3 Reasons Why the 'Hunger Games' Trailer is Brilliant

There's an art to making a good movie trailer. You have to show enough to get people excited without giving everything away, and these days, you have do so in a way that makes people want to sit and watch a three-minute video. In the past, people would be stuck in a theater and have to watch these things either way. With the Internet, three minutes is close to an eternity.

But the team that put together the trailer for "The Hunger Games" knows what's up. The preview aired yesterday on "Good Morning America," and  people are still buzzing about it, with almost all the buzz being positive.

Here are three reasons why:

1. The Big Tease

The trailer gave us a pretty good look at District 12, a solid feel for what the Reaping is going to look like, and plenty of footage from the Capitol and the training for the Tributes. But there was a pretty important chunk of the movie that was missing from the trailer: the Game itself.

Yep, the trailer gave us a very quick look at the start of the titular Games, but little more than that. In fact, we may have gotten more from that tiny little teaser trailer from a while back than we did in this trailer as far as the competition is concerned.

It's a tease, to be sure. But that's why it's a brilliant move on the part of the marketing team for the movie: we're left wanting more. Guess we'll all just have to buy tickets in March, eh?

2. The Casting

In the months leading up to the release of this first trailer, after the roles for the film had been cast, there was a lot of talk about whether the right decisions had been made for these characters. Few, if any, are complaining about Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss, but some fans disagreed with Woody Harrelson as Haymitch or Lenny Kravitz as Cinna.

Did you notice how the trailer paints those two in particular in their best light? We're not seeing the drunken, disheveled Haymitch from the beginning, we're seeing the mentor Haymitch. Also, Cinna's only line in the trailer is the one that shows us how much he's on Katniss' side, so we're rooting for him.

3. That Countdown!

Talk about epic. The scope and scale of this story is part of what brought fans to the books in the first place, making this movie adaptation a possibility. That means there's a good amount of pressure on the movie, and even just the trailer, to convey the sense of urgency and danger that you get when reading Suzanne Collins' novels.

That stress-inducing countdown at the end, leading to the only (very short) glimpse we get of the actual Games, conveys the feeling of terror that these teenagers feel about the competition, that we can cover well enough in the book by being in Katniss' head.

In short, I'm excited. Are you? If so, watch the trailer for "The Hunger Games" one more time!