Josh Hutcherson Talks Preparing for ‘Catching Fire’

did my heart soar? oh josh, you precious boy, you. between this and that one time when PSH also commented on the script, i’ve gained back those twenty years of my life i had lost by worrying about this script.

Oh lordy.. I hope you’re right Josh! I’m really hoping this will be close to the book (even with a few minor tweeks to the movie)!

Josh just thinks the script is so awesome because he gets to be kissed by Finnick and the BEACH SCENE!!!!!!! LOL

Thank you Josh. I shall rest easy tonight.

@carla – Haha, I think you speak for pretty much all of the fandom there I am sure I found a few white hairs!

I’ve probably said this before but I just love that Josh is so in tune with the material, he understands just how important it is to get Peeta right, and I am positive Catching Fire is going to be brilliant. After the bar they have set with The Hunger Games, the only way is up!

Thanks for the reassurance Pee-, I mean Josh!

Thank you, thank you Josh! I started to feel a teensy bit better about the script when PSH talked about it, but when Josh says it’s good, then it’s good. I admire him more by the day. And @Tash I totally agree with you, I LOVE how dedicated Josh is to Peeta and how he is determined to do him right. I can’t rant about Josh enough, so I’ll shut up now

Josh, you’re amazing.

@PeetaLuver10 You are sooooo right!!!!!!

In Josh we trust!lol

Oh, Josh. I note that part of the interview not quoted on this site, he talks about how everyone was telling him his life would change due to THG, and “I didn’t want that to happen and it didn’t… I’m still me and I’m still doing my normal things that I have always done.” Yeah, this is why Collins herself stated that if Josh had been purple with wings, she’d still have wanted him cast as Peeta.

Josh’s description of how Peeta is in love with Katniss and knows she doesn’t love him, makes me wonder how CF will portray this, since many thought the end of THG will be confusing when it came to that. Since just because Josh himself is going to play Peeta as being in that situation, isn’t the same as the audience getting enough cues to realize what’s going in. But the fact that he actually read the script, makes me hope this will be cleared up a little bit. Maybe they’ll leave in that part where Haymitch tells Katniss “he wanted it to be real” after they decide Peeta has to propose to her, and he doesn’t exactly take it well. Or even have Peeta himself say that to Katniss, to make it even more moving.

By what a cutie pie everyone loves this guy , he is a good actor. I hope he gets higher praise for portraying Peeta.

Peeta is my favorite character from the movie, but Beetee is my favorite from the books. So I am looking forward to who will play him.

@satsuma just imagining Peeta say “I wanted it to be real” to Katniss in CF sounds heart breaking. I think of the Real or Not Real so much because of that line.

I think at this point everybody involved with the movies is just going to say they’re true to the book. He likes his job. That’s fine. But there’s no way for us to gauge the accuracy of his statement until we see the movie.

Here’s what made my heart soar, though: “it’s something that I’m really excited to play because it’s such a a conflicting emotion… It’s a very conflicting, confusing kind of thing and I can’t wait to play it out.”

Josh is just FANTASTIC at these types of scenes that require him to convey a thousand really deep, meaningful things with only a few words – or none at all. If this script (unlike the first one) gives him something to sink his teeth into dramatically, that’s more than good enough for me.

Yes, my heart soared when he said that! I’ll be able to sleep tonight instead of worrying about the script! Can’t wait for CPR and THE BEACH SCENE!!!

I like what Josh said in the interview about the girl not always being the one getting hurt and having to be protected. It’s true, but how many times do you hear someone say that?

@SPM-My thought, when I read Josh’s interviews, is that if he wasn’t happy, he would still be positive, but keep his comments short. Something like, “it’s going to be great, I can’t give you too many details.” Maybe I’M reading too much into his comments. He just seems overly excited about the movie. Maybe I’m trying to hold on to the slim hope that the movie will be close to the book, and especially the portrayal of Peeta’s character will be more like the book. Like you said, we’ll have to wait to see the movie.

I just realized he’ll have to starve himself for Mockingjay.

For those who didn’t like the first movie, Josh also said it was true to the book. I loved The Hunger Games I thought it followed the books very well, Even if they left parts out it did follow the book. To be “true” in my head means that it will follow the book! Don’t think just because he says its true to the book that every detail from the book will be in the movie. Its a movie so many things will be left out, you just have to accept it and enjoy the movie.

