the hunger games: mockingjay – pa rt 2
This time it’s war as the YA game-changer calls it a wrap.
Jennifer Lawrence would like to clarify something. She may have been thrashing in filthy sewers, grappling with mutant hordes and weighed down by 20lbs of water-drenched combat gear but no, tattle-mongers, she was never in danger of drowning. “Everybody always says that,” she grimaces, remembering an especially taxing day as the most bankable female star on the planet. “I did not almost drown, ever.”
“Wes [ Chatham, who played Castor] did,” interjects Liam Hemsworth, her co-star in this final instalment of The Hunger Games quadrilogy. “During that fight sequence through the tunnels he has a moment where one of the Mutts attacks him. He got held
underwater by a stunt guy by accident…”
“Holy shit,” says Lawrence, genuinely astonished by this revelation. “I didn’t know about that…”
“Yeah, he couldn’t get up. He said he almost drowned.”
Lawrence boggles. “I love how whoever spread that rumour was like, ‘Oh my god, what happened? Well, it’ll be more interesting if we say it was Jennifer…’ You can already see the chain on the telephone. ‘Who’s Wes?
Jennifer Lawrence!’”
Whispers of a near-miss with a watery death must be one of the stranger consequences of 21st Century fame. And Lawrence has the kind of fame that rearranges the atoms in a room. Today a suite of the hushed and upscale Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills has been commandeered for the
Mockingjay – Part 2 press junket. Lawrence is dryly amusing, vaguely distracted by her phone – “Sorry, a friend’s packing for me... I’ve got to go straight from here to the airport and I don’t want her to pack the wrong curling iron…” – and falls into easy, sisterly banter with fellow Hunger Gamers Hemsworth (Gale Hawthorne) and Josh Hutcherson (Peeta Mellark). At one point she yawns, loudly and theatrically as Hutcherson attempts to answer a question. “I didn’t even think about it!” she says, catching herself. “I’m so sorry!”
“You’ve done it like three times in two days of press!” Hutcherson reprimands her. “I don’t do it on purpose! If it makes you feel any better it’s totally natural!”
“It doesn’t, actually!” Hutcherson mock-fumes. “It makes me feel worse that it genuinely is boring! It’s not a joke!”
The magic number
The trio is tight. And no wonder. They share not only the preternaturally attractive genes of young Hollywood but the battle scars of a blockbuster franchise, the quartet of films adapting Suzanne Collins’ saga of teen rebel Katniss Everdeen and her struggle against the soulcrushing rule of President Snow in a dystopian future world.
“The most heartening thing is to see how close they’ve become with each other,” says producer Nina Jacobson, who first brought Collins’ vision to the screen in 2012’s The Hunger Games. “Oftentimes fame divides people – ‘I’ve got to have this perk’ or ‘I’ve got to have that’, or they become competitive with each other. And they never turned that way. They became a family. They became incredibly close. They grew up together in the way that other people of that age are going to college. Instead they had this experience.”
Mockingjay – Part 2 wraps a franchise that’s already earned $2.2 billion globally. The conclusion to a split adaptation of Collins’ trilogy-capping novel, it marks a brutal end for the saga, high on blood-loss, body count and emotional trauma as Katniss infiltrates the Capitol for a decisive showdown with Snow.
“This is the one where Katniss takes control of the narrative, where she sets the agenda for the movie,” Jacobson tells Total Film. “It’s not set for her. And I think for Jen to step into the role as the leader, as the one calling the shots for a good part of the movie, and the attendant burden of that, was something that she was very ready to play.”
Lawrence says goodbye to the Girl on Fire from a significantly different place in the big screen firmament. In 2012 she was working meet-and-greets with fans at shopping malls. Since then her star has ascended, blazingly,
‘A REBOOT IN 20 YEARS IS A TOTALLY REALISTIC POSSIBILITY – GOD LUCK TO THEM!’
JENNIFER LAWRENCE
vertiginously, bagging an Oscar for Silver
Linings Playbook and proving sufficient box office bait to recently be crowned the apex female of the Hollywood A-list. You wonder if Jacobson suspected the sheer magnitude of Lawrence’s star power when she first cast her.
