungry Games is about a possible future where all of those things converge in a society based around children from impoverished regions killing each other for entertainment value. In Battle Royale, the killings aren't televised (except in the English translation of the manga, because the translator thought it would be cool even though it makes no sense in the story) because what's happening to the rest of the country doesn't matter, whereas in The Hungry Games, the whole point is that this depraved bloodsport forms the bedrock of their society. Most of the kids don't know each other, because their interaction isn't the point. Only a handful of the participants are given any development, and most of the violence is described with a detached, clinical tone. We don't feel bad when most of the characters die because the television audience watching at home doesn't feel bad. They're watching specifically for the gore. It's a broader story than Battle Royale, in which the stakes are much more personal.
tl;dr: Everything has already been done and there are no wholly original stories left. Except Twilight. I really like Twilight.
The Hungry Games is more of a commentary on Americans' preoccupation with reality TV and violence as entertainment, as well as an ethnocentric disinterest in violence and poverty in foreign countries. The Hungry Games is about a possible future where all of those things converge in a society based around children from impoverished regions killing each other for entertainment value. In Battle Royale, the killings aren't televised (except in the English translation of the manga, because the translator thought it would be cool even though it makes no sense in the story) because what's happening to the rest of the country doesn't matter, whereas in The Hungry Games, the whole point is that this depraved bloodsport forms the bedrock of their society. Most of the kids don't know each other, because their interaction isn't the point. Only a handful of the participants are given any development, and most of the violence is described with a detached, clinical tone. We don't feel bad when most of the characters die because the television audience watching at home doesn't feel bad. They're watching specifically for the gore. It's a broader story than Battle Royale, in which the stakes are much more personal.
tl;dr: Everything has already been done and there are no wholly original stories left. Except Twilight. I really like Twilight.
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