We’re only a few months away from the release of The Hunger Games prequel The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. So naturally, the director Francis Lawrence has started doing a few interviews here and there to amp up the hype. But unfortunately for Lawrence his comments about the beloved character Katniss Everdeen, have caused a stir within the fandom.
In case you’ve missed it, the upcoming prequel film follows the future president of Panem, Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), as a young man. It kicks off when he’s assigned as a mentor to a girl named Lucy Grey (Rachel Zegler) from District 12 who has been chosen for the 10th annual Hunger Games.
Throughout this film, we discover what leads him to become the tyrannical overlord we know from the original trilogy.
Francis Lawrence, who directed Catching Fire and both Mockingjay sequels, spoke to Empire on Wednesday about his fears that no one would want to see a prequel that doesn’t star the girl on fire, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence).
“Katniss was an introvert and a survivor,” he told the publication.
“She was quite quiet and stoic, you could almost say [she was] asexual. Lucy Gray is the opposite. She wears her sexuality on her sleeve, [and] she really is a performer,” he said, referring to the character of Lucy as the “anti-Katniss.”
While Katniss loathed having to put on a spectacle in front of the Hunger Games viewers, Lawrence says: “She loves crowds. She knows how to play crowds and manipulate people.”
Since the interview with Empire went online, fans have taken issue with the assumption that Katniss is asexual. Especially since she was a teenager just trying to keep her family alive throughout a famine and faced almost imminent death twice before leading a political revolution. You know, not-so-sexy stuff.
Girlie had other things on her mind, in my opinion.
In the books, I remember the rare instances that Katniss gives affection to Peta or Gale to be pretty much isolated to moments of caregiving and comfort, so I see what the director was trying to say. But ultimately I reckon she was a 16-year-old girl who had bigger fish to fry than smooching.
If Suzanne Collins, the author of the book series, intended her to be asexual, it should have been made clear in the film and in the books. So personally I’ll be waiting to see if Suzanne will weigh in on this one before I make my mind up.
