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The Hunger Games: Mockingjay: Part 2
That is a brutal title to type. The second installment in the third installment in the popular YA Franchise, Mockingjay 2: Electric Boogaloo is the definitive example for why splitting a book into multiple parts is a bad idea. Harry Potter came out with an okay part 1 and a great part 2, and the Twilight conclusions were no worse than previous films. Financially, they were both very successful. The Hunger Games is the franchise that made multiple decent movies and then took a big dip in quality in the split films. Financially, Lionsgate's decision looks like it backfired. Mockingjay Part 1 got significantly less money than its predecessors, and Part 2 is doing even worse on its opening weekend, making it (as far as I am aware of) the only book series turned into a movie series in which the finale made the lowest amount of money. There is no reason why this had to be two movies, but at least in this part the cast and crew made the most of a studio order and churned out a passable, if forgettable film.
I will take the same approach of the film and not bother explaining things to people who haven't seen any of the movies or read any of the books. You won't watch it, which is good because you probably couldn't. To a fault, this film is incomprehensible if you don't know what will happen going into it. Because the film adaptation of the Mockingjay book is two parts, the writers get to tie up a lot of loose ends of subplots. Unfortunately, because the previous adaptations had just 150 minutes, you probably didn't know that most of these subplots existed. I was a huge vocal supporter of leaving out a lot of the love triangle garbage from the books in the first three movies, but the turmoil of Katniss choosing her boy is directly referenced multiple times in this movie. Finnick and Annie get married, which probably won't matter to movie only fans as they have had about 20 and 2 minutes of screentime in the saga respectively. That entire wedding scene, which goes on for a fair amount of time, could be cut out entirely and nothing changes. It has already been established that a lot of weird and unrealistic scifi things can happen in the world of Panem, but even within that context there are a few things that make no sense because they are too unrealistic. The opening scene picks up right where Mockingjay 1 ended, without any kind of recap or segway, so if you don't remember what happened at the end of that you will probably be confused.
As it has been throughout the franchise, the biggest item in favor of The Hunger Games is the acting. The supporting cast gets less emphasis than ever before, with Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks getting only a couple of scenes each and my personal favorite Stanley Tucci appearing only on a video monitor, but all 3 are very good with what they're given. Jennifer Lawrence was fantastic in this film. I can't put together words to describe it. It won't get any awards nominations because of the title and budget, but quite honestly it should. This is the best I've seen her in years, and way better than her caricature overacting in American Hustle. A lot of my theater was making fun of her drooling at a certain part near the end, but I thought it was fantastic. Good on her for actually looking broken instead of pretty "Hollywood crying". Donald Sutherland has been menacing throughout the series, but the last hour of this film is the first time you see him vulnerable, and he is fantastic with it. Josh Hutcherson continues to step up his game as the series goes along, going from mediocre at best in the first movie to above average at worst in the last. Liam Hemsworth is also getting better. I still don't think he's very good, and he's not nearly as charismatic or attractive as the filmmakers want me to think he is, but it was the first time I've seen a performance from him that I can put above the Jai Courtney and Sam Worthington class. Sam Claflin finally gets to act, and he has one really great expression and he fits the bill as a good action hero while being serviceable in other dramatic scenes. I will concede that Julianne Moore was disappointing. She has the ability to be really great, but she obviously phoned this performance in. On the other side, Elden Henson surprised me as Pollux, the former capital slave that got his vocal cords ripped out as punishment. He expresses a lot of emotions with absolutely no dialogue, something very rarely seen in blockbuster movies.
This is not a great movie, but it is made up of some great scenes. The aforementioned emotional breakdown by Katniss is wonderful. Stanley Tucci's one scene is awesome. At one point the protagonist travel party has to go underground, and Hunger Games takes a 10 minute break to become Night of the Living Dead. That sequence is thrilling fun, shot brilliantly with some good CGI and skilled tension building that should make most modern horror directors jealous. The problem with the film is what is happening when a fantastic scene isn't playing, particularly because nothing important fills time in between. The peaks are among the highest I have ever seen in a blockbuster book series adaptation, and certainly the highest class of the YA dystopian genre. The other hour and a half is boring, and it could have been pressed down into 10 minutes in a nearly 3 hour movie combined with the last one. Katniss doesn't even get into the capital until the start of the second act. She spends that entire second act getting near death, surviving but letting Snow think she's dead, and being seen to put her back on the kill list. In true Hunger Games fashion, the third act is split up, with the first part being a traditional third act and the second part being the zillion endings of Return of the King. There is a quiet and nice place where the movie obviously should end, the screen fades to black, and then it keeps going, even though the actual final scene is horribly inconsistent with the tone of the 2 hours you just watched.
