Fan Forum - View Single Post - The Hunger Games Movie News/S&S #10: New stills, interviews, trailers. We're greedy and we want it all!

noos · 02-01-2012, 03:08 AM

Hey guys, this is the Empire article in case anyone who can't get the magazine wants to read it

Quote:

The Hunger Games World Exclusive.

The Girl Who Played with Fire.

Teens in peril. Love triangle. Based on a popular young-adult book series. Think The Hunger Games is another Twilight wannabe? Empire presents five reasons why you should definitely think again.

When Gary Ross first read Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, he couldn’t stop until he’d turned the final page. The Pleasantville and Seabiscuit writer-director had only picked it up on the recommendation of his kids; his daughter, he recalls, “disappeared” into it for about 48 hours. Ross himself began reading at 10pm one Friday evening. He’d finished it by 1am. The following Monday he was flying to England to meet with Nina Jacobson, producer of the cinematic version. He had to direct it.
When Jennifer Lawrence first read The Hunger Games she “just got it”. Here was a story of a girl plucked from a simple but hard life and transported to a glamorous but dangerous world where she’s dressed up and forced to put on a show – in this case, participate in a nationally televised fight to the death. “She doesn’t understand,” says Lawrence of Katniss Everdeen, thrust suddenly into the harsh glare of national attention. “She thinks she looks weird and uncomfortable.” The Kentucky-born actress instantly felt the resonance, having been herself flung into the spotlight, and onto the Oscar red carpet, when her performance in excellent indie noir Winter’s Bone earned her an academy award nomination. “It touched me on a personal level.”
To date, almost 3 million copies have been printed, with another million eBooks sold. It’s spent 100 weeks on The New York Times’ bestsellers list. Inevitably, comparisons with Twilight have come. No doubt about it, Ross’ adaptation is a big deal. And while studio Lionsgate would not doubt be overjoyed for it to do similar numbers to that other franchise based on a teen-genre-lit sensation, the comparisons should really end there. This is far more than some woolly tale of adolescent romance and lip-biting. The Hunger Games means business.

1. It’s gonna be brutal
In Collins’ post-apocalyptic, dystopian America, aka Panem, 24 young people, two from each of the future nation’s 12 ‘Districts’, are transported to the ‘Capitol’ and forced to battle to the death. By the end of the Games, 23 of those contestants should’ve been eliminated. They’ll fall prey to giant, mutant wasps, or rocks to the head, or spears through the stomach. There will be poisoned berries, literal backstabbing and mutated dog-monsters.
There will be death; some fast and shocking, some slow and agonizing.
Collins’ novel, the first of a trilogy, was published to critical acclaim in 2008, blending reality-TV satire with Roman history and science-fiction. Stephen King is a vocal fan.
“It’s real, and it’s violent,” says Lawrence when Empire meets her at a London hotel in early December. “If we toned down the violence…” Ross and Jacobson had to commit to a PG-13 rating. Any higher and they’d be shutting out half of their target audience. But Lawrence assures us that none of the story’s impact has been lost, “even if we don’t show much blood.”
“I don’t think it has to be violent in order to be urgent,” insists Ross. “For the majority of the movie Katniss is being pursued and it’s a violent universe she’s in. But that doesn’t mean the violence has to be depicted gruesomely or exploited in any way.”
Even so, it will be action-packed, and as such proved a particularly grueling physical challenge for its cast – especially its star. Lawrence went straight from shooting X-Men: First Class into training. Archery, stunt work, free-running, combat… Then she was hurled into the shoot itself. The day she filmed the opening of the Games, she tells us, it was 115*F and 10% humidity without rain. “It was awful. I had to sprint across this field with long grass – sprint sprint sprint – and then get into this fight. And then start over. I was running every day. Physically it was just non-stop. It was insane.”
Shooting such intense action led to some rather odd notes from her director. “I used to tell Gary I was going to make a coffee-table book of his directions because they were always so funny,” Lawrence laughs, recalling the time he told her “not to think like an orange-utan”. It was during a scene where he sprint through a forest is suddenly interrupted by a fireball exploding into a tree nearby. She was thrown back, and didn’t realize that at the time she’d raised her arms into a perfect circle above her head. “I watched it on playback,” she says, “and I did look exactly like an orange-utan…”

