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]

AH! I LOVE ALL OF THIS

Comments on random bits and pieces of things:

The D3 class divide is really interesting especially if you think about the fact that you would have the equivalents of both Apple and Foxconn in the same district (which I hadn't really thought through until just now). And especially if it's based on testing from childhood it could definitely really break up families, yikes!

a larger proportion of the demand is for relatively small batch orders of complex items for Capitol citizens or specific industries, rather than mass-manufacture items (as there are so few in the districts who can afford a lot of technology, and many of the district industries don't require it)
Yes, I was thinking about this to in terms of 6 (of course) because they’d be producing for the Capitol and the Peacekeepers and a few rich people and not for the general public, so much lower volume than say Detroit at peak production.

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
Yes I think anyone having any kind of business (from the bakery on up) has to be licensed by the Capitol and the more potentially threatening the business the more closely that's monitored.

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.
YES EXACTLY. When I'm thinking "How might X work in Panem" I think about, in priority order: control, efficient use of (presumably scarer-than-currently) resources, then productivity. Control is the only way you can explain splitting off various industries geographically (especially power generation holy transmission losses, that basically cannot actually be the only place that generates power).

Wiress loves to take someone’s camcorder when they’re not looking and film weird bits (making faces, singing songs, etc), just to watch their reaction when their notes are interrupted with something ridiculous.

like the surprise cake they baked to present his mentor on her 70th birthday, the time Beetee accidentally set his labcoat on fire (which, of course, was only funny for him in retrospect, when he could hear Wiress’s color commentary pompously regurgitating the standard National Science Acadmey speech about ‘the duty of the superior alpha class to use their gifts for the glory of Panem’), or the time his mentor fell asleep over an experiment and the other victors gleefully decorated her with toilet paper, spare wire and a string of LEDs.
My favorite thing is nerdy prank stories (probably has something to do with going to engineering school and participating in nerdy pranks) and I WANT MORE OF THIS PLS

if wanting my coerced and damaged child killers to be one big happy family is wrong, then I don’t wanna be right.
TRUE STORY

[penfold-x.livejournal.com]

you would have the equivalents of both Apple and Foxconn in the same district

Yeah, exactly. I started on this headcanon before reading about the conditions at Foxconn, but turns out it's exactly what I was thinking of. :(

so much lower volume than say Detroit at peak production.

Yes, and there's good and bad aspects to that, I think? One problem is the lower productivity, but on the up side there's less automation, and thus more varied work? (Lack of such was apparently a big problem with assembly line production.)

Yes I think anyone having any kind of business (from the bakery on up) has to be licensed by the Capitol and the more potentially threatening the business the more closely that's monitored.

fernwithy is basically my go-to for headcanon on this. She's thought a lot about how the merchant system in Twelve could operate without becoming a 'problem' for the Capitol, and the answer seems to be crazy taxes, regulatory restrictions, and a heavy reliance on meeting the needs of Peacekeepers.

(especially power generation holy transmission losses, that basically cannot actually be the only place that generates power).

Yes, this is really difficult to explain, right? Unless there's been some massive advance in battery technology that's beyond our current understanding (e.g., the sort of leap that would make renewables practical rather than just a conscience-salving side gig).

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??), but I suspect there's just extreme losses of productivity due to political control.

[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.