Cult-Movie Review: The Hunger Games (2012)

I’m a long-time admirer of Dystopian Cinema -- movies about morally, culturally, and economically bankrupt “future worlds” -- and thus I was very much looking forward to The Hunger Games.  

Directed by Gary Ross from Suzanne Collin’s best-selling novel of the same name, the epic film involves a teenage girl who becomes a contestant in a life-or-death (televised) spectacle in a decadent future society

That brief description conjures memories of many other dystopian films. There’s a strong under-current in the genre involving blood-sports as “bread and circuses” attractions for beleaguered, oppressed citizens of “future states.”  

We saw similar gladiatorial games in Death Race 2000 (1975), Rollerball (1975), and The Running Man (1987) to name only a few. 

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985) and The Blood of Heroes (1989) also feature material of a similar nature, showcasing worlds where life-and-death “games” are the law, and, not coincidentally, the only avenue by which to achieve independence from the corrupt state.

The Hunger Games develops its tale of the futuristic blood sport by comparing the games not to the world of professional TV sports (like Rollerball) or TV game shows (like The Running Man), but to a more timely topic: reality television show competitions. 

Not unlike American Idol (2001 - ) or Dancing with the Stars (2005 - ), the story’s  violent annual “Hunger Games” make a celebrity of a resourceful  contestant, while other, perhaps-equally resourceful youngsters also vie for the crown and fleeting fame.  And not unlike Survivor (2000 - ) alliances are forged during game play, presumably to be broken as contestant attrition sets in.   Meanwhile, producers and other behind-the-scenes players keep changing the rules to make the show a bigger “hit,” and one more appealing to the audience at home.

The Hunger Games combines its apropos commentary on reality TV contests with some very vague political commentary.  I’ve seen the film described in print as a both a metaphor for the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and as a right-wing anti-government screed. 

The phrase I just used -- “very vague” -- in fact, captures much of what’s amiss with The Hunger Games.  Although the film is undeniably buttressed by a forceful lead performance from Jennifer Lawrence and a welcome lack, overall, of sensationalism, the film’s future world never quite seems believable or genuine.  Instead, it comes off as half-baked.

Too many factors here -- too many ideas – are left purposefully vague, and therefore the film is neither the searing satire of our modern culture that it could be, nor the heroic poem that some critics view it as.  

In other words, the filmmakers often back away from the "core" of the material, and don't play it for all it is worth.  This movie should be about America in 2012, about the qualities we ask of our our "stars," and the ways we broach fame.  Instead, The Hunger Games is about none of those things, at least not in a fashion that is cerebral or intriguing.

“This is the time to show them everything.”

In the oppressive future state of Panem, the insurrectionists living in twelve poverty-stricken districts are required every year to give up two “tributes” -- a male and female each between the ages of twelve and eighteen -- to participate in a life or death contest called The Hunger Games.

In District 12, resourceful Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) volunteers to be a tribute for the 74^th Annual Games after her innocent young sister, Primrose (Willow Shields) is selected on the day of the Reaping.  She takes her sister’s place, and steels herself for battle.

Katniss joins Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), a boy in District 12 who harbors a crush on her, for the journey to the Capitol City.  Soon they meet their mentor for the games, one-time winner Hayitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson), as well as image advisors Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks) and Cinna (Lenny Kravitz).

Before the games commence, Katniss and Peeta train with their fellow contestants, learning their strengths and weaknesses in the process.  They are also introduced on TV by the Hunger Games host Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci).  Katniss makes a splash with viewers, and Peeta admits on-air that he is in love with her.

When the bloody games start, Katniss must determine how to stay alive, and how to treat Peeta, who is sometimes a friend and sometimes a foe, apparently.  Meanwhile, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) grows suspicious of Katniss and fears she could upset the Capitol’s grip on the districts…

“They just want a good show.  That’s all they want.”

I have not read Suzanne Collins’ young adult novel, The Hunger Games (2008), or any of its follow-ups so I cannot, alas, comment meaningfully on whether or not this 2012 film represents an adequate or faithful adaptation of the literary material. 

I can only study the film as a movie-going experience and as a complete visual and thematic work of art.  Therefore, my observations in this review will focus on those aspects rather than judge fidelity to the literary source material.

In brief, I found the film’s two primary strengths to be its sense of earnestness and the central performance by Jennifer Lawrence.  

