Does anyone else appreciate the delicious irony of the exclusive new Hunger Games spot being sponsored by Doritos? C’mon, Haymitch. Drop a bag of Cool Ranch into the arena so Katniss can fend off those nagging hunger pains. She has a revolution to fight. She can’t pause for lengthy snack breaks!
The snack company slaps its brand on the new spot "Choice," shared via Lionsgate and meant to drum up interest in the upcoming sequel The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- Part 1. Stanley Tucci’s garish host Caesar Flickerman implores everyone to pay close attention, informing them that whoever they are, and wherever they might be, they are going to want to see this.
The "Choice" in the title of the clip refers to a choice Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) is making to say the words that are fed into his mouth by President Snow (Donald Sutherland). As you’ll hear Gale (Liam Hemsworth) say to Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence), everyone has a choice – and if it were up to Gale, he would rather die than to say the words that are coming out of Peeta’s mouth on the telecast. We can only assume that Peeta is being coerced, violently, into speaking the words on the Capitol’s telecast. In fact, he seems to have taken quite the beating while in the Capitol’s grubby clutches.
So, Katniss. What are you going to do? So many of your moves have been made to keep Peeta alive. Is his rescue the spark that this Mockingjay needs to kick start the pending revolution? "When you love somebody, you don’t just leave them behind," Katniss proclaims in the clip, before telling the warriors of the resistance that she is prepared to fight alongside them. In this movie, as well as in the sequel that will close out the Hunger Games franchise right around this time next year.
What I find mildly annoying (besides the blatant corporate sponsorship for a movie that’s about throwing off the restraints of a powerful oligarchy) is the way Lionsgate is slowly doling out footage for a movie that’s only a few weeks away. These little pinpricks of marketing are slowly bleeding out the massive effect of what one long, breathtaking trailer could accomplish. Thirty-second spots for a movie the size of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- Part 1 can’t do the movie justice, and usually just mislead with images that we probably didn’t want to see outside of the finished film.
"Choice" leads to the full movie, which opens everywhere on November 21.
