Editorial: Fishing for Finnick
When Sam Claflin was first rumoured to be playing the role of Finnick one of the most common phrases used to reassure fans who weren’t sold on Sam was to say “Oh, don’t worry, Finnick’s only a supporting character, he won’t be in the movie very much”. Now that the dust has settled I thought I would take a look at just how large Finnick’s role is in Catching Fire the novel and discuss what may make it onto the screen. The results may surprise you…
Note: There are many spoilers within! Please do not read on if you have not read Catching Fire and do not wish to be spoiled!
As a refresher, let’s start with some basic facts about Finnick:
- He is 24 years old, having won the 65th Annual Hunger Games at the age of 14
- He has bronze hair, sea green eyes (which Katniss describes as “incredible”) and is tall and athletic
- Finnick is from District 4, the fishing specialists, and his weapon of choice was a trident, which he would use to finish off opponents after entangling them in a net
I was surprised to find that Finnick’s name appears in Catching Fire no less than 293 times, more than Gale’s at 181, Beetee’s at 125, Johanna’s at 105 and Prim’s at 87. The only character’s whose names are mentioned more frequently are Peeta’s and Haymitch’s, with 664 and 312 mentions respectively. Finnick’s name isn’t mentioned until Page 178 of Catching Fire as Katniss watches the Reapings and he is introduced on Page 193 when he offers Katniss a sugar cube. Even though Finnick is with Katniss in the arena, for a character that is introduced halfway through the book 293 mentions is quite a lot in a short space of time, certainly more than “just a supporting character”.
Sam now comes with the Elizabeth Banks seal of approval!
Going through the book again I counted 11 scenes that I consider major in terms of both the storyline and Finnick the character:
- Introduction pp193-196
- Training prior to the Quarter Quell pp209, 210, 211, 216-217
- Pre-game interviews pp232-233,241
- Entering the arena pp250-255, 256-257
- Saving Peeta pp260-261
- Escaping the fog pp277-281, 282-284
- Fighting the monkey mutts pp287-289
- Fight at the cornucopia pp311-312
- Jabberjays pp316-321
- The lightning tree/destroying the arena pp343, 348, 352
- Hovercraft to District 13 pp357-361, 362
The above doesn’t include general arena moments such as setting up the first camp (pp267-275), the first beach camp (pp292-295), Johanna’s arrival with Beetee and Wiress (pp297-302) or the second beach camp (pp325-334).
Even if I swing the axe pretty hard and nominate half of those scenes to hit the cutting room floor (either entirely, or parts of them), that is still a lot of Finnick. Can you imagine if the sugar cube scene was cut? Peeta’s rescue? How about running from the fog or fighting off the careers at the Cornucopia? For argument’s sake let’s estimate the running time of ‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’ to be approximately the same as ‘The Hunger Games’, going for around 2 hours and 20 minutes. Also using ‘The Hunger Games’ as a model, we can pretty comfortably assume that the Quarter Quell arena will, hopefully, take up an hour of screen time or even slightly more, and the rest of the film will be based on the rest of the book. Because of this and the scenes Finnick is involved in I am tipping Sam to appear as Finnick for at least 25 minutes on screen. Of course this figure may turn out to be a lot higher and I haven’t taken into account scenes where Finnick is not involved and may just be in the background.
I am basing the 25 minute figure on a rough estimate of the length of each scene and including differing angles and non-speaking moments in those scenes. For instance, the breakfast scene on the train of ‘The Hunger Games’ between Katniss, Peeta and Haymitch took approximately 2 and a half minutes, and although Peeta is not on screen every second of this that still counts towards his total. Using this as an example for ‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’ the sugar cube scene may last 1-3 minutes depending on how it is done. Adding up the rest of the Capitol moments such as training sequences and the pre-game interviews will likely add another 5 or so minutes. Continuing on like this, and I think I am being pretty conservative, you can see it is quite easy to rack up 25 minutes worth of screen time. To give you more of an idea in ‘The Hunger Games’, Gale, a major character, was on screen for all of 3 minutes, and Cinna, a supporting character, was on screen for 5 minutes. Peeta was on screen for about 40 minutes, a figure that will no doubt grow in ‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’. Based on this, the argument that Finnick is a minor supporting character, and therefore will hardly appear on screen, just doesn’t stick, especially considering his involvement in Mockingjay is equally as large and no doubt larger still given that it will be split into two films.
So there you have it, a whole lot of Finnick and that’s just in one film. Personally Finnick is among my favourite characters, so perhaps I am a little biased, but I see no reason why his role will be drastically reduced. Sure there will be cuts, but a lot of Finnick’s scenes involve Katniss and further the storyline, plus Nina Jacobson and co know how popular Finnick is among the fandom. I will admit I initially had some trepidation about Sam playing the role, but going back over the books and getting to know more about Sam I am now confident he has the skills to pull off the role and I’m glad he’ll get plenty of opportunity to do so. What do you think? Too much Finnick? Not enough?