The Hunger Games never feels gimmicky, slick, or sensational, and Lawrence projects fortitude, sincerity, and intelligence as the film’s protagonist.  When the movie succeeds, it’s because Lawrence is riveting and even magnetic as Katniss Everdeen, and because the filmmakers generally take the subject matter seriously.  On the surface, it all seems very impressive, if overly straight-forward.

When The Hunger Games fails, I assess, it’s largely because the dynamics of the dystopian world seem unnecessarily vague or inconsistent.

We see this sort of “muddle” throughout the film, and therefore it is difficult for The Hunger Games to speak meaningfully or even directly to its audience regarding theme or meaning.  

For instance: politics. The film is either an Occupy Wall Street film, about the rich 1% lording it over the poor 99 percent, or it is a film about the fear of over-reaching, outwardly benevolent but really malevolent government.   

The Hunger Games attempts to straddle the line between those red state/blue state viewpoints, but only ends up with a wide stance, if you get the reference.  

In other words, the audiences can’t judge the film’s perspective or viewpoint on the world.  Is it the rich elite who made the world a hell?  Or overreaching government?    In the end, it all just comes across as kind of, well, simple-minded.  What we are left with is that evil government is evil, decadent people are decadent, and good citizens are good.  That's as deep as it gets.  The film is smart enough to tap the Zeitgeist, but it can't commit to a specific aspect of that Zeitgeist.

We see the same problem recur with Katniss and Peeta.  Do they actually love each other, or is it all a show for the cameras, just like on The Bachelor or Joe Millionaire?   

In the end, both Peeta and Katniss play up the star-crossed lovers angle to survive the games, but is the show of affection ever heartfelt or authentic?  Well, The Hunger Games will get back to you on that, coming soon in a theater near you! 

In other words, the film reserves the exploration of that important idea for the sequel.  Yet it is necessary to have some answer here, or the movie offers a woefully incomplete emotional experience.   As it stands, we just don’t know why Peeta and Katniss behave as they do here, now.  Peeta doesn’t bring up his love of Katniss until he is on live TV, for example, which suggests to me it’s a gimmick to help him stay alive.  Katniss realizes that the love affair is, similarly, a way to get ahead. 

Yet, by the same token, Peeta hunts down Katniss during the games with a group of others, which is hardly the act of a soul mate.  And then, if he does authentically love her, why doesn't he murder in cold blood the other contestants (staking out the tree where she is hiding), while they sleep?

But the point is that the movie just...doesn’t...commit.  

It doesn’t commit, I submit, because if it did we, as viewers, would be forced to reckon with how we feel about Peeta and Katniss based on the fact that they agree to a mutually beneficial lie.  If they aren't pretending, and really do have feelings for each other, then they aren't so bad, so shallow.  The movie tries to  play it both ways but just seems, again, muddled.

The Hunger Games could have commented meaningfully (and perhaps mercilessly) here on how reality stars will do and say anything on camera to achieve their fifteen minutes of fame -- Bristol Palin, j'accuse -- but this point is barely touched upon in the film.  

Why set up a satire of reality TV and then drop it without comment?

There’s a similar problem with the violence in the film. Katniss lands in an immensely competitive, immensely violent game, and yet she survives almost entirely by being in the right place at the right time, and by unexpectedly getting help at the very last instant.  She actually kills, by my count, only three of her twenty-three opponents.  And of those, she only kills one directly.  

One blonde villain dies when Katniss cuts a beehive from a tree branch, and the competitor is stung to death.    Katniss wasn't attempting to kill, however.  She was crafting a distraction so she could escape.  

The second kill is sort of a mercy killing, sparing a villain from painful death by huge, slobbering wild-dog monsters. 

Katniss actually only murders one person in cold blood. She shoots Rue’s (Amandla Stenberg’s) killer in a fit of rage and adrenaline.   

Laughably, even the masters of the game keep changing the rules so Katniss doesn't have to kill Peeta to survive the game.  Convenient, no?

Because Katniss never must make the choice to kill someone like Rue -- an innocent little kid -- the movie never addresses the central question of violence and its morality.

