The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (Francis Lawrence)

[Peng]

[Peng]

Very mild yay. What happened to the Francis Lawrence of Catching Fire? In that installment, the director is able to mix both the pulpy and the serious into quite a thrilling blockbuster. But in the two films that follow, he doubled way, way down on the somber, serious tone. That would be fine if he hadn't seem to also equate "serious drama" with "long, lingering, dry pacing", the latter of which he wasn't able to build any emotional momentum underneath to support it.

Good thing that this part contains the most provocative and interesting bit in the books, and that the franchise has Jennifer Lawrence to fall back on to. I'm still a bit pissed though that they dilute my favorite book of the trilogy into two money-grabbing parts, and the creative team fails to make anything meaningful out of the more time given. Seriously, Breaking Dawn manages to diverge and makes the film has more of a pulse from that subpar book, even though Mockingjay the film is still better. And Deathly Hallows has so, so much more material to cover yet somehow its Part 2 still manages to be shorter than Mockingjay's. If you are going to adapt the book that closely, at least don't add faux-dramatic dead air to the proceedings.

[Henry Gale]

Seeing it in a few hours!

Haven't read the books, but the movie series has gone from mild curiosity, to passing fancy, to something I actually kinda look forward to, having liked each more than the last. So we shall see if that trend continues, once and for all!

[TGM]

Went ahead and got my ticket for this for Friday.

[Henry Gale]

Yeaaah.. Pretty much with you, Peng. Though I kind of liked the change of Lawrence's tonal pace in the last one, mainly because assumed/trusted it would lend itself nicely to this finale. But I guess reading the books might've helped knowing exactly where it was going earlier, and that those stylistic shifts don't quite jibe.

It's fine. Without going into details that I can no doubt find out the details of over the course of this weekend and its reactions from fans: This is the ending that Katniss gets? [

Show Spoiler

Girl went from being a revolutionary to being normcore / heteronormative as fuck. Sure she deserves peace, but the way the film gets to her to the final scene just feels like: "She's happy because she's settled down with a husband and kids!" [/magic hour warmth]

]

More thoughts later I guess. Like most series, it kind of peaked in the middle for me. Unlike trilogies, this one having four parts meant it managed two high points in its middle.

[TGM]

So I ended up having the theater almost entirely to myself for this one, surprisingly enough. Sure, it's a Friday morning, but I expected at least a Rogue Nation-size crowd, which was almost a packed house on a Friday morning. And even part 1 last year was about 1/3 full on the same day and time, but today? Only five other people in the whole theater. Huh. Dunno what to make of that.

But anyways, as for the movie itself, yeah, it was all over the place. But unlike part one, not so much in an awesomely bad way, but more so in a... BLAND sort of way. (You know, other than the scene where the movie suddenly becomes The Descent for about 5 minutes that is!)

Also, Jennifer Lawrence actually was surprisingly pretty reserved for once in this thing. In fact, she probably give her best performance and a movie since the first Hunger Games.

But yeah, I have more in-depth thoughts on the movie, which I'll write down in a full review later. But for now, the movie wasn't bad, but it wasn't all that great either. Just sort of... eh?

[Henry Gale]

I feel like Hutcherson actually impressed me the most here, and I wouldn't say he left much of an impression at all with the earlier films.

But the film once again commits the inexcusable crime of relegating Tucci to a single scene. With material with the capacity for mild hammage at best, no less!

[TGM]

It's kinda odd, but I felt the stuff with Peeta both felt extremely contrived, and yet still was probably the most compelling aspect of the movie all the same. Hutcherson definitely did a great job balancing the nonsense they gave him to do here.

[DavidSeven]

This movie (Mockingjay 1 and 2) is aggressively uninspiring. Like Francis Lawrence made it a point not to give a shit.

It's not funny, not particularly dramatic, set-pieces aren't any good. The few potentially meaningful moments seem glossed over. Finishes with an infuriatingly blasé ending. What were they trying to accomplish here?

[TGM]

What were they trying to accomplish here?

[TGM]

My full review: http://cwiddop.blogspot.com/2015/11/...ay-part-2.html

[transmogrifier]

This was the worst of the four, and it's not as if any of the other three were that good. The plotting is just laughable, but the movie doesn't even let us have the decency to allow us to enjoy it on the level of camp kinetics, instead constantly cutting to yet another boring speech or the even more boring "romance"... sheesh

[Dukefrukem]

This was the most boring thing since boring came to bore town.

[Peng]

Thought this would drop further in rating on rewatch, but I find the strength of the book (my favorite of the three) is such that even split into two parts and saddled with weak one-note execution, it's still faintly effective enough for me from its core story. Plus, the remove of time has put an interesting spin on the director's exceedingly grim, "realistic" tone (opened with a bruised neck and painfully coarse voice from being strangled; the bullet that hit Katniss leaves a large black-and-blue mark), which feels almost admiringly perverse for a popular blockbuster franchise closer, even if I don't find it successful by itself. Ideally, this should have been one entry with its tone a mix of the whole franchise, having the first two films' faster-paced, comparatively more colorful palette being suffocated by the increasingly despairing tone of the last two. The story beats would have been more impactful instead of the audience being numbed by a single tonal key. Oh, and (a lost cause by now) preferably with less hedging and less focus on the love triangle that the films choose to stress way more than the book too. 6/10