2. It has a truly strong female lead
At the heart of all the violence is a character who could well prove to be the best young lead – male or female – of the 21st century. Katniss Everdeen is a teenager already providing for her starving family when she volunteers for the Games in her younger sister’s place. “In this very harsh universe where these kids are literally forced to fight for their own survival, Katniss fights for her own humanity,” says Ross. “At first she’s just fighting to live and in the end she finds something she is willing to die for. It’s a very harsh world, a very violent premise, but underneath that there’s humanity. I think that’s what’s really drawn people to the book, and Katniss as a heroine.”
Ross was keen to tell the story entirely from Katniss’ point of view, in keeping with Collins’ first-person narrative. “If you looked at the story from the outside,” he says, “it would be the most forbidding story in the world. But Suzanne was wise enough to write it from the inside so you have all of these human yearnings from a well-drawn protagonist. I tried to make the movie the same way. You’re walking in Katniss’ shoes. You don’t give the viewer information that the protagonist doesn’t have, and you shoot in a very subjective style, so we’re following a serpentine path with Katniss. There is a certain roughness in the way I shot this compared to other movies, because it demanded that.”
Determined, terrified and more capable than any of her opponents suspect, the role required an actress who’s tough, with a steely grace, who could project steadiness rather than sexiness. Thus began a high-profile search, taking in around 30 stars, reportedly including Saoirse Ronan, Chloe Grace Moretz, Emma Roberts and True Grit’s Hailee Steinfeld. But, according to Ross, it had to be Lawrence. “If she hadn’t been born I don’t know what I would’ve done,” he says. “I work with a lot of great actors, but in my life I don’t think I’ve ever worked with anyone more talented. She just has this strong vitality; she knows her own strength and doesn’t hide it in any way. She’s a very modern heroine. When she came in and read for me I was knocked speechless.”
There was some initial skepticism, though, from fans who felt that Lawrence was too old for the part, or too blonde. Lawrence herself had some worries – primarily about accepting the lead in a new franchise and taking public perception of her to a whole new level. “If this is as big as it’s anticipated to be,” she says, “there will have to be some changes to my life – security systems and all that stuff. Now I’m living on the beach without a care in the world. It’s a hard thing to think about, your life being completely different. But I didn’t want to miss out on something because I was scared.”
In person, Lawrence exhibits the same steely grace we’ve seen on screen, and she’s certainly no clothes horse, nor a star who meticulously stage-manages her image. She laughs raucously when she tells us about her first encounter with co-star Woody Harrelson, who plays her Capitol mentor, Haymitch. Upon spotting a strange contraption in his trailer, she accused him of having “a sex wing”. (Harrelson later assures us it was for doing yoga.)
There are also the undeniable similarities between Katniss and Ree Dolly, her character in Winter’s Bone – right down to their impoverished mountain homes. “I do see similarities,” says Lawrence. “They’re both young adults who have to deal with responsibility far bigger than themselves and have to bring out a warrior side to care for their family. They’re incredibly alike in that way.” But compared to Katniss, Ree had it easy, braving beatings, corpses and meth addicts – rather than an entire society set on killing her.

3. It’s set in a compelling dystopia
That society, divided into the dozen aforementioned Districts, finds its heart – or rather the iron fist which rules it – in the Capitol. Ross filmed Katniss’ District 12 scenes largely in the forests and semi-derelict industrial buildings of North Carolina, but the Capitol itself required a very different treatment. In Collins’ novel it is an exercise in intimidation, filled with spoiled, bored people who while away their hours inventing ever-more outrageous fashions. “The contrast Gary created with the set designers was incredible,” grins Josh Hutcherson, who plays Katniss’ fellow District 12 competitor, or “Tribute”, Peeta. “You cut back and forth between the Games, where you see this battle unfold, and the Capitol, where people are sipping cocktails and watching it on TV.”
“It’s set in the future but it needs its own past,” says Ross. “So the Capitol had to have a sense of history. So we went for architecture that was massive, concrete, monumental. We took our inspiration from mid-20th century Brutalism – and as I was looking at this I realized that power is expressed through open spaces, so that was the first reference point. We looked at great seats of power, like Red Square, and went from there.”
The Games themselves begin with a melee and progress as a campaign of attrition. Some of the bigger, tougher Tributes, from Districts where being chosen is an honor rather than a horror, form feral packs that roam the arena in search of easy prey, while others lurk in wait and set deadly traps. And the fact that it’s televised further raises the stakes: the Games’ sadistic controllers, led by Wes Bentley’s Seneca Crane, can introduce new hazards into the Arena or chance the rules of engagement any time the death rate flags or viewing figures wane.
There is an obvious parallel here to Kinji ***asaku’s 2000 cult hit Battle Royale, in which, in the Japan of the near-future, a class of ninth-grade delinquents are transported to an island, armed and tasked with killing each other until only one survives. Yet it’s one that Ross politely circumvents. “I think that is something glimpsed from outside, just from the premise. This is something that proceeds inside out, from inside Katniss’ shoes. This is also about the structure of this society – the way Suzanne created this relationship between the Capitol and the Districts and the way they use the Games to segregate people and as the ultimate extension of this kind of entertainment. So yeah, have there been premises like this? Sure. But it’s the interpretation of that [which marks The Hunger Games out].”