Again, I see this development as a failure on the part of the film (and I would assume the book too…) to really commit to its central idea . If Katniss wants to survive the games, she has essentially two options: team-build with the other players and commence an insurrection against the games, or kill her opponents outright.  She does neither, at least not in any organized or deep sense.  Instead, Katniss hides for the first part of the games, teams-up with Rue for a while, and then manages to endure alone while the others fight.

Once more, the hard questions are totally avoided.  

Is it right to kill another human being for your own survival?  

For the survival of your family?

The Hunger Games features children killing children on screen -- something I’ve rarely if ever seen in a horror movie, for example -- but makes absolutely no commentary on the morality underlying these killings.  This way, we can continue to gaze at Katniss as a hero, I suppose.  She's more of an innocent bystander than an active participant in the violence.

How do I feel about this?  

In two words: cop out.

For all of Jennifer Lawrence’s skill in bringing the character of Katniss to the screen, I find that she succeeds without much help from the non-commital script.  Katniss is given no meaningful character arc whatsoever in The Hunger Games. She starts our resilient, independent and capable, is judged an "11" by the games keepers (meaning resilient, independent and capable, in other words), and then emerges the winner of the Hunger Games (with Peeta) by being -- wait for it -- resilient, independent and capable.  The character has no learning curve in the film.  Katniss is in the end as she was in the beginning.

Other aspects of the plot are also deliberately vague. The Capitol apparently possesses miracle medicine and -- unbelievably -- Star Trek-type technology which can seems to  turn energy into matter and “beam” hostile dog-things into the fighting  arena.  

Where did this high-technology come from in a post-war dystopian universe where resources are limited?  

Why does the Capitol need supplies from the districts if it can create matter out of energy, or even just teleport real matter?  

Such amazing technological capabilities are never directly addressed in the film, and thus the universe of  The Hunger Games doesn’t quite feel real.  It certainly isn't very believable.   I submit it would have been much better to see dog-handlers releasing the slavering beasts from cages at the rim of the arena rather than featuring this unexplained and inconsistent technological achievement. 

For instance, if the gamesters of the Capitol can create animals, generate fires and so forth from energy, they can certainly create a CGI Katniss and get her to do what they want her do.  They could have killed the real one, and then had the CGI one act badly, reflecting poorly on her reputation and mitigating her capacity to be a martyr.   Problem solved!

Indeed, this one technological touch ruins a lot of the legitimacy of the action in The Hunger Games.  Katniss might lay low enough for a while to last for much of the game, but there' s no way she could beat a state apparatus armed with Starfleet-era medicine, genetic engineering capabilities, and the equivalent of replicators.  That's a bridge too far.

Also, and I'm certain this has been said before, there is not a single contestant in the games -- not one -- who looks remotely hungry, or starving.  The whole idea underlying this culture is that the Districts live in abject poverty, scrambling for resources and food.  And yet everyone looks well-fed, not emaciated.  Some of the contestants, in fact, look like body-builders.  In the real world, we've all seen, alas, how hunger twists young, developing bodies.  It doesn't look anything like what is presented in The Hunger Games, or more aptly, The Well-Fed Games.

It's a fact, isn't it, that muscle-mass comes from eating right and vigorous exercise? How are these poor District-ers eating so well, getting so much protein, and working out so frequently under the yoke of The Evil Government?

Either the movie should have cast more appropriately, or the actors and actresses should have fasted a bit before principal photography began.  But if those changes had occurred, The Hunger Games wouldn't be able to show off hot young nubile bodies, and that, finally, is what gets the Twilight crowd into the theater, isn't it?

Does she look hungry?

Does he?

How about him?

Does he look like he's starving to you?

What about these folks?  Skinny, undernourished kids living off the land?

Dystopia can't be built in a day.  For audiences to believe in a corrupt future world, they must understand why it works or why it doesn't.  It needs to be internally-consistent and well-thought out.

We also must understand how the filmmaker's feel about that world, and where that world went wrong.  What was the human quality that transformed paradise into hell? 

The Hunger Games doesn't provide much by way of answers to any of these questions. It eschews social commentary and satire in the very era when we see fame whores on every network station in prime time every night of the week.  And furthermore it suggests -- in an abundantly bogus fashion -- that a person can survive a tournament to the death without committing almost any violence at all. 

In terms of dystopian films, this one wouldn't likely survive the first round with Rollerball or Death Race 2000.  The Hunger Games looks terrific and is fronted by the very appealing Lawrence, but the film doesn't hold up under the slightest intellectual scrutiny.

