The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2

I'll say it right off the bat, this and Mockingjay Part 1 probably could have been one movie.

Now I saw this movie on Thanksgiving Day. Unfortunately it became a victim of my recent backlog that I am just now getting back on track with. I think the official order of me viewing these movies was Spectre, Rocky Balboa, Creed, Mockingjay Part 2, and The Man from UNCLE. (Nice plugs). That isn't counting the fact that I still need to do a review for Zoolander and possibly a review for Happy Gilmore (maybe). But I feel bad for not doing this review because this movie just seems to be too late for whatever reason in general and I don't think that it's totally warranted.

If you'll recall, I actually liked Part 1 despite it not feeling like a complete film. I was really looking forward to the second part because I wanted to see a complete movie. Well that was a year ago...

Part 2 picks up where Part 1 left off. Katniss Everdeen (played one last time by Jennifer Lawrence) is still the symbol for the revolution against the evil President Snow (played by Donald Sutherland). She's the symbol for the rebellion led by President Coin (played by Julianne Moore). At the end of the first part (spoilers I guess?) they had just finished a daring rescue to retrieve Peeta (played by Josh Hutcherson) from the captivity of President Snow. However, when they found him, he attacks Katniss claiming that she is evil and the reason for all his troubles. It is discovered that Peeta has in fact been indoctrinated by President Snow to kill Katniss.

This of course causes drama for Katniss but honestly, I didn't feel too much of the love triangle in this film. Maybe it was because I didn't re-watch the first part or the previous films, but the love triangle was increasingly missing despite being the culminating event that Katniss must choose between Gale (played by Liam Hemsworth) or Peeta. I mean don't get me wrong, the less of a love triangle you get the more interesting it gets, I just didn't feel Twilighted by this film and I was expecting to. This is a good comment.

But whereas Part 1 was focused on propaganda videos and Katniss having to be the public figure for the rebellion, this movie she is actually fighting in this revolution... sort of.

After seeing what Snow did to Peeta, Katniss makes it her mission to seek out President Snow and kill him once and for all.

However, as she makes her way to the Capital, she finds herself in a city full of traps and terrors that make her push to Snow, one last torturous Hunger Games as she and her friends must fight to stay alive and bring peace to Panem.

When I speak of the traps and terrors, I'm talking about the number of death machines and monsters scattered throughout the Capital City that stand in between Katniss and President Snow and THEY ARE AWESOME!

And maybe I just didn't understand it while I was reading the book but this is actually a really cool set up. They're actually doing this street to street fighting and they have to avoid these traps that were set up by all the past game makers. They utilize the same skills they used to make the Hunger Games into these death traps that are bent on killing Katniss and her friends. It was awesome.

And what was great about this film was that I didn't feel like it was just a fight the entire time. They focus on characters, they focus on the arcs we've seen throughout all three previous films. Its not like the Battle for the Five Armies that it was just one 2 hour long fight, it was a lot of good action but it was also a lot of good character development and story.

I do have to mention it though, there is a point in the middle of this movie where I think the director got confused and instead of filming a Hunger Games movie he started filming a scene from I Am Legend.

Like I don't want to give too much away and if you're watching the movie you should know where it is, but it is a legitimately creepy scene where zombies are trying to kill Katniss and her friends and you legitimately feel like you're in the middle of a zombie horror film. I felt the same way about that scene than I did when I watched I Am Legend and that movie terrified me the first time I saw it. Just be warned.

I guess I should mention that the visuals in this movie are really good. That was something I did notice while watching the movie and I don't think its something that the movie will get a whole lot of recognition for but it should. The creatures and traps are really well done and I was impressed.

In case you didn't figure, the action in the movie was also a lot of fun. Katniss has obviously gone into Legolas mode but we like Legolas mode so it doesn't matter.

What was really good was the acting of Josh Hutcherson.

