If you love movies about solemn, pensive young people in dystopian futures, killing each other as part of an allegory about the structure of human society and the necessity of violence for self-preservation, then you must be one happy weirdo this November.

Prior to becoming a trolling poster-boy for the Mormon Church’s nonsensical views on homosexuality and same-sex marriage, Orson Scott Card was better known as the author of Ender’s Game, a novel that, though it only came out in 1985, has become a seminal part of the American science-fiction canon. The novel, which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards (for non-nerds: top prizes for sci-fi and fantasy fiction), tells the story of a young boy, Ender Wiggin, who is recruited by international armed forces so that he can be trained to fight a seemingly-hostile alien race. Ender proves to be lethal and ruthless and is used as a tool by those in power to eradicate the aliens. The extent to which Ender does so “against his will” is subject to some debate, but the main idea here is where we should be drawing our lines in the classic conflict of “kill or be killed.”

Over 20 years later, in 2008, Suzanne Collins had an overnight success with a relatively similar theme when the first book of the Hunger Games trilogy swooped in to fill the gaping void left in the wake of the last Harry Potter novel for adults who demand their fiction fast, fantastical and at a seventh-grade reading level. (I presume I do not need to recap the plot here.) Katniss Everdeen (who might as well just be Jennifer Lawrence by this point) is certainly a much less morally ambiguous character than Ender Wiggin (her main character flaws seem to be that she’s a little mopey and disengaged), but she faces similar questions in her own “kill or be killed” scenario. At what point is it necessary to use violence to promote your own well-being and does there ever come a point where we won’t kill another person when our own life is on the line?

Both stories have now been turned into grandiose Hollywood productions. Ender’s Game was released last Friday, to relatively mixed reviews, and the second story in the Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire, will be released on November 22, a promotion which this movie almost certainly does not require. (As Conan has often said, “just trying to help this little film out, get the word out there.”) This, of course, means that as part of the promotional run-up to these films, we are treated with movie “soundtracks,” which may or may not include songs actually in the movies but will at least include “songs,” that are at least sung by very popular musical acts, because MONEY.

Two of the songs used to promote these films come to us by way of two of the most respected and critically-acclaimed bands of the past several years: the Flaming Lips and the National. These bands are also certainly both “popular” to some degree though they’re not exactly “my mom knows who they are” popular and it’s probable that many of the potential viewers of these films will have no familiarity with them at all. It seems more likely that (following a trend that seemingly started with the Twilight movies) the producers of these films reached out to the Lips and the National because, while trying to cast the widest net possible, these bands seemed to fit snuggly into the “well-known act that a music-savvy young adult might appreciate” slot on their demographic score-card. Given that this all has the opportunity to be nothing more than a transparent money-grab, it’s somewhat interesting then that both bands not only turned in songs that are entirely enjoyable but that actually seem to reflect the themes of the films they’re meant to promote.



The Flaming Lips took their task so seriously, in fact, that they actually wrote and released an entire EP of songs based on the story of Ender’s Game. For those familiar with the Lips’ discography, it isn’t exactly surprising that they’d revel in the opportunity to release a musical essay about a boy who is shot into space to save the world from aliens. If Orson Scott Card hadn’t written it, Wayne Coyne probably would have. The themes of survival and the inner-struggle between being peaceful or violent are also vintage Flaming Lips material.

Their song, “Peace Sword (Open Your Heart)” is a throwback to their Soft Bulletin-Yoshimi days where they perfected the art of couching heavy, existential lyrics in airy, psychedelic sing-a-longs. Wayne Coyne doesn’t say much here (some of the other songs on the EP are a bit darker and more direct, which is probably why “Peace Sword” was chosen to represent the film) but we still get a poignant look at the conflict Ender faces as he becomes a world-extinguishing killing machine.

Lines like “I was trained to ignore your pain” and “I drained the sun of its light” are contrasted with the repeated mantra of the song “open your heart to me, open your heart, you’ll see.” It’s a chilling image of Ender at the helm of an intergalactic space station, recognizing that he’s a utensil of death while softly encouraging his enemy to “open their hearts” to him… likely meaning both to try to sympathize with him, understand him and, physically, open their hearts, as he ends their lives. The name of the song itself, “Peace Sword,” is a contradiction of pacifism and destruction and eerily symbolizes the way in which Ender strokes his enemies’ hair with one had while slicing their throat with the other.



The National’s contribution to the Catching Fire soundtrack was originally called “Dying is Easy” but was mysteriously renamed “Lean” prior to the album’s release because heaven-forbid a song promoting a movie about post-apocalyptic murder-games seem too “edgy.”

Being a fairly staunch National fan, I have no problem defending the frequent criticism that many of their songs “sound the same,” though even I have to admit that the chord progression, melody and pacing of “Lean” are all very similar to the track “Pink Rabbits” off of the National’s Trouble Will Find Me LP released earlier this year (which I voted as my favorite song of the first six months of 2013). Despite the similarities, the song still works for all the same reasons: a circular underlying-urgency, a propulsive build-up to a climax that never seems to arrive and Matt Berninger’s melancholy, half-awake delivery like a melodic drunk on the verge of passing out.

The verses stick to a formula, describing the ways in which “everybody” is the same in that we’re all desperate in various ways and that we’re all essentially just looking out for ourselves. These are concerns that could potentially be grafted onto the residents of Katniss’ District 12 (ie. needing friends, knowing when the world will end, knowing what you’re running from) though in a humorously incongruous line Berninger sings: “everybody wants a sip of wine to drink.” (Haha, no, you want a sip of wine to drink Matt, these people want their children to not be recruited for the murder-Olympics and to wake up breathing in the morning.)

In the pre-chorus of the song, the narrator then sings of an impending doom, a “fever on the rise” and “waters in your eyes,” before singing (in a lyric that is so fundamentally Berninger-esque, it’s hard to believe he hasn’t used it yet): “lover, lead us all to smithereens.” The refrain is then “dying is easy, I believe my love, and my love relieves me.” It’s a sentiment that’s almost the inverse of the “peace sword,” switching the point of view to that of a potential victim. If it’s easy to kill someone (and it seems to be for Katniss) then it also must be easy to die. The National take the idea of Katniss being “victorious” by killing others and cynically flip it around to the perspective of the collateral damage.

It makes sense. There’s not much to live for in Panem anyway, and there are worse ways to die than at the hands of Jennifer Lawrence.