Mockingjay

The Hunger Games has been a very successful film franchise.  Over the weekend, the latest installment opened and while it was the biggest opening weekend in terms of tickets sold of the year, it was considered by some to be a disappointment since projections have it being twenty-million dollars short of the previous North American opening.

So what's happened?

This perceived failure of Mockingjay will be discussed non-stop and the blame's going to fall on Jennifer Lawrence because she is the star of the franchise.

So let's start with her actions.

1) First and foremost, she's been overexposed.

We're not talking about in promoting the film, we're talking about her Academy Award win and multiple nominations, we're talking about her interviews and her opinions.

2) Now let's talk about her romance.

She lost Chris Martin to Gwynnie?

That is the perception and it comes as she's supposed to be carrying a film.

That's never good for an actress.  When Lana Turner, for example, lost Tyrone Power that was the beginning in a shift of press coverage from Lana Golden Girl to "what's wrong with Lana?"

3) Jane Fonda took to praising her publicly.

Fonda's 76 and not at all relevant to the lives of young women and girls.  She's older than their great-grandmas.

When a young actress is so popular that even a woman who's 77-years-old next month is trying to hop on the bandwagon, there are far too many on the bandwagon and the performer has gone stale.

4) The petty wars -- which Jennifer Lawrence should have issued a statement on.

For the likes of Ms. magazine -- forever looking to 'heart' someone -- Jennifer Lawrence and The Hunger Games franchise was an opportunity to trash Kristen Stewart and to slam the Twilight franchise.

Those five films that Kristen carried have made over $3 billion world wide.  There was no need to trash Kristen or the Twilight franchise in order to build up Jennifer Lawrence.

It looked petty and it looked bitchy.

And Twilight fans didn't enjoy it.

Nor should they have.

Twilight is a huge franchise that was based on romance.  It was telling a different type of story -- an equally valid story -- and as various Jennifer Lawrence boosters in the press and on the blogs went out of their way to explain how much more important Jennifer was and how much greater Hunger Games was, it did help create a backlash.

Again, Jennifer Lawrence should have issued a statement -- and she still needs to this week -- explaining that there's nothing wrong with Twilight and that she wishes people would stop pitting Hunger Games against Twilight.



5) Beefcake.

Josh Hutcherson was never handsome.

He did have a cute phase.

By the end of 2012, that moment had long passed. That leaves only Liam Hemsworth.


Twilight actually added more good looking men to the cast as the franchise went along.

With Hutcherson looking more and more like Herman Munster, the reality is The Hunger Games franchise has fewer and fewer attractive men for young girls and young women (or, for that matter, young boys and young men) to be attracted to and fantasize about.


None of the above should be shocking.

And while some may argue this is obvious in hindsight, we'd argue this should have been obvious months ago.







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Since this posted minutes ago, this has been corrected to note "multiple nominations" -- Academy Award nominations -- and only one win.