I had a girlfriend who pushed me into reading the whole series and its actually pretty good.
Without ruining things for other people the books get a lot more political and they spend a good amount of time addressing issues like socialism and individual freedoms. I imagine most of that will be washed out in future movies, but last two books skew towards a lot of conservative values.
These days we will take what we can get when it comes to influencing young minds to see the value of conservative beliefs.
Interesting, imaginative, somewhat morbid, G.O.'s 1984ish, with a hint of Survivor, Gladiator, Star Wars and Lord of the Flies. I had not read the book and could still follow. Alec Baldwin and Johnny Depp were not in it so it was okay.