Starvation Video games: Sunrise on the Reaping didn’t fairly land for me. Suzanne Collins’ newest was relentlessly bleak and lacked the compelling arc that made Coriolanus Snow’s transformation in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes so charming. That mentioned, I’m weirdly excited to see what Francis Lawrence does with it onscreen. A robust forged can elevate a story, even one constrained by the preordained occasions of The Starvation Video games, and to Lawrence’s credit score, he’s assembled a hell of a forged.
The most recent addition is Elle Fanning, who appears like the good selection for a youthful Effie Trinket, initially portrayed by Elizabeth Banks. Actually, I’m stunned Fanning hasn’t already performed a youthful model of or the daughter of a character performed by Banks. It simply matches.
As we beforehand reported, they’ve additionally forged the good man to play Plutarch Heavensbee: Jesse Plemons, who in some ways appears like this era’s Philip Seymour Hoffman, the unique Plutarch. In the meantime, Ralph Fiennes has been forged as President Snow, a sensible bit of continuity that bridges Tom Blyth’s youthful Snow and Donald Sutherland’s iconic model. Mags Flanagan, winner of the sixteenth Starvation Video games and memorably portrayed by Lynn Cohen as an octogenarian in Catching Fireplace, will probably be performed right here by Lili Taylor. Maya Hawke is taking on the function of Wiress, initially delivered to life by Amanda Plummer, additionally in Catching Fireplace.
The youthful forged is a combine of recent and acquainted faces. Joseph Zada stars as a younger Haymitch Abernathy (later performed by Woody Harrelson), whereas McKenna Grace (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire), nonetheless a standout for me from 2017’s Gifted, will painting Maysilee Donner, one of the many tragic figures in the story. That features Lenore Dove Baird, performed by Whitney Peak, in all probability greatest often known as Zoya from the Gossip Lady reboot.
It’s a stacked ensemble, and if Francis Lawrence can inject even a flicker of hope into an in any other case grim chapter, we is likely to be in for a surprisingly respectable movie.