@Isaac – “For those who didn’t like the first movie, Josh also said it was true to the book.”

Thank you for proving my point.

Thanks for clarifying things for me, I am somewhat new to the party and had no idea he said that about the first movie. I did like the first movie and will probably like the next. I am hoping the character is written closer to how it appears in the book.

Of course, it’s nice to hear JH is excited, but I agree with all those who say to take this with a dose of realism. I mean, really, what else could he say? And, yeah, he has said it before. The funny thing is, that THG movie really did follow the book closely. It’s just that the areas/characters where I felt the film deviate were kind of a big problem for me, so, errrrr.

And while I, too, love seeing convention turned on its head, with Katniss doing the “saving,” Peeta’s strength of character had better be made clear in this script.  While he may not be a super, survivalist soldier, he is able to understand and support her emotionally in ways no one else seems able. If this isn’t obvious, it flattens  BOTH characters.

@Kaleiney – exactly. It mystifies me as to why Hutch and everyone else seem so excited to set up Katniss as the ONLY hero in the story, which is just dead wrong. Peeta is much smarter than even Hutch seems to give him credit for – as someone pointed out above, look how crafty he is during the 74th and 75th Hunger Games as he tries to protect Katniss. That’s someone who is clever, devious, and even manipulative when he has to be, in addition to being a major source of strength for Katniss.

Hey Hutch, does the script say anything about that?

@satsuma, khanster– i do hope that line makes it in! not for me, specifically; i’d be happy just to see that emotion in peeta’s eyes (and i’m sure we will because josh is just that perfect), but i do think katniss needs to hear it. so i hope they keep it in.

@LR– that’s what makes me feel like josh really, really gets peeta, because i think most of us have thought that about the character at least once: in the story of katniss & peeta, katniss was never the one who was going to get hurt. and that is critical to understanding not only their relationship, but also peeta’s character individually, too.

@SPM– there’s not much of a point to be “proven” if you’re basing it off your opinion. i loved the first film so i have no reason to go “oh, he’s obviously saying it just for PR.” i have no need for that defense mechanism. i thought the first movie was VERY true to the book, so when josh says this one will be as well, i’m inclined to believe him.

also, even if josh were possibly saying this just for PR, i would trust PSH to be more serious than that. he basically had the script in one hand and the book in the other when he said it. if he had found them to be significantly different and still had to “spin it around” so it sounds good, i would’ve expected him to spin the deviations in a positive way, instead of telling us they’ll be similar when we’ll obviously find out eventually that they’re not.

@isaac– i don’t think anyone out there is expecting the script to be exact to the book line by line. that’s just never going to happen. it’s just a question of whether the parts that are changed/left out were dealbreakers to you, or not. in my case, they weren’t. and i’m hoping to see a similar approach to catching fire.

@carla – I think his enthusiasm is genuine. I also think he honestly believes what he says, as he did with the first movie, and IMO he was dead wrong about that. So yes, I’m wary. I’m glad for your sake that you don’t have to be.

@SPM– alright, at least we agree on josh’s genuineness. that’s something. it’s when people imply that the actors are just “saying what we want to hear” that i’m really bothered, because we really don’t have any proof of that. but i guess you didn’t mean it that way, so it’s cool with me.

did my heart soar???????????? I have to tell you something….. it didn’t soar… it lept out of my chest and flew to the moon and back!!!!!!!! I was sooooooo happy!!!!

Josh, your peeta again! Omg! Thank god ! I love you!

@SPM I agree. I think Josh does inner conflict quite well. While I was definitely on board when they announced him as Peeta (dark hair and all), what sold me with his performance was the time where he looked out of the car and he actually sobbed. Now that the BluRay is out, and I got the see the movie all over again (rewind it several times LOL), I love all the little glances Josh has. In the bread scene, there was this very short shot of him looking back at Katniss after he thorws the bread which is amazing!

I do hope that they portray Peeta to be a strong character in Catching Fire. I want him to train Katniss and Haymitch into to shape and be ruthless with them. I want to see the look on his face when Katniss takes care of Gale and realizes that he ‘lost’.

