Many young adults liken the finale of Hunger Games to the Harry Potter series: they’ve spent the past few years watching Katniss do battle in an unkind world, not unlike their teen selves.
But the ending of the movie franchise, while faithful to Suzanne Collins’ books, is unlikely to elicit many tears and tributes from fans.
I blame Jennifer Lawrence. She is so strong as Katniss, the girl who took her sister’s place in the Games, and who outsmarted the game-makers and the politicians, that her male co-stars are feeble in comparison. This is problematic, since the action outside of the arena hinges on a love triangle the audience doesn’t much care for.
If you’ve been hiding under a rock, don’t bother seeing Mockingjay until you are caught up with the other Hunger Games films, which shed light on a future world where rebellion among districts is quelled by imposing a mandatory fight-to-the-death among teens in a high-tech arena.
Our heroine Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) has survived the games not once but twice, and has incited a rebellion against a gluttonous Capitol that leeches its districts dry under the command of President Snow (Donald Sutherland, deliciously evil). Â
When we left off in part one, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) had been recently recovered from the Capitol where he was tortured with tracker-jacker venom and brainwashed to believe that Katniss was the enemy. Thus the purple hand-marks around Katniss’ neck, and Peeta in round-the-clock restraints.
“I don’t stand a chance if he doesn’t get better,” notes Gale (Liam Hemsworth), the other tip in the love triangle, “you’ll never let him go.”
Gale has been rising up the rebellion ladder, which is led by President Coin (Julianne Moore) and game-maker/defector Plutarch Heavensbee (how strange it is to see Philip Seymour Hoffman so long after his death). War is always personal for Katniss, whereas Gale takes a more mongering view of the price that needs to be paid for freedom. “She’s mythic,” says Coin of Katniss, with an eye to who will lead Panem once President Snow is overthrown.
Our fighters need to take District two before infiltrating the Capitol. Katniss, as usual, is used as a propaganda tool to rally the districts to rebellion.
The Capitol itself becomes “the 76th Hunger Games” of sorts, with boobytraps detonating bombs and walls of fire, releasing terrifying “mutts,” seas of hot tar, and all manner of carnage. Things are violent and scary, but there’s no blood, in order to maintain that PG-13 rating.
Mockingjay is more or less a supernatural disaster movie, and the visual effects under Francis Lawrence’s direction are superlative. But even at over two hours the film rushes through parts and languishes unnecessarily in others. Our favourite characters are sidelined in favour of the action, meaning that Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci) and the ever-sumptuously dressed Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks) only get a smidgeon of screen time.
There’s a wedding, one mighty jump scare, and a tour de force grief scene from Lawrence which makes us kind of wish that the finale of the Hunger Games would see Katniss pick up her bow and arrows — and that mangy cat — and head out into the sunset all on her own.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 screens at Scotiabank.
