'Hunger Games' fans outraged over black characters

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Hunger Games will go down in history as a certifiable blockbuster after earning $155 million at the box office during its opening weekend — the biggest opening ever for a non-sequel. The sci-fi action flick is not only generating buzz with enormous ticket sales, but also recently made headlines because some fans are outraged that three of the characters in the film were played by African-Americans. Some of these critics have expressed their feelings with racially offensive rhetoric.

According to Jezebel, many fans have expressed anger because Rue, played by Amandla Stenberg, Thesh, played by Dayo Okeniyi and Cinna, played by Lenny Kravitz, are black.

Apparently, a lot of white readers of the Hunger Games series imagined the characters to be Caucasian without paying attention to the descriptions of the characters in the book. Rue is described as having “dark brown skin” and Thresh has “the same dark skin as Rue.” The color of Cinna’s skin was not discussed in the book so it was fair game for an of any racial ethnicity to play to the part.

Regardless of the logic behind casting the black actors in the film, droves of die-hard Hunger Games fans took to Twitter to express their fury, particularly over the casting of 13-year-old Stenberg as Rue.

Follow Chris Witherspoon on Twitter at @WitherspoonC