Josh seems to be really enthusiastic about being Peeta which is another thing that I like. Although, next year, I hope to see them all in Comic Con together. LOL.

@AnvilGate – you’re making it harder for me to live with my choice of buying Remington Steele DVDs this month and Hunger Games next month! I will be rewinding Josh scenes like mad.

SPM and carla, it’s very interesting reading your posts because you seem to have seen the same film, and had VERY different reactions to it. While my take on movie-Peeta vs book-Peeta is pretty close to SPM, it seems that this pretty much ruined the movie for her, and I can’t say that for myself. While I wish Peeta was more in-character, I still found the movie to be true to the book overall. At least, if we’re talking about the SPIRIT of the book.

Also, I recall that while Josh said THG is true to the book, he also said that he, Ross, and Collins herself did tweak Peeta’s character in the movie. Except that Josh thought the changes made Peeta a stronger character, and I’d disagree with that.

As for his comment, what he actually said was “I think that it’s good to have a female hero who can step up because that’s real. It’s not always the girl that gets hurt in the story and the man has to protect her.” He said that to point out that HG is different than a lot of other movies and books where there is the case.

I really don’t think he meant that Peeta is always the one getting hurt and being protected by Katniss. I didn’t get that at all, I think he’s smart enough to know that the girl always rescuing the boy isn’t realistic, either. Even in THG, the reason Peeta winds up needing Katniss to protect him is because he sustained the cut on his leg protecting Katniss from Cato.

I also didn’t take his comments to be an attempt to sell Jen Lawrence as the only hero of the story. I think his point was that it’s rare that girls get to even be *one* of the heroes of the story.

Also, while I loved Peeta’s character, I wouldn’t want to let that blind me to the fact that he does take a backseat to Katniss in terms of importance, even in the books. I think SC never meant for the romance aspect of the books to take center stage; though many have said it before me, THG is NOT Twilight. Which is why, though the problems with movie!Peeta characterization bothered me, in the end, it did not make or break the movie for me. I guess for others, it did.

@satsuma – interesting insights. I’m in a strange position because I didn’t like the film on first viewing, loved it on second, and then went back to not liking it, or at least not liking some aspects of it. There were many misgivings I had all along that were never fully done away with. That’s one of the reasons I’m putting off my DVD purchase.

Part of the reason I’m so attached to Peeta is because I’m so attached to Josh (not in a crushing way since I’m old enough to be his mother). He’s my favorite modern actor and his casting is the reason I got excited about the movie to begin with. I know it’s not rational, but I hate seeing him given less than excellent material to work with. I’m sure my bias toward him does color my perception of everything else.

I forgot to add that I think he did an astoundingly good job with what he was given; he and the character just deserved better, IMO.

I guess I feel it’s very important to explicitly show Peeta’s inner strengths, precisely because this is NOT a story that is just about a love triangle. While there are coming of age aspects to the story, it needs to be clear that it’s not as simple as which crushing guy Katniss will pick after she’s done leading a revolution.  Both  Peeta and Gale help to explain the larger world view that Suzanne Collins was espousing, and the inner, personal journey of Katniss. While there ARE things worth fighting for, sacrificing for, dying for…we can’t allow ourselves to lose our humanity in that fight. We cannot become the thing against which we fight.  Peeta’s arc in the book is central to that understanding. I’d hope it would be for the movie.

@satsuma…I feel like the strength JH spoke of with regards to the way Gary Ross altered Peeta’s character turned out to be only physical, that is, in the quick recovery of his sword wound, not losing his leg, showing off for the Careers, etc. (All of which weirdly diminished somewhat his inner strength, I felt.) I’m quite attached to JH in the role, though. I just hope we get a more full characterization in CF.

Having said that, I’ll be up bright and early tomorrow to pick up my copy of the DVD!

@SPM-It’s good to know I’m not the only one old enough to be Josh’s mother that likes the books.

@LR – not by any means.

@Kaleiney – everything you said. But if the salary rumors are true, I’m concerned that does reflect Peeta taking a lesser role in the movies than he had in the books. Hope I’m wrong, though.

@carla I know many people aren’t expecting the script to be exact to the book line by line but it annoys me that some people do. There are actually people who write down all the differences on a paper lol. I just had to let my anger out, sorry If I sounded like a jerk don’t mean to offend anyone!