“It’s crazy to imagine that yes, there was a moment when Jen Lawrence had to audition for a role, and that’s unimaginable now – and that was not that long ago,” reflects Jacobson. “But then she came in to audition and the audition was ridiculously moving and made the casting director cry. Nobody was ever going to get that part besides her. Star quality? Yes, of course. She felt like a movie star from the second I saw her in Winter’s Bone.”
The Hunger Games saga has mapped two revolutions. Beyond Katniss’ fight to liberate the people of Panem it has demonstrated the undeniable kick-ass power of the XX chromosome, proving there’s a place for femaleled actioners in a traditionally testosterone-dominated marketplace. As Plutarch Heavensbee declares in Mockingjay – Part 1, Katniss – and, yes, Lawrence – is “a lightning rod, the face of the revolution”. Has the success of the saga kicked this door down for good?
“It’s a door that we will probably be kicking for years to come,” says Jacobson. “But have we made a really good dent and maybe kicked off one of the hinges? Yes. But there’s definitely at least one more hinge. A compelling female protagonist is as universal a magnet to audiences as anything. When I was coming up as an executive, it was considered conventional wisdom that girls will identify with a male protagonist but boys will not identify with a female protagonist. And that just makes no sense. At the very least our films and a good handful of other movies that have come out during the five years that we’ve been in the ether have been kicking down that door and disproving a ridiculous premise. The Hunger Games stands proudly in that line of movies, whether it’s Bridesmaids or Frozen or Spy. Right now you can have an all-female Ghostbusters – honestly unimaginable 10 years ago. I think that’s a legacy.”
“My fear with Hollywood is all you need is one that doesn’t work and then it’s going to slam the door shut again,” says director Francis Lawrence, who’s also reaching the end of his association with The Hunger Games after helming the last three films back-to-back. “It wasn’t
so long ago that people were saying we cannot have female leads in the movies. It can so easily go back again. I just want people to make interesting stories and take gambles on interesting stories and interesting characters whether they’re men or women.”
Let’s go round again
Given the rather intense universe-building demands of modern Hollywood there are, naturally, rumblings that this won’t be the last we’ll see of the bow-wielding rebel and her world. Just as Warner Bros are set to extend their Harry Potter empire with 2016 brand extension Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer recently revealed that they were “actively looking at some development and thinking about prequel and sequel possibilities”. Next year sees the Hunger Games stage show hit London’s West End and rumours swirl that a theme park is being considered. For Jacobson the story is over. For now.
“I don’t have any idea for how to extend it, and I have no plans to right now,” she says. “If Suzanne Collins called me up one day and said ‘I have an idea…’ I’d be there in a second. But I would always follow her lead and right now there are no plans. I wouldn’t know how to do it myself and I wouldn’t want to do it if she didn’t, if it didn’t come from her.”
And then, of course, there’s the inevitable Hunger Games reboot in 20 years… “The way the business is going now it seems like they would,” laughs Francis Lawrence. “It’s like you would be doing it in less than 20 years!”
“Of course they will,” says Jennifer Lawrence. Just how surreal would that be for her? “I don’t think it’s surreal at all,” she shrugs, “I think it’s a totally realistic possibility. Good luck to them!”
“I want to play Haymitch,” jokes Josh Hutcherson, “You can be Effie.” He turns to Hemsworth. “You can be Snow. The son we didn’t know about.” Hemsworth grins, running with it. “I’m really bitter towards you guys because of what happened.”
“It’s great,” enthuses Hutcherson, already unspooling the production of the film in his head. “We’re going to write it. Jen and Amy Shumer!” Lawrence nods, “It’ll be the most dramatic thing you’ve ever seen...”
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 opens 19 November.
‘T HIS IS THE ONE WHERE KATNI SS TAK ES CONT ROL. JEN WAS READY TO STEP INTO THE ROLE OF LEADER’
NINA JACOBSON