4. It has a hell of a supporting cast
Katniss isn’t in this alone. Not only does she form an unlikely alliance with a young girl called Rue (Amandla Stenberg), she also finds friendship – romance, perhaps – with a Tribute named Peeta (Josh Hutcherson). “Peeta knows that if it ever comes down to a head to head with Katniss, he’s in love with her so it’s an obvious choice what he’d do,” says Hutcherson. “But Katniss has to survive for her family, so it’s very different for her she doesn’t have that certainty.”
Not only does Katniss barely know Peeta, she suspects his declarations might be some Games tactic – and she’s at least half in love with Liam “Younger Brother of Chris’ Hemsworth’s Gale, her hunting buddy back home. Says Hemsworth, “Gale’s very similar to Katniss: he’s constantly trying to figure out a way to fight back against the system but he’s really powerless, he’s on his own. He ends up having to watch his friend go into it and doesn’t want to watch her possibly die. But what can he do against a whole government?”
The suggestion of a love triangle shouldn’t put you off. “These are not love stories,” stresses Hemsworth. “They’re not presented in a sexy way. It’s not about relationships for Katniss but survival. The only way this story is similar to Twilight is they both have huge audiences.”
The key Capitol characters, meanwhile, are played by an array of impressive adult actors. In addition to Harrelson as former contender Haymitch, Stanley Tucci plays Games presenter Ceasar Flickerman (who sports a powder-blue wig and has orange skin), Donald Sutherland is President Coriolanus Snow, leader of Panem’s totalitarian regime, Lenny Kravitz is Katniss’ stylist, Cinna, and Elizabeth Banks is the amusingly named Effie Trinket, the Capitol’s pink-wigged representative in District 12, tasked with bringing its Tributes back to the Capitol.
“Some people only see Effie as comic relief, and some only as an evil puppet of the Capitol, but I think she’s really complicated,” says Banks. “She understands that everything she has built up can be taken away from her at any moment; in this world every character knows that any minute they could have their tongue lopped off. So there are moments where Effie is truly behind her mentees, and moments where she is great comic relief, because she takes everything so seriously and is inappropriately optimistic about things where the outcome is literally pre-determined.”

5. It has satirical bite
Banks certainly doesn’t buy the Twilight comparisons. She wouldn’t even cite Battle Royale, or other properties which were suggested that one day death will be televised entertainment, like The Running Man or Series 7: The Contenders. “I would compare it to Lord Of The Rings or Lord Of The Flies or 1984. I mean, I like the Twilight movies, but I don’t know what they’re saying about society. They’re fantasy. We’re making a movie that’s about something.”
The inspiration for The Hunger Games arrived one night as Suzanne Collins idly flicked between a news channel showing the progress of the war in Afghanistan, with young soldiers running to their deaths, and a reality show of the Survivor sort. What, she wondered, of the two were put together? It’s not such a leap. “This is the most important thing I’ve ever done,” your typical reality show contestant will tell us. “My family, and my whole town, are counting on me. I can’t give up now. I have to win.” All they’re talking about is glorified Karaoke, or a show in which people eat insects for our amusement. But what if the stakes really were life or death, if the hyperbole were in fact the plain and simple truth?
“We all can’t wait to tune in to the new season of The Kardashians to watch a marriage be destroyed,” says Lawrence. “That’s such a heartbreaking, terrible thing to happen to anybody, and we tune in and watch it. We’re becoming more desensitized to the things we see on TV,” she grimaces. “That’s our entertainment: people suffering.”

The Hunger Games is out on March 23 and will be reviewed in a future issue.

The Hunger Games briefing:
Released: March 23
Director: Gary Ross
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Elizabeth Banks, Woody Harrelson, Stanley Tucci, Lenny Kravitz, Donald Sutherland
Story: In post-apocalyptic America, the new nation of Panem holds yearly Games in which teenaged contestants fight to the death as televised entertainment. Katniss Everdeen, aged 16, is one such contestant, who volunteers to take the place of her younger sister. An intense fight for survival begins.