Hunger Games moves to a final darker phase

The hugely successful movie franchise based on author Suzanne Collins' multimillion- selling The Hunger Games trilogy is entering its final phase, and war is coming. Although not quite yet. While Collins wrote three novels, the final one, Mockingjay, has been split into two films.

Fans - who will have to wait until this time next year to see the climax of Jennifer Lawrence's compelling take on Katniss Everdeen's transformation from ordinary girl to Joan of Arc-like heroine - can either thank or blame the studio behind the Harry Potter franchise, which struck box-office gold twice when it bisected J.K. Rowling's The Deathly Hallows.

Of course, there may be some artistic merit in taking an axe to Mockingjay. However, you cannot discount the influence of the numbers. In January this year, it was reported that the second film, Catching Fire, had made $US838 million ($970 million) worldwide in its first seven weeks compared with the $US691 million worldwide generated during the entire run of its predecessor, The Hunger Games. Both set domestic box-office records, and Mockingjay, Part 1 is predicted to do even better. Who wouldn't want to have their cake and eat it?

In truth, it is heartening to see The Hunger Games films do so well. Collins didn't just write the books as entertainment but as a means of communicating some of what she had learnt about war at her father's knee to a young readership. He was a US Air Force officer who served in Vietnam when Collins was six, and after he got back, she told Time magazine: "I think (he) felt it was his responsibility to make sure that all his children had an understanding about war, about its cost, its consequences . . . And if I took the 40 years of my dad talking to me about war and battles and taking me to battlefields and distilled it down into one question, it would probably be the idea of the necessary or unnecessary war."

The Hunger Games emerged as the YA part of a plan to write "a war- appropriate story for every age of kids". The films, then, take viewers into a world very different from the ones populated by wizards, vampires and hairy-footed Hobbits in other recent book-to-screen franchises. Here you're plunged into a (not entirely unfamiliar) dystopian future, where a rich elite rules over a largely impoverished citizenry, and televised "games", in which children fight to the death, are used to serve up punishment as entertainment. Katniss survived one of these high-tech gladiatorial contests in The Hunger Games by subverting the rules. In Catching Fire, she not only survived the Games but literally broke them apart.

Meanwhile, a rebellion has been forming, with Katniss as its unwitting symbol of hope. Until now, she has fought for family, friends, and her own survival. In Mockingjay - Part 1, she must decide whether or not to embrace a bigger cause and help unite the people of Panem's districts in an uprising (to be fought in next year's concluding episode) against their ruthless President Coriolanus Snow's (Donald Sutherland) government in the Capitol.

Faithful to the books, the films have taken Lawrence on a progressively darker journey. When Mockingjay opens, Katniss is hiding in an air vent in District 13 - whose rebellious inhabitants, led by President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), have literally gone underground - shaking uncontrollably and muttering to herself.

Speaking at a gathering of the film's cast, director Francis Lawrence (no relation to the actress), and producer Nina Jacobson, in London, the Oscar- winning star says "Katniss is stripped down at the beginning of this movie. She's suffered from post-traumatic stress from the Games. She wakes up in a district she didn't even know existed. She's completely stripped away from everything that she knows and has to rebuild herself."

Although she has lived with the character for a number of years now, and they have grown together, Lawrence doesn't see many similarities between herself and Katniss. She is only Katniss "between Action and Cut", and can always easily separate herself from a character.

"Drawing on your own experience is tricky for me. I never really understand how that works," she admits. "Katniss is not me. It's a very different person, that handles emotions in a very different way. I mean, I'd just be crying every single day. Like 'Where is my mum?'"

After she accidentally gave Josh Hutcherson, who plays Katniss' friend Peeta, concussion, with "a perfect death-kick", during stunt training for The Hunger Games, Lawrence wept for three hours. On the other hand, she couldn't stop laughing when Liam Hemsworth, who plays Gale, injured his ankle filming a scene for Mockingjay.

"It wasn't funny for him," she giggles, "but I thought it was funny because we were just jogging and he suddenly starts screaming. I'm like 'Are you serious, dude?' The whole thing was very bizarre. I got lots of pictures. Everyone's like 'Liam, are you OK' and I'm like 'Liam, look over here'. He looked so cute because he's so big he's inside this tiny little ambulance. It was so funny."

Despite these un-Katniss-like moments, Lawrence does acknowledge a parallel between the way that the bow-wielding heroine is suddenly thrust into a role she doesn't feel ready for, and her own trajectory. When The Hunger Games movies came to her, she was experiencing her first awards season, with Winter's Bone and feeling like she wasn't in control.

"I understand what it's like at the beginning to feel like you're not your own person, like you're kind of this prop," she says. "I was being put in dresses that were uncomfortable and make-up that made me end up looking not like myself. And all of a sudden everyone's listening to you and I'm thinking 'Don't listen to me, I'm 20.' But eventually you grow into it and you grow your own voice."

In Mockingjay, Katniss is at her most powerful when she is allowed to speak from the heart. British actress Natalie Dormer, who plays a new character, Cressida, suggests this is also Lawrence's strength. "She is just truthful. She's just herself. And that's why she's had the effect that she's had on so many young people, especially young girls."

As Katniss, Lawrence is the face of a franchise that doesn't recoil from engaging truthfully with some of the harsher aspects of life. In Mockingjay, the consequences of war are powerfully illustrated in harrowing shots of District 12, Katniss former home, reduced to rubble and charred human remains, while an attack on District 13 frighteningly conveys what an air raid might feel like.

Meanwhile the use of high-tech propaganda in the film reflects the propaganda wars currently being waged online by governments and terrorist groups. TV appearances by the captured Peeta cannot help but remind you of the recent videos of Islamic State prisoner John Cantlie reading scripted denunciations of Western governments.

"I think that part of the reasons kids have responded to these books and these movies is that they're being treated like adults," says Francis Lawrence. "I think they can smell when they're being spoken down to. And I'm not interested in doing that."

Neither is Sutherland; he wants the films to connect, inspire and galvanise. "I came aboard this project for one specific reason: I thought that it could be a catalyst for young people that had been dormant for a generation or two, particularly in the United States. The Occupy movement fizzled out because it didn't have a leader. I hope that this film will in some way become, or create, a leader who will put young people together in a way that they will understand." Oligarchs such as Snow exist for real, he adds: "And they need to be brought to account."

The Canadian is likely being over- optimistic about what the film can achieve. Jacobson, though, believes that part of the reason for the popularity of The Hunger Games is that Collins tapped into the Zeitgeist.

"We live in complex and anxiety- producing times," she says, "and I think that young people face the future with a fair degree of uncertainty, and this book and these films speak to those uncertainties, and to the strange sort of dance between violence and entertainment that make up our daily bread."

Jennifer Lawrence reveals that seeing how big the films were becoming made her "nervous for a few days" because she feared that Katniss could define the rest of her career. "I'm an actress," she says. "I don't want to be remembered as just one character. It's a scary idea."

The actress is probably worrying unduly. After all, she won an Oscar for playing a reformed sex addict in 2012's Silver Linings Playbook. In any case, she appears to have overcome her fear.

"I'm so proud of these movies that I'm actually honoured to carry this character with me for the rest of my life," she insists, "and have people remember me as this incredible, courageous hero.

"I just hope no one mistakes it for me."

Katniss . . . must decide whether or not to embrace a bigger cause and help unite the people of Panem's districts in an uprising.

'And all of a sudden everyone's listening to you and I'm thinking "Don't listen to me, I'm 20"'. Jennifer Lawrence

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 opens on Thursday.