If you missed the news yesterday, Jennifer Lawrence has been cast as Katniss Everdeen in the film adaptation of The Hunger Games. It seems like this choice has already caused a firestorm across the web.
She's too old!
Too blonde!
Her boobs are too big!
Admittedly, I have a few reservations about Jen. I mean, she does seem a bit old for the role, right? By the time Mockingjay gets made into a movie, she might be 23 or older. And Katniss is only seventeen or eighteen in that book! (Additionally, Jen does seem a bit, uh, buxom, for the role. I've always envisioned Katniss as very slender, very thin. Very flat-chested. Ah well.)
Despite my reservations, I'm actually pretty excited about this casting! I watched Winter's Bone with Justin a couple months ago and I thought Jennifer did a fantastic job in it. She really captured her role as a struggling Appalachian teen trying to keep her family together--and this role is pretty reminiscent to the role of Katniss. I'm just grateful that the director Gary Ross chose a girl who can act.
Speaking of Gary Ross, I really loved this interview he did with Entertainment Weekly about why he chose Jennifer for the role. He and Suzanne Collins worked together very closely in choosing their Katniss:
[Jennifer] came in and read for me and it just knocked me out. I don’t want to go into too many details, but we did a scene from the movie and it was so amazingly powerful that it was sort of stunning. You glimpsed every aspect of the role and the potential of the whole movie.
But that's just my opinion. What do you think about this decision? Who were you rooting for to play Katniss? Hailee Steinfeld? Chloe Moretz? Finally, I found this picture of Jennifer as a brunette. Does this help make her case at all?
