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| Directed by Francis Lawrence Written by Peter Craig and Danny Collins |
Alo Party Peoples.
Setting my thoughts about its legion of imitators aside for the moment, I get why people like The Hunger Games, or at least I think I do. Strong female heroine? Great. Encouraging young audiences to think about systemic inequality and the effects of perpetual war on society and the power of media narratives to reshape society? Great. Doing so as a big multimedia franchise with broad appeal that can reach as many people as possible? Indispensable. Those are all good things, all admirable goals, all things that I can respect Hunger Games for trying to do, but that doesn't mean that I like them as movies. Like the man said, "It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it", and The Hunger Games has mostly failed in execution.
The first film is okay, but it's surprisingly cheap for a high profile release like this and it starts the baffling decision to strip Katnjss of her interior monologue from the books, meaning that huge chunks of it are just watching Jennifer Lawrence mope around the middle of the woods. Catching Fire is better by virtue of abandoning shaky cam for the most part, but it's mostly more of the same, and Mockingjay Part 1 stretches maybe thirty minutes of actual plot into two and a half hours of moping around a bunker for no reason other than splitting the final installment in half, a decision that has doomed Part 2 to die of thirst in a desert of mediocre anti-climax.
It's sort of ironic, the two Mockingjay films are easily the biggest of these movies, in terms of scope, in terms of themes, the studio even let them spend enough money to almost look like a theatrically released film instead of the direct-to-TV cheapness of the rest of the series. The games are over, and the war to free Panem has reached its peak. Katniss Everdeen has been made into the Mockingjay, the symbolic firebrand of the revolution, and as such she's chafing at leadership's insistence that she stay away from the actual fighting. They've almost taken the Capitol, and ever since finding out that they'd brainwashed her co-Games survivor Petta to hate her, she's been motivated to take up the "Girl on Fire" mantle for real and sneaks off to lead the siege of the Capitol herself. (just in case the allusions to Joan of Arc were too subtle for you)
Taken together, the two Mockingjay films are the best of the series, their action is harrowing, and unlike anyone else in the YA game, it actually has an effect on the people doing the shooting. (Seriously, this barely qualifies as a PG-13) Namely, that Katniss barely survived being a media puppet for one regime, and becoming one again but for her own side - as reflected by the Capitol gamemakers having turned their own city into an arena to hold back the invasion - nearly breaks her, and Jennifer Lawrence plays that spectacularly. But the same thing that turned Part 1 into a near unwatchable slog comes back to bite Part 2 in the ass. Since the final installment was split in half, this one feels less like an epic finale to four years of buildup and more like a feature-length cutscene from any number of indistinct military shoot-em-ups.
Then again, in some ways it doesn't matter. Like most franchises, you've either been a fan of Hunger Games from the beggining and you'll see this no matter what, or you've never cared and you're definitely not starting now. I could have spent this entire column ranting about the Republicans' response to the Syrian refugee crisis, and it would have exactly as much impact on the box office returns of this movie. I'm just glad that the dystopia craze it started is finally dying down, but if you love Hunger Games, then go see it, you'll probably get a lot more out of it than I did, but everyone else just shouldn't bother.
It's sort of ironic, the two Mockingjay films are easily the biggest of these movies, in terms of scope, in terms of themes, the studio even let them spend enough money to almost look like a theatrically released film instead of the direct-to-TV cheapness of the rest of the series. The games are over, and the war to free Panem has reached its peak. Katniss Everdeen has been made into the Mockingjay, the symbolic firebrand of the revolution, and as such she's chafing at leadership's insistence that she stay away from the actual fighting. They've almost taken the Capitol, and ever since finding out that they'd brainwashed her co-Games survivor Petta to hate her, she's been motivated to take up the "Girl on Fire" mantle for real and sneaks off to lead the siege of the Capitol herself. (just in case the allusions to Joan of Arc were too subtle for you)
Taken together, the two Mockingjay films are the best of the series, their action is harrowing, and unlike anyone else in the YA game, it actually has an effect on the people doing the shooting. (Seriously, this barely qualifies as a PG-13) Namely, that Katniss barely survived being a media puppet for one regime, and becoming one again but for her own side - as reflected by the Capitol gamemakers having turned their own city into an arena to hold back the invasion - nearly breaks her, and Jennifer Lawrence plays that spectacularly. But the same thing that turned Part 1 into a near unwatchable slog comes back to bite Part 2 in the ass. Since the final installment was split in half, this one feels less like an epic finale to four years of buildup and more like a feature-length cutscene from any number of indistinct military shoot-em-ups.
Then again, in some ways it doesn't matter. Like most franchises, you've either been a fan of Hunger Games from the beggining and you'll see this no matter what, or you've never cared and you're definitely not starting now. I could have spent this entire column ranting about the Republicans' response to the Syrian refugee crisis, and it would have exactly as much impact on the box office returns of this movie. I'm just glad that the dystopia craze it started is finally dying down, but if you love Hunger Games, then go see it, you'll probably get a lot more out of it than I did, but everyone else just shouldn't bother.
Have a nice day.
Greg.B
FINAL RATING: 3/5
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