Donald Sutherland hopes Hunger Games inspires real revolution

Donald Sutherland wants a revolution. And he wants ‘Hunger Games’ fans to lead it.
 
The veteran actor, who plays the tyrannical President Coriolanus Snow in the Jennifer Lawrence-fronted franchise, wants a youth-led revolt to bring about a better way of life in the US.
 
"I hope that [young people] will take action because it's getting drastic in this country,” Sutherland told the Guardian. “Drone strikes. Corporate tax dodging. Racism. The Keystone oil pipeline. Denying food stamps to ‘starving Americans’. It's all going to pot. "It's not right. It's not right."

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The Canadian-born actor, best known for ‘M*A*S*H’, ‘Don’t Look Now’, ‘Ordinary People’, and being the father of ‘24’ star Kiefer Sutherland, has long been recognised for his leftwing activism. Only now he feels it’s the job of young people to carry on the flame – issuing the proud call to arms “we did it in '68.”
 
"You know the young people of this society have not moved in the last 30 years,” he said. "They have been consumed with telephones… Tweeting."
 
Although he plays the figurehead of the oppressive government of Panem in ‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’, out this week, Sutherland told the newspaper he hopes young audiences will learn something about their political rights and abilities from the film.
 
"It just puts things out in the light and lets you have a look at it. And if you take from it what I hope you will take from it, it will make you think a little more pungently about the political environment you live in and not be complacent."
 
"[Young people] might create a third party. They might change the electoral process, they might be able to take over the government, change the tax system,” he added.

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The 78-year-old did admit to feeling some sympathy towards President Obama though (claiming racism had now become an obstacle to government), as he drew parallels between the current US leader, and his own fictional movie statesman: "I think [President Obama] realises, like Coriolanus Snow realises, that to exert authority and to control a situation it is necessary to make certain expedient decisions that you would not normally make.”
 
“I don't think it's in his nature to send Predator drones. I thought it was in his nature to get out of Guantánamo, but people prevented that. It's not been easy for him to govern, because this is a very racist society."

‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’ is out in the UK 21 November 2013. Watch the official trailer below.