The Hunger Games recap

In the nation of Panem, the wealthy Capitol keeps its twelve districts obedient with the annual Hunger Games, a televised fight to the death between children chosen by lottery. When her twelve-year-old sister is drawn, sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen of impoverished District 12 volunteers to take her place and is sent to the arena alongside Peeta Mellark, the baker's son who once helped her survive. Coached by their drunken mentor Haymitch and made memorable by her stylist Cinna, Katniss becomes a public favorite. In the arena she survives the opening slaughter, allies with a small girl named Rue whose death hardens her against the Capitol, and reunites with a wounded Peeta after a rule change allows two tributes from one district to win together. The pair play up a romance to win sponsors and outlast their rivals. When the rule is reversed and only one may live, they threaten to poison themselves together, forcing the Capitol to crown them both. Katniss returns home a victor, but her defiance has made her an enemy of the ruling Capitol.

In the poor coal-mining District 12 of Panem, sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen hunts illegally in the woods to feed her mother and younger sister, Prim, after her father's death in a mine accident. The ruling Capitol forces each of its twelve districts to send one boy and one girl each year to the Hunger Games, a televised fight to the death, as punishment for a long-ago rebellion. At the reaping ceremony, run by the Capitol escort Effie Trinket, Prim's name is drawn, and Katniss immediately volunteers to take her place. The boy chosen is Peeta Mellark, the baker's son, who once secretly gave Katniss bread when her family was starving. Watched over by their perpetually drunk mentor Haymitch, the district's only living victor, Katniss says her goodbyes to Prim, her mother, and her hunting partner Gale, and is given a small mockingjay pin as a token from home before she is taken away to the Capitol.

Katniss and Peeta travel to the gleaming Capitol, where Katniss's stylist Cinna dresses her in flames for the opening ceremony, making her the memorable girl on fire. During several days of training with the other tributes, she sizes up her rivals, including the deadly, well-fed Career tributes who treat the Games as an honor and a tiny twelve-year-old from District 11 named Rue. In her private session before the Gamemakers she shoots an arrow near them to force their attention and earns a surprisingly high score. Haymitch coaches the pair to appear as a team. In the televised interviews, Peeta stuns everyone by confessing on air that he has long been in love with Katniss, casting them as doomed sweethearts, a story she cannot tell is genuine or a survival strategy Haymitch has approved.

The tributes are lifted into an outdoor arena, and Katniss avoids the bloodbath at the central Cornucopia, fleeing into the woods and relying on her hunting skills to find water and stay hidden. Several tributes die in the opening minutes. The Career pack, now traveling with Peeta, hunts Katniss and traps her up a tall tree. Rue, hiding in a nearby tree, silently points out a nest of venomous tracker jacker wasps hanging above the sleeping Careers. Katniss saws the nest loose so it drops onto them, killing one and scattering the rest, and she seizes a fallen bow and arrows. Badly stung and hallucinating from the venom, she stumbles away and is quietly tended by Rue until she recovers.

Katniss and Rue form an alliance, sharing food and knowledge. They plan to cripple the Careers by destroying the supplies the pack has hoarded near the Cornucopia; Katniss triggers the buried mines protecting the pile and blows it up, cutting off the Careers' food. Returning to find Rue, she arrives just as another tribute spears the girl. Katniss kills him, then stays with Rue as she dies, singing to her and covering her body with wildflowers, a quiet gesture of defiance meant to shame the Capitol on camera. In gratitude for what she did for their tribute, the people of District 11 send Katniss a gift of bread. Grieving and newly determined, Katniss is left more openly opposed to the Games than ever.

The Gamemakers announce a change: two tributes from the same district may now win together, and Katniss sets out to find Peeta. She discovers him gravely wounded and camouflaged beside a stream, his leg infected, and hides them both in a cave. To win gifts from sponsors she plays up their romance, and her displays of affection earn small parcels of aid. When a feast is announced offering each tribute something they desperately need, Katniss goes to retrieve medicine for Peeta despite the danger. There Clove of District 2 pins her down and taunts her, but Thresh of District 11 kills Clove and spares Katniss because of her kindness to Rue. Katniss brings the medicine back and heals Peeta as their numbers dwindle.

With Peeta recovering, the remaining tributes are drawn together. Foxface, the cunning girl from District 5, dies after eating poisonous nightlock berries that Peeta had gathered without knowing what they were. The Gamemakers unleash monstrous creatures to force a final confrontation at the Cornucopia with Cato, who is eventually killed, leaving Katniss and Peeta as the last two alive. The Gamemakers then revoke the rule allowing two victors, demanding that only one survive. Rather than kill each other, Katniss and Peeta threaten to eat the deadly nightlock together, denying the Capitol any winner; the Gamemakers relent and declare them both victors. Crowned as champions, Katniss learns from Haymitch that her defiant stunt has embarrassed and angered the Capitol and its president, Snow. Peeta is hurt to realize her arena romance was partly an act, and the two return home united in name but uncertain with each other, and dangerously out of favor with the regime.

Katniss and Peeta are the last tributes alive when the Gamemakers revoke the rule that would have let a district's pair win together, ordering them to fight to a single victor. Katniss instead proposes that they both eat poisonous nightlock berries, denying the Games any winner. Before they can, the Capitol relents and declares them joint victors, and both survive to be crowned. Afterward, Haymitch warns Katniss that her gesture was read as an act of rebellion and that the authorities, led by President Snow, are furious with her. Peeta is wounded to learn that some of her tenderness in the arena was a performance for the cameras and sponsors, leaving their relationship unresolved. They ride the train home to District 12 as celebrated champions, but Katniss now stands as an accidental symbol of defiance against the Capitol, a position that marks her as a target and sets up the wider unrest of the books that follow.