HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY Pt. 1 (2014) Review

Last night I saw the third The Hunger Games film, Mockingjay - Part 1,with a friend. Here's my review...

The Plot

With the aid of a group of rebels including Capitol dissidents and the people of the long-thought-destroyed District 13, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and some of the other tributes have escaped from the arena. Now they're in hiding in District 13, whose leader Alma Coin (Julianne Moore) plans to lead the rebellious districts in the final war against the decadent Capitol. Coin and Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) plan to make Katniss an iconic figure for the rebellion, but the Capitol has cards to play of its own...

The Good

*I liked how they made District 13 look. There's a giant central shaft and tunnels radiating off in different directions, with bomb shelters below and aircraft hangars at the top. The vibe I got off it was that they were living in a re-purposed missile silo, which given what District 13 produced for the Capitol before the rebellion, makes a lot of sense.

*I like how in the overhead shots of District 13 you can see buildings engulfed by the forests, broken bridges, etc. It shows that the people once lived on the surface and retreated below-ground before Capitol aerial attacks without having to explain it.

*Jennifer Lawrence is a great actress. She does a great job conveying emotions like horror (the ruins of District 12) and blinding, straight-up FURY ("you will burn with us"). Bravo.

*I liked Jennifer Lawrence's rendition of the song "The Hanging Tree." It's apparently one of the most popular songs in the world right now. So in addition to being a talented actress and (from what I've read about her) an awesome person in general, now she's a pop star. :) I need to come up with some folk music for the wider culture of my Wastelands world. Something akin to "The Hanging Tree" would really fit. I've gotten the song off iTunes and I've listened to it a whole bunch of times...

*When they cut from her singing "The Hanging Tree" to District Five rebels marching on the giant dam complex that fuels the Capitol, carrying no weapons to defend themselves but explosives to attack the dam, it shows just how much of a cult icon Katniss is becoming to the people of Panem.

*Per my earlier comment, the scene where Katniss returns to District 12 and finds in absolute ruin, complete with, well, go to this image, is well dramatic and well-done. Especially when you see off to the corner what a surviving dog is doing. TVTropes calls it Scenery Gorn and damn if it isn't effective.

*The propaganda campaign the Capitol wages against the rebellion is actually quite clever. No details for spoiler reasons, but it's something that on the surface makes a lot of sense. It's a testament to human ingenuity and fallibility that the most evil things (like the Capitol's exploitative system) can be made to sound so good. If you want something similarly clever, there's this rumination on the Sith.

*The producers have been criticized in many quarters for splitting the singular Mockingjay novel into two movies, but where they split the book makes sense.

*There are some good moments of humor, many of which revolve around Katniss's sister Prim's cat.

The Bad

*It was a little slow in places. I found myself looking at my watch a couple times. That being said, there weren't any obvious places where material could be cut.

*It would have been good to see the Capitol bombers attacking District 13. Although there are good, dramatic reasons to focus on Katniss, her mother, and her sister hiding in the bunkers while dust falls from the ceiling, it would have been cool to intersperse those scenes with images of Capitol aircraft engaging District 13's air defenses.

The Verdict

Go see it. 9.0 out of 10.

More HUNGER GAMES Movies?

According to this link I found while doing some Twitter work for a client, the producers of The Hunger Games film franchise are planning more movies even after the second Mockingjay film is done. It looks like they're leaning toward new characters in the pre-existing universe rather than trying to come up with more adventures for Katniss, whose story is pretty much done with Mockingjay.

(Not going to go into any more detail for spoiler reasons.)

Although this looks like a blatant cash grab, it could actually be pretty interesting. Here are some ideas I just spun off the top of my head:

*A prequel about Haymitch Abernathy--how he became a victor, how his family was murdered in reprisal for his figuring how out to use the Arena itself as a weapon, and how he started the path toward becoming the ornery drunk he is. To make things even more interesting, he'd competed in a previous Quarter Quell where the Capitol demanded twice as many tributes as usual. It'd basically be the first movie with twice as many tributes and (apparently) twice as much brutality, with a male protagonist and a downer ending I won't be getting into for reasons of spoilers.

*The rise of the evil Capitol President Coriolanus Snow. He apparently murdered and manipulated his way into power, so he could be a Villain Protagonist. Think a sci-fi version of House of Cards set in probably one of the most thoroughly vile fictional societies ever created. Given how Snow apparently prostitutes victors to the other decadent aristocrats of the Capitol, this is something that could get into serious rated-R territory here.

*The rise of the Capitol and how it took control of the Districts and established the exploitative system that presumably provoked the first rebellion. If things were really so dark and desperate that one can make any case that the Capitol's system was needed to save humankind (at least in North America) from extinction, this could have a lot of Grey and Gray Morality going on.

*The first rebellion-This is when the Districts rebelled and after defeating them (with the exception of District 13, which made a separate peace), the Capitol imposed the Hunger Games on them. This could be really interesting, especially with the referenced rebel attack on the Capitol in the Rocky Mountains and how it was foiled by aerial bombardment. It could be a Hope Spot (like the scene in Valkyrie where all the top Nazis are getting rounded up and the viewer actually thinks the coup will succeed) followed by a massive downer when the attack is defeated and/or when District 13 betrays the rest of the rebels. This could be so epic it could be made into multiple movies.

Life lesson for writers--create worlds so detailed and "big" that you can write lots of stories set in this world, not just stories about the important characters. This is by no means advice to scrimp on characterization though--I doubt The Hunger Games could be the phenomenon it is now if not for the character of Katniss.

P.S.

Producers of The Hunger Games, if you read this, please don't discard any of the above ideas for legal reasons. I've heard that Hollywood people sometimes ditch good ideas that they find others have come up with due to fear of lawsuits. Remember, ideas can't be copyrighted.

A Couple of Interesting Movie Trailers...

The other night, I came across the trailer for Snow White and the Huntsman, which can basically be summed up as "Snow White done in the style of Lord of the Rings."



I'd heard about how they intended to remake Snow White with a more overtly-feminist SW who even goes into battle in full armor and I thought that was goofy and heavy-handed.  I have no objection to feminism--see my repeated denunciations of complementarianism--but given how most women aren't as physically strong as most men, medieval-style combat in heavy armor is not something they're especially suited for unless we're talking someone like Brienne of Tarth from the A Song of Ice and Fire novels who is unusually big and strong.

However, having watched the trailer, this actually looks kind of cool.  Epic battle sequences, the evil queen providing a very strong incentive for the Huntsman to kill Snow White, the much spookier Magic Mirror, a reason for the evil queen to want Snow White's heart specifically, monsters, etc.

My friend Korsgaard warned about Kristen Stewart's acting prowess.  I've never seen any of the Twilight films, so I cannot comment intelligently on whether or not she can act.  Let's hope she can pull this off.

And now we're onto the Hunger Games trailer...



I haven't been interested in the Hunger Games novels because I figured they were intended for younger people, but then, so is Harry Potter and that didn't stop me from writing two novel-length HP fan-fics.

However, a member of my writing group and my friend Jamie have both gotten really interested in THG, so writing it off as kids' stuff would be rather foolish.  Furthermore, in discussions of just what genre Battle for the Wastelands would fit into, someone pointed out that young adult fiction is predicated on the protagonist's age, not the content.  THG features teenagers taken as tribute by an evil government and forced to fight to the death, plus YA fiction from my own childhood (Gruel and Unusual Punishment and Weasel) could get pretty disturbing.

Oh well.  We'll see what happens when it's done and polished and sent to publishers.