The movie adaptation of The Hunger Games opens nationwide starting at midnight. You're welcome to check it out, provided you can get a ticket:

As if we needed any more proof that The Hunger Games is going to be a box-office bonanza this weekend, Fandango announced Tuesday that the movie has sold more advance tickets on its website than any other non-sequel ever. By the end of today, the futuristic action film will be sold out at more than 2,000 showtimes. The Hunger Games also accounts for a staggering 92 percent of Fandango's daily ticket sales.

I've seen the movie, and feel quite comfortable saying it will make eleventy gazillion dollars. But what about the source material? Suzanne Collins' original novel has taken some recent flak for a variety of reasons, which I'm going to address here. Because they're valid topics of conversation, and also because tagging your post with "hunger games" is a surefire SEO extravaganza.

Charge: It's Too White

Yeah, well, this is a complaint about most entertainment, isn't it? This criticism comes to me third-hand, from a message board frequented by educators, where there was apparently some debate about whether there were any people of color in the book.

I can only assume these same people haven't read the The Hunger Games, for while no one's going to mistake the setting for South Central Los Angeles, there are three characters I can think of: Cinna, the District 12 stylist, and Thresh and Rue, the tributes from District 11 (portrayed by Amandla Stenberg and Dayo Okeniyi in the upcoming movie).

There was more outcry when Jennifer Lawrence was cast as the "olive-skinned" Katniss, though it looks like they've swarthied her up just fine. Was an opportunity lost to cast an actual dark-skinned person in this role? Perhaps, but nothing bad every comes from casting Caucasians in duskier roles, right?

And not to bring another franchise in to the debate, but how many central characters in the Harry Potter universe are non-white? I guess no black people live in England.

Charge: It's Depressing

The world of Panem is pretty grim by YA standards, no doubt. Poverty is a constant state for most, starvation is a persistent threat, and then there's the more or less constant threat of reprisal for a seemingly endless list of offenses against the Capitol.

But then, that's kind of the whole point. While we may cringe at the goings-on down the Jersey Shore, we're free to turn the TV off. The Capitol forces everyone in the 12 Districts to watch the Games, which are themselves a means to cow the spirits of the people who once rose up against the government. And while we may currently find ourselves enjoying cinematic bloodletting or even MMA competitions, we're still a ways off from a televised battle royale to the death between unwilling children.

Am I allowed to say "battle royale" in reference to The Hunger Games? Because that brings me to...