Now I've never really thought that Hutcherson was that great of an actor, and unfortunately he has a really dumb haircut that is just bleach blonde in this movie that I can't really take seriously, however, I knew it was going to happen because of the arc this character had, but he's no longer the bland loving puppy dog he was in the past two movies.

He's a character you question and you wonder if he's actually going to end up good or bad. It was something I really enjoyed in the books and I do think Hutcherson did a good job developing that character.

And that's why I've always like Peeta more than Gale. While he's obviously not the better looking, I always thought Peeta was a little bit more of a complex character than Gale and I liked him more.

Now, Hutcherson still does have his white bread moments and once his issues go away he kind of goes back to how he was before. However, I think that he did well with the source material and I enjoyed his performance.

The majority of the cast from the first part return, Natalie Dormer as Cressida, Mahershala Ali (the guy from House of Cards) as Boggs. Michelle Forbes has a role in this. She did work in 24 and other good TV shows I've watched so I like her and I like her role in this movie.

Overall the acting in this movie is done pretty well. People have either been in this franchise long enough to be comfortable enough with it and act organically, or they have a small enough part that it doesn't really matter.

Julianne Moore is good in the role like she was in the first part. She's developed a little bit more in this movie and she's a little bit more sinister. I liked her character in this and I liked how she contributes to the story.

I guess I found a lot of interest in this movie because of the role of Plutarch Heavensbee, played by the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman. I remember that Hoffman passed away half way through the filming of this part and while it didn't have much of an effect on the first part, it definitely had an effect on this part.

If you recall my review of Furious 7, I commended the movie on the rewrites and edits they made to make Paul Walker remain a lead character but make up for the shots that were incomplete. I have to give this movie credit for doing that as well. Its not the same as Heavensbee was not as big of a character as Paul Walker's character was, but I thought it was done tastefully and if you weren't looking for it, you probably couldn't tell. I went with my parents and I mentioned that he had passed away after the film and they hadn't realized anything different.

And then there was Jennifer Lawrence.

One of the issues that I think this movie had was that I think it lost steam in popularity and also in the production. While that's not the whole narrative on this film, and I will get into that in a second, I do think it had a little bit of wind taken out of its sails and it hurt the film.

However, if there was any kind of loss of motivation in this film, it did not affect JLaw.

I have to give the woman a round of applause because while this movie is not as good as its predecessors, Jennifer Lawrence continues to commit to this role. Even when she has bigger and better things going on for her, even though she is considered a world class actor right now and probably is above this, she continues to commit to this character.

Jennifer Lawrence only amazed me on how committed she is to a franchise that I will go into more detail later on, but peaked too early. She continues to be the best part of this franchise and she's really grown since the first movie. There is nothing more I can say except that JLaw makes me love the character of Katniss, even though in the books, she is not exactly a likable character. She kills it. While this franchise may have peaked last year, Jennifer Lawrence's career is far from peaking.

But what do I mean by this franchise peaking?

Maybe this is just my opinion, but I didn't see the pomp and circumstance of this series coming to a close the same way I saw it for Harry Potter or hell, even the Twilight films.

Now that could be because I am in the real world now and I'm not surrounded by people who read the book or if they did, not in an environment for people to get overly excited about this.

But I went to see this movie because I wanted closure on the franchise. I didn't feel like this franchise closing was an event of any kind, it was just an end.

Maybe it was the lackluster response to the last film, maybe it was the marketing, but for whatever reason, I didn't feel like this ending was anything special. I didn't hear about my friends going to the Midnight show, I didn't hear about people being overly excited to see the final chapter.

And it kind of goes into how this movie was executed. Now I get it, every epic book is getting its last book split into 2 (hell even 3) movies now. But I think this was probably a movie that didn't need that same treatment. While I think they did a better job than people give this movie credit for, I think people just got tired of the Hunger Games prematurely and it wasn't a profitable wave of excitement for this movie.

But what's more, is that I feel the Hunger Games had a little bit of a legitimacy complex that hurt it in the end.

Hear me out on this.

