One of the skills I imagine you have to master as the parent of a young child is presenting the proper expression of surprise and delight when they do something new – new and breathtakingly original and memorable for them, of course, but something which you yourself grew familiar with, accustomed to, and indeed perhaps even a little bit tired of a long time in the past. Every generation has to rediscover things for itself, of course, and so one ought to be indulgent in these matters.

As with toddlers tying their shoes or mastering bladder control, so with major entertainment corporations rediscovering and representing hoary old SF tropes and clich é s, I suppose: which brings us to, need it even be said, The Hunger Games , directed by Gary Ross from the novel by Suzanne Collins.

In an unspecified future, North America is under the control of a totalitarian regime, and has been reconstituted as a single nation named Panem – presumably twinned with the nation of Circenses (one for the Latin scholars out there). The control of the ruling Capitol is maintained through the titular Hunger Games, in which young men