Movie Trailer: The Hunger Games (2012)

Cult-Movie Review: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)

My gravest concern with Catching Fire (2013) is that it never quite does. 

This sequel to 2012’s The Hunger Games takes ninety lugubrious -- if earnest -- minutes to get to the film’s central action and when it does so the action is a straight-up regurgitation of the previous film’s arena game show environs, only this time with no clear winner…only losers. 

What’s more, the involvement of the central character, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence), in the new “Quarter Quell” games makes no brand of sense whatsoever, especially given the film’s clever, even knowing dialogue about Everdeen’s value/threat to President Snow’s (Donald Sutherland) regime.

In other words, if President Snow were any sort of fearsome and intelligent leader at all, he would follow the sage advice of his new game designer, Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and destroy Katniss outside the games, via the auspices of propaganda.

As Plutarch deviously suggests, Snow could transform this young woman of the woods and dirt into a celebrity fairy princess of sorts, thus negating her “common folks” credibility, and simultaneously subtracting her worth in the rebellion’s eyes.

Of course, Snow doesn’t do that, because this (blockbuster) film must, in the end find a way to get the audience -- and Katniss -- back to the Hunger Games arena…no matter what. 

Yet to make that eventuality occur, you can practically hear the narrative cogs and wheels groaning under the strain.

In terms of the original The Hunger Games, I’ll re-post my original review later today. But in broad strokes, I felt the first film’s biggest strength and biggest weakness simultaneously involved casting.

Jennifer Lawrence was (and remains…) a strong, compelling central figure as Katniss.

But on the other hand, all the teens who served as Tributes in the 74^th annual games had so much muscle mass that it was difficult to buy into the reality that they arose and grew-up in an era of scarcity and starvation. The narrative told us they did so, but the visuals revealed that these kids grew up in close proximity to the local gym.

To Catching Fire’s credit, it doesn’t make the same mistake. Lawrence remains a power-house performer who galvanizes attention and projects levels of complexity, and the regurgitation of the games scenario in the last act features folks of all ages, shapes and sizes, and so doesn’t look like a casting audition at the CW gone violently wrong.

Last week, I wrote about Veronica Mars (2014) and about how the film industry could use more films featuring a strong female lead character. Katniss clearly fits that bill well, and so I would definitely recommend the sequel on that basis.

In Lawrence’s hands, Katniss is never less than intriguing to watch. Like Veronica, Katniss is not a princess, and she doesn’t have a pony. In fact, Katniss must always be the very antithesis of a princess in her life. To make her a princess would be to destroy her, and that’s a message I can get readily behind.

But despite the presence of Lawrence in her career-making role, the saga has yet to provide the actress a coherent script that makes full use of her abilities.

Still, I find it admirable that in its own small way, Catching Fire attempts to forge a social critique about celebrity culture, and its inherent corruptness or emptiness. The film would have been even stronger if  it had pursued those points more assiduously.

“I don’t want to kill you. I want us to be friends.”

A year after the 74^th  Hunger Games, victor Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) still suffers from survivor’s guilt. She also feels ambivalent about choosing between the two men in her life, agreeable Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and alpha male Gale (Liam Hemsworth),

But President Snow (Sutherland) presents Katniss with graver concerns. After Katniss’s show of defiance and independence in the games, the districts are threatening to rise up against the totalitarian ruler.  Snow demands that Katniss serve his agenda, lest it become necessary to wage war against her home, District 12.

To save lives, Katniss agrees to Snow’s terms, and decides to marry Peeta as a show of her obedience and loyalty.

But when Gale is injured by Snow’s shock-troopers Katniss intervenes, and reveals her true colors. An angry President Snow promptly orders up a diabolical twist in the long-standing Hunger Games, this time known as “The Quarter Quells.” 

This year, tribunes shall be selected from among former victors.

In short order, Peeta and Katniss are back in the games fighting for their lives and their freedom.

They must go through training again, find new allies, and prepare themselves for the worst.

On the day of the games, they are dropped into the arena, now in a tropical setting, and must contend with fierce baboons, spinning island rocks, and poison gas…

People are looking at you, Katniss. You've given them an opportunity."