The editing was poor to help pad out the run time. Basically every scene was 30 seconds longer than it had to be. We don't need to see a minute of hovercrafts taking off. We don't need to see a minute of Katniss walking with a crowd behind her. We don't need to see an explosion burn for a minute. If we were just showed the last 5 seconds of these shots, we could understand what happened and it would help out the awful pacing. Ironically, a major death is rushed out of obligation and glossed over. I barely even realized who had died, which is a problem, because that death is the catalyst for every aspect of the film that follows it. The only thing worse than a slow and boring movie is a slow and boring movie in which there is an easy fix to make it not slow and boring, which was to cut time and focus on the characters instead of the spectacle.
The dark tone of this movie is definitely dark. Everything is gloomy, and other than that out of place ending which I will pretend does not exist, there isn't much in the way of a happy resolution. Katniss and Peeta move from anger to acceptance in their depression phases, but they clearly do not get better. Most of the District 12 team that you might have learned to love gets a somber ending. Most of them end up with a job that sort of resembles what they wanted at the start, but with all hope drained out of them, and they all lose contact with Katniss, most of them on bad terms. A romance between Effie and Haymitch is implied, which did not exist in the book and is not consistent with either character, but if a male and female are around the same age they have to get together. That's the closest thing to happiness you can expect from this. This isn't making that Catching Fire money for a few reasons, but an obvious one is that this isn't really an enjoyable viewing experience. Parts of it are very enjoyable, but this is the type of movie that I will call well made without liking a whole lot, and that becomes an issue when it is not on an Oscar level of filmmaking. There isn't anything to form a positive emotional connection to. It's not uplifting or fun like most summer blockbusters, and it's certainly not an easy casual watch on a rainy day the way something like a Furious 7 or Avengers 2 is, even if I think Mockingjay 2 is objectively a better film than either.
The criteria for recommendation is simple. If you have watched the other 3 Hunger Games movies and thought they were at least okay (or you're one of those people that think it would be okay if it was rated R and resent bloodless, consequence-less action, or even if you liked the first two and were massively disappointed by the third entry), watch it knowing that this is better than the first Mockingjay. If you absolutely loathe the others in the series, this won't change your mind. If you haven't seen all of the previous movies, I don't know how you can figure out the plot of this. All in all, The Hunger Games escaped the arena with dignity, even if it was weakened by its time in the fight.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay: Part 2
That is a brutal title to type. The second installment in the third installment in the popular YA Franchise, Mockingjay 2: Electric Boogaloo is the definitive example for why splitting a book into multiple parts is a bad idea. Harry Potter came out with an okay part 1 and a great part 2, and the Twilight conclusions were no worse than previous films. Financially, they were both very successful. The Hunger Games is the franchise that made multiple decent movies and then took a big dip in quality in the split films. Financially, Lionsgate's decision looks like it backfired. Mockingjay Part 1 got significantly less money than its predecessors, and Part 2 is doing even worse on its opening weekend, making it (as far as I am aware of) the only book series turned into a movie series in which the finale made the lowest amount of money. There is no reason why this had to be two movies, but at least in this part the cast and crew made the most of a studio order and churned out a passable, if forgettable film.
I will take the same approach of the film and not bother explaining things to people who haven't seen any of the movies or read any of the books. You won't watch it, which is good because you probably couldn't. To a fault, this film is incomprehensible if you don't know what will happen going into it. Because the film adaptation of the Mockingjay book is two parts, the writers get to tie up a lot of loose ends of subplots. Unfortunately, because the previous adaptations had just 150 minutes, you probably didn't know that most of these subplots existed. I was a huge vocal supporter of leaving out a lot of the love triangle garbage from the books in the first three movies, but the turmoil of Katniss choosing her boy is directly referenced multiple times in this movie. Finnick and Annie get married, which probably won't matter to movie only fans as they have had about 20 and 2 minutes of screentime in the saga respectively. That entire wedding scene, which goes on for a fair amount of time, could be cut out entirely and nothing changes. It has already been established that a lot of weird and unrealistic scifi things can happen in the world of Panem, but even within that context there are a few things that make no sense because they are too unrealistic. The opening scene picks up right where Mockingjay 1 ended, without any kind of recap or segway, so if you don't remember what happened at the end of that you will probably be confused.
