I thought the author was pointing towards simple - and timeless - reasons for the success.
The themes of ritualized entertainment involving doomed participants, the theme of a ruling class that is bizarre in their eccentricities and excesses, the theme of a youthful sacrifice. These are indeed timeless themes in both fiction and real-life. And they are certainly present in the hunger games. But I don’t think they are why the hunger games is successful, and that is where I think the author over-reaches. I believe that the success is derived from successfully transporting the viewer into a dystopian world, and that because that is rarely done adequately in Hollywood, the film succeeds because it taps into that demand. You could remove all of these timeless themes, replace them with any other kind of drama/action combination, and as long as the dystopian world was captivating, the movie would succeed. Just as Blade Runner, Aliens, the Fifth Element, 1984, the Walking Dead, the Book of Eli, the Road etc., have done.