Watch An Angry Katniss Get the Gamemakers' Attention in Clip from The Hunger Games
With only three weeks to go until YA adaptation The Hunger Games hits theaters, Lionsgate has released the first actual clip from the Gary Ross-directed film, and it's a memorable moment Hunger Games fans should recognize: Forced to show off her skills for the Capitol's boorish, drunken Gamemakers -- the designers of the Games, headed by Wes Bentley's Seneca Crane -- Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) lets an arrow fly in an act of defiance that finally gets their attention.
It's a smart scene choice to unveil, as the barrage of trailers and TV spots released so far have offered only snippets from the film; this clip, meanwhile, gives more of a sense of Ross's sense for tone and pacing within scenes, not to mention how he might treat iconic moments from the book. Katniss's arrow flying at the pack of vulgar Gamemakers, in whose hands the fates of the Games' tributes lie, is one of one her first impulsive displays of rebellion against the Games and the government that created them -- the perfect way to get fans' attentions, too.
This scene also demonstrates Ross's stylistic approach, sound design, and visual interpretation of Suzanne Collins' Panem, and while I expected to see a little more outrage on Lawrence's face at the :30 second mark, it works for me. What say you, Movieliners?
The Hunger Games is in theaters March 23.
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If I was part of the head of a totalitarian rulership, what I'd do to quell rebellion is make it understood that with us, though officially we'd frown on your bratty disinclination to cooperate, we'd also damn well make sure to reward it with all our attention and grade it A+, or an eleven out ten, or whatever would serve to distinguish you as better than the rest of the slaves; whereas any upcoming democracy might not let it serve to disvalue all your peers, infuriatingly insisting that there really is something beautiful in everyone, including you, but not especially in you.
If you like getting attention from managerial superiors, and find you get a rush when these ostensible villains notice you and assess you flatteringly -- and be honest, you do, you really do -- in truth you're the last person we'd ever worry about: pathetic you is wholly owned merely by the threat of us grading your best with a B or B +. If it meant avoiding a (self-esteem-obliterating) C or C-, we bet we could even get you to be the one who kills sweet little you-know-who, just to show there's nothing presumable about you.
Awesome clip!. Actually, if Lawrence had gone the show extreme rage route it would not have been true to the character; remember that we are inside Katniss's head and Katniss is telling the reader that she feels rage but, Katniss also keeps her emotions very close to the chest(remember how Haymitch was trying so hard to get some kind of emotion out of her for the interview?); she just actsbut with little hystrionics...she shoots the arrow. It's Katniss Everdeen not Rambo.