It’s out. It’s finally out. It’s hard to believe the full Hunger Games trailer is finally out. I have tranquilized my pure excitement enough to post my thoughts about what was seen.
My thoughts are, and I quote, “HOLY-MOLY-ME-OH-MAH GIMME MOAR” end-quote. It looks fantastic. Really. What I was most surprised about was how faithful to the story it looks like the film will be. Too often do we get annoying summary films of books that leave out so much that you end up walking out of the theater making excuses to your illiterate friends like “I swear, the original is wayy better than this was! Really!” *cough* The Last Airbender *cough* *cough* Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – no, seriously. That book was the longest of the first four, and the shortest movie. I hadn’t read the fourth book at the time I saw it. It made no sense. It was awful. I was confused. End of example. *cough* The Hunger Games, however, looks like it will really stick to the original book.
One worrisome thing is the rating. The trailer was rated PG. In Canada it was rated G. That worries me. Thankfully, the rating only applies to the trailer, not the film itself. After all, the film is still in post-production, there’s no way it has a rating yet. So why did Lionsgate try for the “G” rating? Down With the Capitol says what they think the reasoning for this is:
The ‘G’ Rating only applies to the film’s trailer– probably a move on Lionsgate’s part to ensure that it can run before as many films as possible (trailers rated above a G are limited as to which kinds of movies they can run with).
So I really don’t think we have much to worry about on this front. But this does bring me to the point of ratings. Anyone who read the book would (or should) say that the film clearly deserves an “R” rating. This isn’t Harry Potter at school. This isn’t some teenage vampire drama. This is a film about children dying of hunger and murdering each other, usually in rather gruesome ways. However, the film will get a PG-13. We can be pretty sure of that. Lionsgate is laying everything on the line with this movie. If Hunger Games does poorly, it’s questionable whether they will be around to make movies for our kids to see (to put it nicely). They need to get the young-adult audience Harry Potter and Twilight captured.
Another thought occurred to me last night: did this trailer make the least bit of sense to anyone who didn’t read the book? I don’t know a single person who saw the trailer who didn’t like it, but did it make any sense. I know for myself, if I randomly saw that trailer at a theater my first reaction would be “what the heck is going on here??” I asked my dad, who saw the trailer and didn’t read the books: he said he thought it looked great, but had to have some parts explained by my mom and sis. All-in-all, I think we can say the trailer was clearly made as fan-service.
If you HAVEN’T seen the trailer yet, what the &*@# is wrong with you?? watch it here!
According to Mockingjay.net, it’s been confirmed that the Hunger Games trailer is going to run at the beginning of Breaking Dawn (you know, that mushy mess of sparkling vampires movie?). Not that you should go see that movie. I fully expect it will be bad. It would be very cool, however, to see this amazing trailer on the big screen!
May the odds be ever in your favor,
Sam.