As it has been throughout the franchise, the biggest item in favor of The Hunger Games is the acting. The supporting cast gets less emphasis than ever before, with Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks getting only a couple of scenes each and my personal favorite Stanley Tucci appearing only on a video monitor, but all 3 are very good with what they're given. Jennifer Lawrence was fantastic in this film. I can't put together words to describe it. It won't get any awards nominations because of the title and budget, but quite honestly it should. This is the best I've seen her in years, and way better than her caricature overacting in American Hustle. A lot of my theater was making fun of her drooling at a certain part near the end, but I thought it was fantastic. Good on her for actually looking broken instead of pretty "Hollywood crying". Donald Sutherland has been menacing throughout the series, but the last hour of this film is the first time you see him vulnerable, and he is fantastic with it. Josh Hutcherson continues to step up his game as the series goes along, going from mediocre at best in the first movie to above average at worst in the last. Liam Hemsworth is also getting better. I still don't think he's very good, and he's not nearly as charismatic or attractive as the filmmakers want me to think he is, but it was the first time I've seen a performance from him that I can put above the Jai Courtney and Sam Worthington class. Sam Claflin finally gets to act, and he has one really great expression and he fits the bill as a good action hero while being serviceable in other dramatic scenes. I will concede that Julianne Moore was disappointing. She has the ability to be really great, but she obviously phoned this performance in. On the other side, Elden Henson surprised me as Pollux, the former capital slave that got his vocal cords ripped out as punishment. He expresses a lot of emotions with absolutely no dialogue, something very rarely seen in blockbuster movies.
This is not a great movie, but it is made up of some great scenes. The aforementioned emotional breakdown by Katniss is wonderful. Stanley Tucci's one scene is awesome. At one point the protagonist travel party has to go underground, and Hunger Games takes a 10 minute break to become Night of the Living Dead. That sequence is thrilling fun, shot brilliantly with some good CGI and skilled tension building that should make most modern horror directors jealous. The problem with the film is what is happening when a fantastic scene isn't playing, particularly because nothing important fills time in between. The peaks are among the highest I have ever seen in a blockbuster book series adaptation, and certainly the highest class of the YA dystopian genre. The other hour and a half is boring, and it could have been pressed down into 10 minutes in a nearly 3 hour movie combined with the last one. Katniss doesn't even get into the capital until the start of the second act. She spends that entire second act getting near death, surviving but letting Snow think she's dead, and being seen to put her back on the kill list. In true Hunger Games fashion, the third act is split up, with the first part being a traditional third act and the second part being the zillion endings of Return of the King. There is a quiet and nice place where the movie obviously should end, the screen fades to black, and then it keeps going, even though the actual final scene is horribly inconsistent with the tone of the 2 hours you just watched.
The editing was poor to help pad out the run time. Basically every scene was 30 seconds longer than it had to be. We don't need to see a minute of hovercrafts taking off. We don't need to see a minute of Katniss walking with a crowd behind her. We don't need to see an explosion burn for a minute. If we were just showed the last 5 seconds of these shots, we could understand what happened and it would help out the awful pacing. Ironically, a major death is rushed out of obligation and glossed over. I barely even realized who had died, which is a problem, because that death is the catalyst for every aspect of the film that follows it. The only thing worse than a slow and boring movie is a slow and boring movie in which there is an easy fix to make it not slow and boring, which was to cut time and focus on the characters instead of the spectacle.
The dark tone of this movie is definitely dark. Everything is gloomy, and other than that out of place ending which I will pretend does not exist, there isn't much in the way of a happy resolution. Katniss and Peeta move from anger to acceptance in their depression phases, but they clearly do not get better. Most of the District 12 team that you might have learned to love gets a somber ending. Most of them end up with a job that sort of resembles what they wanted at the start, but with all hope drained out of them, and they all lose contact with Katniss, most of them on bad terms. A romance between Effie and Haymitch is implied, which did not exist in the book and is not consistent with either character, but if a male and female are around the same age they have to get together. That's the closest thing to happiness you can expect from this. This isn't making that Catching Fire money for a few reasons, but an obvious one is that this isn't really an enjoyable viewing experience. Parts of it are very enjoyable, but this is the type of movie that I will call well made without liking a whole lot, and that becomes an issue when it is not on an Oscar level of filmmaking. There isn't anything to form a positive emotional connection to. It's not uplifting or fun like most summer blockbusters, and it's certainly not an easy casual watch on a rainy day the way something like a Furious 7 or Avengers 2 is, even if I think Mockingjay 2 is objectively a better film than either.
The criteria for recommendation is simple. If you have watched the other 3 Hunger Games movies and thought they were at least okay (or you're one of those people that think it would be okay if it was rated R and resent bloodless, consequence-less action, or even if you liked the first two and were massively disappointed by the third entry), watch it knowing that this is better than the first Mockingjay. If you absolutely loathe the others in the series, this won't change your mind. If you haven't seen all of the previous movies, I don't know how you can figure out the plot of this. All in all, The Hunger Games escaped the arena with dignity, even if it was weakened by its time in the fight.