The Hunger Games trailer hardly needed 24 hours before it hit one million views following its online premiere on Monday. General fan reaction is enthusiastic with props that it closely mirrors the book, the celebrated Suzanne Collins novel that has 16 million copies in North American print. My thinking is that it needed a slightly more Orwellian “1984” functionality – the adults, the children, don’t have that glazed worked-to-death appearance. I mean, how else is District 12 supposed to get any labor production done? Still, the sounds of the characters have stricken me with awe.
“This is the time to show them everything,” Woody Harrelson, as Haymitch, articulates. “Make sure they remember you.”
“I keep wishing that I could think of a way that I could show that they don’t own me. If I’m going to die, that I can still be me,” Josh Hutcherson, as Peeta, indignantly expresses.
As the second half of the trailer moves into the Capitol, I became astonished by the visual opulence of the upper class, and the city that replicas Hitler’s vision of the Myth Germania that is brief in shot. Lenny Kravitz, as Cinna the dresser, is a little too pulled together and not crazy enough. Jennifer Lawrence is one thing – she’s perfect, what’s there to dissect? But how about Harrelson? His Haymitch, the former Tribute winner, could be the great show-stealing character of the whole upcoming trilogy. And I can’t wait for Donald Sutherland’s craziest tyrannical moment as President Snow, but we’ll probably have to wait for “Catching Fire” for that one.
Comments on your reaction to the trailer?