Here’s your first (real) trailer for The Hunger Games, though it’s pretty light on the “kids killing kids” parts.
Back in September, Lionsgate gave movie audiences a glimpse of its upcoming film adaptation of The Hunger Games. A glimpse was all that was, too, since September’s video seemed like it was more of a high-quality remake of the teaser trailer for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves than anything else. Now, though, the real trailer has been released, and now we know why Jennifer Lawrence is running through the trees and killing off her fellow tweens: She wants to be the next Kim Kardashian.
Whoops, no! Sorry! Got that wrong! It turns out that Lawrence is playing Katniss Everdeen, a young woman living in the distopian nation of Panem (what used to be North America), which is divided into twelve different districts. Katniss volunteers to be a “Tribute” in her sister’s place for the Hunger Games. The Games are a combination of government intimidation tactics towards the districts and reality television; basically, the Tributes are forced to murder each other for the public entertainment of upper class society.
The trailer looks pretty impressive, especially the bits where the decadent future society of Panem is featured. The trailer is also entirely a prologue, with no actual footage of the Hunger Games themselves. That said, the scenario certainly looks like it’s being set up nicely.
Of course, what will be interesting to see is how the film actually depicts the element of, you know, kids murdering kids. The books are pretty graphic, since people get mutilated, riddled with arrows, stabbed, gutted, and -oh, yes- blown up. Odds are that Hollywood isn’t going to want to show much of this in any amount of detail.
The Hunger Games will hit theaters on March 23rd, 2012.
