Review: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay: Pt 2

Time to review that long-awaited sequel…


I’ve had a middling relationship with the Hunger Games movies. The first one made a whole bunch of unnecessary changes, each of which felt like they were missing the point. Catching Fire basically got everything right from the book, or nearly. And Mockingjay Part 1 took what I remember as a whole bunch of nothing in the book and…well, there still wasn’t too much going on in the way of events, but that gave them some time to spend on Katniss dealing with trauma.

Unfortunately, having taken that breather, Mockingjay Part 2 reversed back to action action action. Oh, it hit all the plot points in the book, and they managed to pull off, um, the thing that Gale was planning (the delayed bomb), and Peeta’s struggles were done all right. But it ultimately felt like a straightforward plot going from action sequence to action sequence, and Katniss felt a little shallower than I remembered her being in part 1.

I mean, it was actually perfectly fine. The Hunger Games was never fine art (neither the movies nor the books), and this movie certainly carries them through to the end. It’s probably better if you haven’t read the books; I remembered how most of it was going to play out, which made it a little less tense than it could have been.

I appreciated Mockingjay-the-book because it didn’t have a happy ending, and because it had allies that turned out to be less than trustworthy. For a young adult adventure series, this sort of subtlety just isn’t that common—far more dramatic betrayals than this. For the movies, I think Part 1 actually ended up my favorite.

If you watched the first three, go watch Mockingjay Part 2 (is it still playing?) and get your closure. If you didn’t, that is perfectly fine.

Yes, I’m planning to watch The Force Awakens. Still trying to decide if it’s a worse name than Attack of the Clones.