Let's Review: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1

The Hunger Games is a series I enjoy but don’t love. I feel like the series has a brilliant plot, but I feel like each of the films have one critical error to them that stops me from fully enjoying this series as much as I should. The first film had very tight and choppy camera work while the second film took far too long to actually get to the Hunger Game which was ultimately just a brief part of the movie. I was very excited to see this film, but at the same time I was concerned that something else was going to let me down. Did I enjoy the film or did it disappoint? Let’s review The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1.

The Negative

I don’t really hate this film, I hate Harry Potter. Rather I hate the trend that the Harry Potter films started. It made since to split the final Harry Potter book into two films as it was a ridiculously large book and squeezing it all into one film would have had to cut out major portions of the story. Unfortunately, this has caused film producers to take on an ‘every final book in a series needs to be split into two films’ approached to adaptation. Not every book series needs this approach though. Mockingjay is 390 pages long; the final Harry Potter book was 759 pages long. The reason I bring this up is because the pacing in this film was terrible. There are definitely some awesome action pieces and plot moments that occur in this movie, but in between those moments was some serious flab that could have been cut out.

The Positive

One of the greatest aspects of The Hunger Games series is its depiction of propaganda and manipulating the populace. This is a war that can be fought and won on either side, but it entirely depends on who the people are rooting for. Katniss isn’t so much a warrior for District 13 to rely on but she is their weapon of propaganda. Katniss is a symbol that the people can rally behind, sure it’s great that she can hold her own in a fight and she is very level-headed, but ultimately it is the idea of Katniss that will set the flames of war ablaze. This is why I love this series so much as it rings true that wars are won by having the people on your side. The propaganda caused by this war is almost more important than fighting it as the media war is the true battlefield.

The tone of this film was significantly darker. The Hunger Games series has always had a dark tone but this was the film that truly felt like war was being waged between The Capitol and District 13. This tone shift really makes this movie, as we are no longer witnessing a game of survival but a war for freedom. The film regularly cuts out of the main characters to show how the various districts are responding to the propaganda battle and it beautiful sets the tone of the severity of the situation as well as the importance of winning this battle.

In Conclusion

I am growing concerned with book to film adaptations as the film industries seems to think that extending them out for as long as possible is a good thing. While extending the plot of a book can lead to interesting changes or insights we never thought about before, true thought should be put into how a plot can be improved before just going ahead and splitting it just to have another film. I think Mockingjay has a very good plot and characters but ultimately suffers from being spread too thin among 2 films. 3.8 out of 5.