There’s a great idea lurking in Catching Fire, and it often attempts to come to the forefront. Basically, that idea concerns the emptiness of celebrity culture. For instance, at one point, Katniss is told that she is famous, and she replies, tersely, “Famous for what? Killing people?”

In a celebrity culture, it doesn’t matter why one is famous, only the fact of fame itself.

The Kardasshians, Paris Hilton, Honey Boo-Boo, the Duck Dynasty family and (the recently-deceased) fellow with the 132 pound scrotum all prove this point rather nicely. There is no compelling reason for them to be famous since they all seem absent of talent of any kind. 

But these folks are famous nonetheless. 

For some reason, our society wants us to look at them, and keep looking.

But why? 

What is their “value” to the corporate-owned media?

And to us as viewers or consumers of that media?

Catching Fire attempts to tackle this issue, and one scene in particular really does well with the concept.  In fact, the film momentarily teeters on brilliance when Plutarch outlines his scheme to destroy Katniss.

He tells Snow not to kill the famous icon, Katniss, but rather turn the State’s camera to her constantly, like a 24-hour reality show.

Thus the people will see her trying on wedding gowns, attending parties and so forth. Thus the message (interspersed with footage of uprisings being quelled…) will be that she is one of the fancy ones; one of the elite. She will be seen as compromised, co-opted.

To actually see Plutarch’s plan enacted would have made for a great genre film, I suspect, and would have presented Katniss with a new and fascinating set of challenges.  She’s already conquered the bow -- as demonstrated in a vivid training sequence involving attacking holograms -- but what about the adoring press?

What would she do if a mountain of wealth were thrown at her?

If President Snow were to shower District 12 with wealth?

It would have been fascinating to see Katniss tempted by wealth and fame, and have to fight back against the power of the capitol in a material sense.

In this case, the “hunger” game would have been about the “hunger” for material things, for the safety and security that comes from wealth.  She says she isn't interested in jewels or wealth in the film...but has she ever been faced with them? Awash in them?

Would Katniss have been able to continue her campaign of resistance if Snow got Prim into the best school in the capitol?

Alas Catching Fire doesn’t think of such things. In no time at all, Snow drops Plutarch’s clever plan, and instead decides to send Katniss back to the arena for the Quarter Quells.

This is not very smart.

After all, Katniss achieved her fame in that domain. She survived the games, and become the symbol of the resistance through her experience on national television, and in the arena.

Knowing that, why put her in the exact same position again? Where she could again influence millions of people through her behavior?

Talk about making the same mistake twice…

Snow has nothing to gain by throwing Katniss to the lions this time around, and especially since his people could have the same response to her feats. 

Had he been thinking more clearly and effectively, Snow would have escorted Katniss’s family out of District 12 and moved them into a castle in the Capitol. 

He would have asked Katniss for her thoughts about how he could make the people happy. He would have truly made her “a friend,” in the eyes of the people, negating her power as a symbol of the peoples’ struggle.

Also, it’s baffling why Plutarch -- secretly Katniss’s ally --would propose the whole “make her a celebrity” strategy, given that it makes so much sense and seems so efficient. It’s better to rob Katniss of her currency as a symbol, than to make her a martyr, but why would someone on her side suggest something so diabolical?

Because he knows Snow is an idiot and won’t listen to any counsel but his own?

No, there’s another reason, and it is called Screenwriting 101.  Virtually every blockbuster sequel – book or film -- must apparently be obligated to re-stage “popular” moments from the first “chapter” of the saga.  

So we get an underwhelming return to the arena in Catching Fire that makes no sense at all. 

What’s worse is that after we have waited so long to get back to the arena, the game itself feels half-hearted.  We get several deaths, but no conclusion, and no victor at the end.  This denouement reveals what I already suspected: the games are, essentially, a time waster in the movie.

To put this matter another way, Catching Fire takes the better part of ninety minutes to get us right back to where we started in The Hunger Games, and then, instead of giving us a victory or defeat for Katniss, just whisks her away from the arena and ends the movie. 

Why bother with telling us the rules of the new game, or making us weigh the allegiance of new allies and enemies if the games are going to simply end without closure or resolution?

Why not instead have made the book and the movie about Katniss legitimately joining the resistance movement?  Seeing her do that would have felt more like a step-forward and not merely a regurgitation of scenes we’ve already seen before.