Harry Potter. Its clearly a beloved book series with both a devoted fan base and a creative idea to appeal to both the fans and the everyday movie going audience, as well as the fantasy community. It was huge because it had such a huge base.

Now look at a franchise like Twilight or the Maze Runner. These are clearly centered on the fans. Sure they have "creative" ideas but they're really building off of what had come before. The Maze Runner, though better than I thought it was going to be, is pretty much riding off the wave of Young Adult Novels that was really started by Twilight and The Hunger Games.

Now Hunger Games is a little bit of a red haired step child because while it is a movie based off of a young adult book with a devoted fanbase, its also a very well done movie. Its also headed by an actress who is the biggest thing since sliced bread right now. Whereas Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson grew with the franchise and were able to grow past it, and Kirsten Stewart and Robert Pattison are still trying to grow past their franchise in Twilight, Jennifer Lawrence really outgrew her franchise by movie two.

This is a pretty half baked theory, but I feel like the hype over this movie wasn't so much about the story of The Hunger Games, while there were a lot of people who wanted to see a conclusion to that story, I think it was more on the hype that this was another performance by Jennifer Lawrence who we just can't seem to get enough of.

I feel like a lot of people may have watched this movie and saw Jennifer Lawrence as far and above this movie and therefore saw it as not as good of a movie. Does this theory make a lot of sense? I don't know, you'll have to let me know. But the point is, I think as this movie was a second part of a movie that probably should have been just one longer movie, their star had out grown the franchise, as well as the Young Adult crowd growing up and not being as interested in this as much as we used to, this movie suffered.

Now, I will come out and say, I think this movie got a lot more shit than it deserved. It served its purpose and I think it did a good job closing out the franchise. I love the performances and I think they did a good job providing a Part 2 with more of a story than I've seen in the past. It had good action, good acting, and it was a pretty fun movie all around.

The one big complaint I've heard that I totally agree with is the ending.

Now I think I was a little bit more forgiving with the ending of this film because it finally made me understand what the hell was going on in the end of this film, something I had trouble with when I was reading the book, because I'll admit it, there is a point where I think Suzanne Collins stopped trying, or at least didn't give it as much as she could have. While I didn't like the ending of the book, I did like it in the movie and seeing it in action made it a lot more understandable why she made some of the decisions she did.

However, that clarifying ending, is just the first ending. There are about 5 more endings to this movie and I think some people were just surprised that this movie didn't end at say the 3rd or the 4th ending.

And I was pretty forgiving, until they got to the last ending. It wasn't that I felt the movie went on too long (although it did have sometimes where it dragged where it should have been exciting) I felt like they had a good ending in the 3rd or 4th ending but they saw what they did in the last Harry Potter movie and decided they needed a 10 years later epilogue, something that was not in the book.

I think they could have gotten rid of that epilogue, especially since they didn't even try to make them look older which they hilariously failed at in the last Harry Potter movie, and they should have just ended the same way the book ended.

Overall, I liked Mockingjay Part 2 more than I was told I was going to. I think this franchise lost its steam in between this movie and the first part, whether it was the growing fame of Jennifer Lawrence, lazy writing, or just poor source material. But either way, I thought it did as best of a job as it could adapting what is universally known as the worst of the three books.

I thought it did a good job adapting it and keeping me engaged even though I knew what was going to happen and the first time reading it, did not like what I knew was going to happen.

Eventually I'll have to go back and watch the entire franchise from front to back to see how the movies progress and where this movie really stands in comparison with the other 3, but for now, I really did enjoy The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 and I think you should check it out, especially if your a fan of the franchise and need some closure for your characters like Katniss, Peeta and Gale.

Also, not enough Woody Harrellson... Didn't really know where to fit that in but this movie needed more Woody!

But what did you think? Comment and Discuss below. You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your thoughts for future movies I should review. If you subscribe to me on Twitter, you'll get updates on future movie news and reviews, as well as live tweets from movies I'm watching and much more!

I'll leave you with this. Here's JLaw just being JLaw. Enjoy!