New Catching Fire Trailer and Posters

[penfold_x]

Of all the books, Catching Fire is my favorite, so I'm almost vibrating with excitement over the release of a new trailer yesterday at San Diego Comic Con, and the chance to see our named victors in their arena costumes.

Some thoughts I had watching the new trailer:

* The Victor's Village is smaller than I expected, and the houses are much grander than I imagined. Kind of a McMansion development that didn't think hard enough about green space. So, from that perspective, it probably is the Village the Capitol would build.

* The scenes of the Hob burning are very dramatic! What's just an off-screen moment in the book is going to be a very dramatic sequence. I love that the film adaptation gives us the chance to see things outside of Katniss's perspective, and I'm really looking forward to more of these moments.

* That shot of the crowd surging forward during the tour (at 0:53)... is that District 3? Oh, please, let it be so! (Alternately, I'm guessing it's District 5, which I would also not mind seeing.)

* Is it just my imagination, or do the shots of the Capitol look bigger and broader than those used in The Hunger Games? I don't expect Catching Fire has a substantially bigger budget (I think Lionsgate expected THG to be a hit and funded accordingly), so I'm not sure why that would be.

* The look between Effie and Katniss at 1:16 is exquisite.

* OMG, the interview set! Am I the only one tortured by the fact that all the victors are there, but the screen size/resolution is too small to get real detail? (Why does District 6 look like they've escaped from the Matrix?)

* The actresses playing Enobaria and Johanna look fantastic. Not quite what I imagined (I pictured Enobaria with darker skin and a buzzcut), but true threats.

* Following Katniss's lift out of the stockyard into the arena could not be more breathtaking.

The victor posters were originally distributed separately to various websites, but Empire Online has posted all of them. The casting of District 3 is particularly important to me (headcanon, I haz it). I am really pleased with the choice of accomplished character actors Amanda Plummer and Jeffrey Wright as Wiress and Beetee. Plummer seems especially right to me, given the niche she's carved out for herself playing the tiny, soft-spoken women with the crazy eyes (if you have the opportunity, check out her Emmy-winning guest shot on The Outer Limits, "A Stitch in Time").

Comments

[kawuli.livejournal.com]

Re: levels of automation, yes you would have somewhat more varied work, which would be good. I've been sort of wondering whether 6 wasn't going a bit the way of Detroit in terms of increasing automation decreasing the labor needs--otherwise wouldn't the Capitol be more concerned with tamping down rampant drug use? I guess it's also possible that we're all overstating the "6 is the morphling district" case but the other is kind of interesting to think about.

crazy taxes, regulatory restrictions, and a heavy reliance on meeting the needs of Peacekeepers.
This sounds interesting, I haven't read her fic, I'll have to look it up, any particular recs?

I do think there have to be some concessions to reality at various points (eg, what if all the natural gas or shale oil isn't located in Five? Is the Capitol really not going to put a few wells in Ten just because it's supposed to be the livestock district??)
Yes exactly. I'm sure there's lots of losses in productivity but some things are just PHYSICS and seriously, distributed power generation is necessary. I think at least the passenger trains are electric and in my head there's distributed supplementary solar generation stations along the tracks in addition to the larger scale power plants. Not sure exactly how that works but it seems more or less feasible. And re: renewables, I think they play a larger role than now because of North American isolation and increasing scarcity/extraction cost of petroleum. I think mostly electric cars fits from both an efficiency/scarcity and a control standpoint--it's easier to stockpile fuel than batteries, so you can really effectively limit transport range with electric.

Anyway, just rambling, but it's interesting stuff to think about!

[penfold-x.livejournal.com]

I've been sort of wondering whether 6 wasn't going a bit the way of Detroit in terms of increasing automation decreasing the labor needs--otherwise wouldn't the Capitol be more concerned with tamping down rampant drug use? I guess it's also possible that we're all overstating the "6 is the morphling district" case but the other is kind of interesting to think about.

That's one of the areas I diverge from lorataprose and a lot of other fans. I don't think that abuse of morphling is widespread in Six, if only because I don't think enough morphling gets to Six to allow that to happen. I think there may be quite a lot of abuse of inhalants like some types of solvents or whatnot that are involved in manufacture, but I don't think it's so bad it's debilitating to a large portion of the population, because I think that would start to interfere with the quality/quantity of what's sent to the Capitol, which I don't think they would tolerate.

This sounds interesting, I haven't read her fic, I'll have to look it up, any particular recs?

Hmmmm... Regarding her theories on how merchants stay afloat in D12, I'd recommend The Final Eight (parts of THG from Delly's POV), The End of the World (Haymitch's games), and The Rites of Fall (Twelve after Haymitch's games). Generally, I like all of her fiction, but I think The End of the World and The Golden Mean (Haymitch during CF) are my favorites.

[kawuli.livejournal.com]

Agreed, you can't have everyone in 6 on morphling. I can see how an industrial district with low safety standards and just enough money to be able to afford medical care would have a lot of opiates coming in, so some of those getting repurposed a la oxycontin in the US would seem plausible--plus, as you say, you can make a lot of different drugs from industrial materials. Assuming the Capitol has enough labor to get the things it needs, I think they don't care if people take drugs, because addicts are too worried about the next hit to overthrow the government. I don't think it's everyone in 6 by any stretch but in my headcannons it's something like in cities like Detroit or Baltimore where it's enough to make the place more dangerous. It's not something I'd fight over though--just different ways to see the world.

I'll definitely check out those recs, it's always good to find more quality non-"wtf-AU-Everlark-romance-love-triangle-yay!" THG stuff.

[penfold-x.livejournal.com]

but in my headcannons it's something like in cities like Detroit or Baltimore where it's enough to make the place more dangerous.

That gives me a really good mental picture of what you mean. Yes, I can see that level of addiction/dysfunction.