Another problem with Catching Fire is that the writers don’t always trust audiences to get what they are “saying” about the characters.  How many scenes do we need of Effie (Elizabeth Banks) crying and apologizing to Katniss, for example? 

We get the point from one short scene that she has had her faith in the system shattered, and that through “knowing” Katniss, Effie has seen the degeneracy of both the games and the president.

But the movie shows us this scene once, and then it shows it to us again, just in case we didn’t get it.

In a movie that is two-hours and thirty-four minutes, it would be nice to have those two minutes back. Some judicious editing seems to be in order.

Catching Fire is very lucky indeed to have Jennifer Lawrence in the lead role, revealing and exploring many sides of an intriguing character. It’s rewarding to watch Katniss no matter what she’s doing, because she is an independent, fiercely loyal person.

“You’re a strangely dislikable person,” a character notes at one point, of the franchise’s hero.

 Isn’t that wonderful?

That description is true only in the sense that Katniss does nothing to please those around her. Instead, she does only the things that she must do to stay alive, and to preserve her family and her district. She isn’t going to make nice about that fact, either.

Katniss’s best scene in the film occurs, in my opinion, when she applies logic to a statement made by Snow about the general instability of his administration. Her remark isn’t a quip or a wisecrack so much as an arrow straight through the heart, cutting right to the point. 

Quite simply, I can’t find any grounds to quibble with the presentation here of Katniss, or Lawrence’s acting. I hope, indeed, that young people are widely attracted to Katniss Everdeen as a role model because she is an engaged, intelligent, resourceful person. 

Both Katniss and Lawrence are too good for such a middling, confused, long-winded, and incoherent script. The movie doesn’t do either of them justice.

Lastly, I am very curious about the next part of the saga, Mockingjay, simply because it should have no obligation to return to the Hunger Games and their milieu.

Instead -- like the book -- it should be able to focus on uprising, rebellion, and the idea that no matter what regime is in power things have a way of staying exactly the same. 

That’s the kind of narrative innovation this sequel needed, a leap away from the cruel dystopian game -- been there, done that -- and a step closer to a more serious consideration of the way that those in power are corrupted by it. 

Because it fails to really innovate in any significant way -- even when Plutarch gives us the blueprint to do precisely that -- Catching Fire is barely Treading Water.

Movie Trailer: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)

At Anorak - Bread and Circuses: The Six Most Savage Games of the Near Dystopian Future

My newest article is up at Anorak, and it gazes at "bread and circuses" science fiction dystopias. The films discussed include Death Race 2000 (1975), Rollerball (1975), The Running Man (1987), Battle Royale (2000), Gamer (2009) and The Hunger Games (2012).

Here's a snippet of "Bread and Circuses: The Six Most Savage Games of the Near Dystopian Future:"

IN Ancient Rome, the poet Juvenal coined the term “bread and circuses” (panem et circenses), and to his credit, it is one that remains pertinent to this day, especially in our  21st century pop culture and entertainment.

Specifically, the idea of “bread and circuses” involves an artificial means by which the government or ruling class of a nation distracts or appeases “the common man.”  In Rome, for example gladiatorial games in the Colosseum fit the bill, distracting and diverting people from significant issues such as poverty, war, and corruption.

In the modern science fiction film, the palliative of “bread and circuses” has also commonly been highlighted.

In other words, many films involving dystopian cultures also depict bloody games that keep the masses entertained. In fact, the bloody games in these films serve a double purpose, often.

First, they distract the common folk from everyday problems of life, and second, many of the games at the same time (violently) remove dissidents or rebels, who have spoken out against the regime in power.

The latest such film of this type is The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), but that popular franchise is far from original in depicting man’s easily-distracted nature.

With that in mind, below are six of the most savage “bread and circuses” games of the near dystopian future, as imagined by filmmakers.

Television and Cinema Verities #114

“I’m playing a real girl that is stuck. The only thing that she wants, and what makes her a true hero, is she wants as little death as possible. She doesn’t want a war to get revenge. She wants to fix the situation and I think the cruelty of the Capitol gets to a place where you can’t not do something, you know? You have to act.”

-Jennifer Lawrence discusses her heroic role in The Hunger Games franchise, at Slash Film, in November of 2013. I’ll be posting my review of Catching Fire this Thursday morning.