Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss in "The Hunger Games": A poor tease?

Screen shot, MTV.com

he video: Viewers who endured all of this year's "undeniably strange" MTV Video Music Awards were rewarded with the first teaser for the pantingly anticipated film adaptation of The Hunger Games, based on Suzanne Collins' best-selling novel. (Watch the video below.) The movie — coming March 2012, but still filming in North Carolina — is set in a dystopian future where teenagers are forced to murder each other on a government-run reality TV show. The brief trailer shows Katniss Everdeen (Oscar-nominee Jennifer Lawrence), a crowd favorite to win the slaughter contest, running through the battle arena before launching an arrow at one of her competitors.

The reaction: All that hype and we get "a totally underwhelming clip of Jennifer Lawrence hopping over a log," says a baffled Caroline Stanley at Flavorwire. Even so, says Ethan Alter at Television Without Pity, Lawrence looks "every bit the skilled hunter that her character is intended to be," and the lush North Carolina woods are perfect for the battleground. Though distinctly anticlimactic, says Kim Palacios at Hollywood News, the shorter-than-expected trailer "didn't dampen my desire to see the film." If anything, watching Katniss running for her life only stoked my excitement. Judge for yourself: