I do not usually look forward to movie adaptations of books I love. More often than not, they leave out some of the finer nuances in favor of keeping the film cinema-friendly, and more often than not, those cut elements are some of my favorite bits from the book.
And yet, I have not been as excited about a release as I am for the new Hunger Games movie Sunrise on the Reaping in a really long time. From the way they revealed the cast to the early set photos and sneak peeks offered by Mckenna Grace and other actors, it looked spot-on to me so far.
Then the trailer dropped, and it threw me a tiny curveball.
Don’t get me wrong. I think the 2:11 minute trailer that dropped on November 20 is incredible. Glenn Close as Drusilla Sickle, wrapped in blinding yellow with a bird on her head, is perfectly gaudy. The softer, spaced-apart Mockingjay whistle in the background as we are introduced to the Second Quarter Quell arena works both for nostalgia and foreshadowing. The arena itself has that “too pretty to be true” essence, with lush green meadows, vibrant flowers, and a clear blue sky, faithfully adapted from the source material.
All the actors seem to fit their characters like a glove, with a Ralph Fiennes-shaped icing on top. The man knows how to play a bad guy better than most. I cannot wait to see his delivery of President Snow’s last words to Haymitch Abernathy in Suzanne Collins’ story.
However, I do have a minor axe to grind with Lionsgate about the last few seconds of the trailer.
MAJOR BOOK SPOILERS AHEAD. Non-readers who want to avoid spoilers, please steer clear.
I wish this scene was not in the Sunrise on the Reaping trailer
From 1:45 onwards in the trailer, there are three back-to-back scenes, all of which are major plot points in the book: a fire, Haymitch crying on some rumpled-up clothes, and a volcano.
In the first scene, Joseph Zada’s Haymitch is held back by two people in front of a house engulfed by a massive fire. If you have read the book, you know that the two people are Burdock Everdeen and Asterid March, Katniss and Prim’s parents. You also know that Haymitch’s mother, Willamae, and little brother, Sid, are trapped inside the house, and there will be no way to save them.
To me, this was the most seismic moment in Haymitch’s character arc. His past has always been a patchwork of implications in the original trilogy. We only knew what Katniss could guess. We knew that he had seen enough to drown himself in alcoholism, a habit he only pressed pause on for Peeta and Katniss. Trauma lived in the margins of his bitter and cynical yet intelligent and protective nature, but Collins kept that history tucked away between the lines.
Sure, at this point, he has already lost enough in the Games and nearly died himself. But we already knew that Haymitch was the victor, so the others must die, even though we wished it wouldn’t be so. The housefire scene is the first real confirmation we get, after years of wondering about Haymitch’s past, of what other terrible things the Capitol subjected him to that made him act the way he does in the original trilogy—paranoid and indifferent all at the same time.
It turned out that Snow, a 60-something-year-old dictator, had to make it personal with a 16-year-old boy, and so he set his whole house on fire, with his only remaining family inside, just to teach him a lesson for his acts of rebellion inside the arena. And then there’s that other heartbreaking thing with the love of Haymitch’s life, Lenore Dove, which we get a brief flash of right after the housefire.
We never got such a front-row seat to Snow’s personal cruelty in the other books, even though he was cruel enough. From the moment the President bids Haymitch farewell with a three-word warning disguised as pleasantry, you can simply tell things will go horribly wrong. You just never expect it to be that horrible.
The scene in the trailer would mean nothing to someone who hasn’t read the book. If this weren’t an adaptation, it would’ve been a perfectly fine moment to include. However, as someone who read the book, got lost in the series of events, and didn't see the fire coming, I wanted to discover what the scene looks like on the big screen in real time, not on my 6-inch phone.
But I do not begrudge the decision-makers for robbing me of it. This isn’t just a boy entering the 50th Hunger Games and surviving. If I were editing the trailer, I too would want the non-reader fans to know that this story is darker, uglier, and more psychologically intense than the other four, and the fire scene does the job pretty well.
There are just some pivotal scenes in the book that I would rather experience in the theaters, and that includes any confirmation about the potential cameo from Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, or Woody Harrelson from the tear-jerking epilogue.
Of course, there is an equal chance that the scene in the movie is different from the one used in the trailer. In that case, you will have to pretend I never wrote this rant at all, given it is not as much of an argument as a personal foot-stomping.