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

Re: District Three Headcanon, Part the Second

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So basically D3 is a weird sort of meritocracy, where you can only get so high because otherwise the Capitol comes swooping in with its giant hammer and smashes everyone back down.

Yes, though I think there’s also just basically a ceiling of how well you’re going to be able to do in D3 (or any other district), because of how crazy-pants the organization of Panem is. Like other totalitarian states, Panem is sacrificing the economic growth (and the prosperity and human flourishing that accompany that growth) and engaging in debilitating levels of social control in order to maintain a power order. All the districts are much poorer than they need to be, and I imagine that life in D3 (like the other middle-range districts), even for those at the ‘top,’ reflects that unnecessary poverty. For example, I imagine that most factory workers can’t afford most of the technology that’s manufactured there, and even the scientists are limited in what they can afford.

Also, I imagine the Capitol exerts control over areas of research/study. For example, I imagine that the Capitol permits pretty much unlimited exploration of science and engineering, but has no interest in and significantly curtails study of the humanities (no sitting around contemplating the inalienable rights of man, or whatnot). I imagine a lot of directives from the Capitol, through state- or privately owned industry, for certain types of research projects, some of which are the bane of the scientist class (e.g., explaining the impossibility of perpetual motion machines to people who have never heard ‘no’ in their lives and have the power to ruin you). I also imagine that the Capitol maintains a rather tight control on ownership of the science and technology firms, through either nationalization of certain industries or prohibiting ownership of R/D or manufacturing firms by non-Capitol citizens, etc (which would, I think, be necessary in all the urban districts, to prevent any district from eventually becoming an economic rival).