The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 [M]

After the destruction of the Hunger Games arena during the Quarter Quell Katniss awoke to discover that the Capitol had destroyed her entire home District and she, along with her family and friends, had become revolutionists underground beneath the remains of District 13, long thought to be destroyed. Now the truth arises that war is imminent and the revolution needs a face: the face of Katniss. With many of her dearest friends held hostage in the Capitol, Katniss agrees to become the Mockingjay and help District 13 to rise from the darkness and unite the repressed Districts of Panem. But the risks soon become greater than she ever imaged as President Snow works viciously on his personal vendetta against her. 

I’m going to be brutally honest and say that I wasn’t very eager to see this movie when it was in cinemas for the central reason that I wasn’t all that jazzed with the final book on which it is based. This very well could be a flaw of mine completely, but I felt that even though we all knew that things would take a militant and political turn, it really did take away something from the first two books and movies: characters became annoying, clichés, or nothing and a lot of the creativity and inventiveness that thrilled in the Hunger Games arena got completely replaced with tanks and air raids: stuff we’ve seen and read about time and time again. I also have to admit that I take some umbrage at the fact that they’ve split the smallest book of the trilogy into two films. As much as I love the Harry Potter movies, The Deathly Hallows has a lot to answer for because now literary trilogies are being made into bloody cinematic sagas and whilst I’ll admit whole-heartedly that it worked for Deathly Hallows and to an extreme lesser extent Breaking Dawn (though that was the biggest book in the series, nothing bloody happens in it), I just don’t feel that Mockingjay needed it, I mean it’s a bit like the bloody Hobbit movies! 

Whilst it continues to successfully milk the franchise, what happens when you split a book into two movies is you end up working in a lot of padding. I have read Mockinjay and I know that there is a lot in there so I can see the appeal of splitting it, but ultimately this flick was just a bunch of scenes that were on repeat for 2 hours, just looking a little different each time. 

This film works as the “deep breath before the plunge” as Gandalf famously said and, like Attack of the Clones, it works as a filler movie between the start of a revolution and the end of it. There is action, tension, drama, and a fair portion of stirring scenes and events I’ll grant you, but ultimately nothing much happened in this movie and for all the action and war that it boasts, everything pretty much takes place underground and through dialogue. This is not to say that the film is bad. Jennifer Lawrence, probably getting a bit sick of the inadvertently strong heroine cliché, still manages to deliver a strong and, at times, quite moving performance and she is still a woman, a figure that inspires and you can see why people would follow her. Julianne Moore is another positive point for this film too, playing the hardened political leader very well. 

As much as I don’t want to focus on the negatives, I do have to say that it’s gotten to the point where a lot of the characters are forced: Gale has turned into a bit of a nothing character, Prim (admittedly growing up) has lost that naivety and innocence that made her so pretty, really the only two characters I still liked (and incidentally who brought some much-need comic relief and breath of life the film) were Effie and Haymich. Whilst both their characters have changed and become a bit more serious as an adjustment to their surroundings, they still retain the initial essence that made them so appealing, individual, and loveable in the first films and that was very nice to see actually. 

Starring Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Willow Shields, Sam Claflin, Elizabeth Banks, Mahershala Ali, Jena Malone, Jeffrey Wright, Paula Malcomson, Stanley Tucci, Natalie Dormer, Evan Ross, Elden Henson, Wes Chatham, Sarita Chodhury, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 is a fine film that more or less stands firm, visually and performance-wise, with its predecessors, but ultimately it is the filler movie before the end and as such, it lost a lot of that essence that made the first two exciting and enjoyable. Filled with action, war, rebellion, drama, tension, suspense, and a little bit of comedy, I was still glued to the screen with my eyelids fixed in an open stare, but I didn’t (and I felt that I wouldn’t before I sat down and watched it) enjoy it as much as the others.