 |
| Directed by Francis Lawrence Written by Peter Craig and Danny Strong |
Here we go again. This has been a year of growth for me as a critic. I've established a solid foundation for myself and my writing style, gotten a better hold of what does and doesn't appeal to me personally, and found that I'm better at writing these when the subject involves the fantastic for reasons that I'm still not entirely sure of.
I've also found that a certain type of film tends to get under my skin. I speak, of course, of the flood of pandering, cheaply produced dystopic SF laser focused on the wallets of the parents of insecure teenagers, the YA "genre" that have been flooding our theaters for the better part of the New Tens, and bookstores since at least the latter half of the Zeroes. The thing that gets at me about the works filling this particular market niche (I don't refer to it as a genre anymore), is the laziness of so many entries.
Sidenote - The only one I can think of that didn't leave a sour aftertaste in my mind was The Fault In Our Stars, and I only consider that a YA movie because John Green writes for teenagers, and that's where a lot of his fanbase lies. Otherwise it has almost nothing to do with most of its peers. -End Sidenote.
One might think that since I have such disdain for the genre, that I would loath The Hunger Games, since it started the current strain of YA movies, but you'd be wrong. I don't hate this series, in fact I kind of have a respect for it. It's just peachy that a generation growing up in the wake of the Digital Revolution is getting into a big multi-media franchise about the importance of media in people's lives, and it's especially good that young female readers have a better role model to look up to than Bella Swan. However, I was never quite sold on the Hunger Games movies as movies. They aren't bad, but they weren't exactly paragons of cinema. The first two movies played to me as serviceable action flicks banking on the popularity of the books, and the decision to split the series' final installment, Mockingjay, into two parts read to me as little more than following the established tradition of splitting up stories to extend the box office lifespan of a franchise.
For the parents that drew the short stick at the mall and had to take everyone else's kids to see this, or anyone else that isn't particularly invested in the series' lore, the franchise is set in the fictional future dystopia of Panem and concerns an ever escalating war between rich and poor classes as symbolized by the easiest possible visual metaphors for rich and poor classes. The evil oppressive Captiol, modeled after King Louis' court and/or Caligula's Rome, and the good Districts modeled on impoverished and downtrodden Great Depression blue collar workers. The Capitol has kept order for close to a century via a televised blood sport called the "Hunger Games" where the districts sent their children to die for the entertainment of their oppressors, but this started to backfire when series' hero Katniss turned the public opinion machine against them. As Mockingjay Part 1 opens, Katniss has discovered that her surprise escape at the end of the last movie was secretly managed by rebels operating out of a secret former District seeking to overthrow the Capitol.
Because there aren't any more games for Katniss to fight in, the conflict here is psychological. Since she was already mentally scarred twice by one propaganda campaign, can she pull it together long enough to do it again when the propagandists are on her side, and does this by letting them mold her into the Mockingjay symbol that has become an emblem of anti-Capitol sentiment in the Districts. They manage to get a good deal of drama out of that, and Jennifer Lawrence is more than game for the role, and having the production work on the rebel's "propos" staged as a funhouse mirror version of the reality TV-esque production work of the Games in the first two movies is one of the more interesting parts of the series so far. We also get to see the home front for once, which lets the mass media culture/Occupy movement/war coverage stuff that was brushed to the sidelines in prior installments come to the forefront here, which is a welcome change of pace.
Unfortunately, those changes are barely felt since the production has been padded out to the horizon in order to justify splitting the final book into two movies. This could have easily been a 90 minute movie or even a 65 minute TV special, but instead we get to see the assembled cast moping around a bunker for great stretches of time in between the good bits. It's the same problem that always accompanies doing so, part one ends up being all about setup for the more interesting stuff consigned to part two. That isn't Suzanne Colin's fault, not by any means, the blame goes to Lionsgate's corporate overlords that wanted to keep their cash cow pumping cheddar for their stock holders at the expense of the film's overall quality.
That being said, I've liked Mockingjay the movie so far. I don't know that I can recommend it to anyone not already invested in the franchise, but it's a solid action movie and the best part of the series so far.
Have a nice day.
Greg.B
No comments:
Post a Comment