@Satsuma, I understand your worries. I agree that the first movie shortchanged quite a few characters in order to focus more on the world-building (although Gary Ross also inserted that brilliant 4-seconds scene of Haymitch watching the Capitol children play a THG-like game), but I think that things will be (hopefully) very different in Catching Fire. The first movie had to establish the background of the story, especially since there’s no narration to shortly introduce us to the basics of the story. Curtailing Peeta’s development (and the K/P relationship) in the first movie may not be a problem if he gets a lot of development in CF, which I expect to happen. (After all, Collins was writing the first book before she knew she would write any sequels. The filmmakers, on the other hand, could afford to save certain things for the next movie.) Besides, the screenwriters (Simon Beaufroy, and Michael Arndt who reportedly reworked the script, though I don’t think it’s been confirmed) are known for writing stories about “little people”.
With Finnick, although we don’t learn his entire story until Mockingjay, there’s a trajectory in CF – we first get to see his public persona, then we start seeing other sides of him and we’re supposed to wonder, like Katniss does, whether to trust him or not, we see that he’s really helping Katniss and Peeta, and then we get to see his vulnerable side and learn about his love for the insane girl back home. Also, his storyline is intrinsically connected to Mags’ entire role in CF, which is one of the most poignant moments. I don’t see how they could omit any of that, or why they would want to do that.
I don’t really worry about characters like Finnick or Johanna getting shortchanged. My only worry about CF is if they will really get across how damaged and sad all of the former Victors are. The fact that they’ve mostly cast younger and fitter people than described in the book as most of the minor Victor characters doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence (though on the other hand, Amanda Plummer is older than Wiress is described in the book) though I guess makeup can help make the morphlings look unhealthy and worn down, for instance. I’m also worried about the portrayal of the Career Pack and whether the movie will really get across the idea that they’re not “the enemy”, though that’s easier to do in CF since they don’t appear that much during the Games themselves, and most of the torment in the QQ comes from the Arena itself (ironically, organized by a man who’s working for the rebellion). Although the first movie ended up doing better on that account than the book did, if only by virtue of one added scene. It would be easy to focus entirely on the few friendly and sympathetic characters, and make the quasi-antagonists in the Arena just “scary tough guy” or “hot deadly chick”. Even the readers barely ever seem to think about how desperate someone must have been to rip another person’s throat with their bare teeth (this likely means hand-to-hand combat with another Tribute who’s trying to kill you, with no available weapons) or what it says about the life and psyche of a Career Tribute who succeeded in he was always brought up to and won the Games at 18, when all he wants two and half decades later is volunteer again and go back to the Arena. (Of course, we don’t get the full picture of what a Victor’s life is like until Mockingjay. In that light, you look back and wonder things like, did Enobaria herself really want to get her teeth altered after the Games, or did she have to do it because the Capitol people were fascinated with her “savagery” and found it attractive. And maybe someone like Brutus couldn’t wait to go back to the Arena not just because he never learned to do anything but fight, kill and train others to kill, but also because Arena might have been where he felt he had most control over his life.) I don’t expect the movie to dwell on any of it – it’s not like the books ever did – but we have to understand that the lives of the Victors aren’t happy, and that they all genuinely hate Capitol and what it’s been doing to them, even though some of them revert to killing their friends/acquaintances as soon as they are in the Arena and the survival instinct and old habits kick in.
I really like Sam playing Finnick. I do not think he is a minor supporting character. In the book he was one of the main characters in a way so I think he should be an actual character not just a supporting character. Finnick is also one of my fav characters.
@Crystal: I know. I was referring to the logic of some readers (mentioned by Satsuma) who believe that Katniss doesn’t love her children, “evidence” being that she doesn’t mention their names. I thought she sounded very loving in the epilogue, all the more so because she refers to them as “they”, “she” and “he”. There is this inclination that people often have to refer to those you love a lot by a loaded pronoun, especially in an inner dialogue. For instance, when Katniss sees that Peeta is back to D12, she doesn’t immediately mention his name in her narration, it’s not “I see Peeta and I stop short” but: “When I see him, I pull up short. His face is flushed from digging up the ground under the windows. In a wheelbarrow are five scraggly bushes.”
(And yes, I can see Satsuma’s point that this means that some of the characters that are very close to Katniss will often be referred to without mentioning their names, so the name count can be lower than the actual number of mentions, but it’s still the simplest way to get a rough idea of the frequency of character mentions.)
@Ivana – That was very deep and I have to say that I agree with you.Sometimes, you show a deeper meaning when you say just he or she instead of your actual name like Jimmy or Carly.