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 Since
its first installment, I’ve been in mild awe of the movie adaptations of
Suzanne Collins’ enormously popular teen-lit series, The Hunger Games.
We’ve all seen plenty of book-to-screen flicks that shame their makers,
but it’s kind of great when the film actually improves on the source
material. So it went with 2012’s The Hunger Games, the first telling of
a dystopian future where the world is culminated into one nation called
Panem. Panem is divided into neat and increasingly poor segments by a
totalitarian government that keeps its citizenry in strict order by
sacrificing its children to a grotesque battle-to-the-death gladiator
contest, where only one winner can survive. A denizen of the
impoverished District 12, Katniss Everdeen, uses her wits and skills to
be a wrench in the government’s plan to publicly murder her. Her
resulting victory and its deeper meaning of defying the status quo,
reverberates across the districts and stirs the unrest against the
Capitol that was growing long before Katniss was born. To Panem’s
President Snow, Katniss’ win equates to a lighting a match to a
revolution he will stop at all costs.
We had
last seen Katniss in the relative safety of the bowels of the mythical
District 13; a place she and many other citizens believed either never
existed or had been wiped off Panem’s map for insubordination. A city
of bunkers houses not only refugees - including Katniss’ mom and beloved
sister, Prim - who’ve fled from the destruction and tyranny of the
Capitol, but also soldiers ready to overthrow it. It’s a tight ship run
by Alma Coin, a steely woman, inside and out, who is referred to as the
“President” of District 13. Katniss’s presence has been used to foment
more support for the rebellion with the aid of propaganda videos that
interrupt Capitol broadcasts with their subversive and openly
antagonistic messages. Thanks to the golden brooch she wore back
in the first Games, Katniss has become the Mockingjay, the very symbol
of the revolution. Altruism and hate for the government aside, Katniss
agrees to be the rebellion’s poster girl in exchange for their finding
and releasing her old partner and occasional flame, Peeta Mellark, as
well as the others captured during a second Game meant specifically to
destroy her. While warned, Katniss was no ways prepared for the gaunt,
hollow-eyed shell of Peeta they bring back. His leaping off a
gurney to nearly choke her to death for her troubles in trying to get
him released was a surprise, too.
Mockingjay Part 2 picks up in the days following. We begin with Katniss
trying to reclaim the use of the vocal chords Peeta tried to crush. The
torture that broke Peeta and made him into this feral Katniss killer is
yet one more reason for Katniss to take out President Snow. Peeta
simply cannot tell truth from Capitol programming and therefore cannot
be trusted around Katniss. The other (occasional) side of the
Katniss love triangle, Gale, himself an earlier victim of Capitol
persuasion methods, has become a ruthless military machine; showing no
compunction about decimating the innocent along with the guilty in his
determination to bring about the coup. Naturally, it is decided
that both young men will accompany Katniss and the rebel crew on their
big operation to invade the heart of the Capitol and assassinate Snow.
A
Katniss-hating psychotic and a gung-ho militarist, both of whom are in
love with the same girl - the most wanted fugitive on the planet - who’s
also on the mission with them… What could possibly go wrong?
That’s
pretty much the whole show. Unlike the previous three chapters, which
displayed character development, humour and some emotional depth,
Mockingjay Part 2 is a very noisy teen-lit war movie, much hollower and
less engaging than its predecessors. Going much harder than the
previous films, the violence is fairly jaw-dropping for a PG-13 movie:
The big Games-like conundrum is the maze of incredibly lethal
booby-traps laid every ten feet or so on the streets of the Capitol that
the rebels must avoid, using purloined but outdated technology to
discover where they are. For every snare they sidestep, there’s
three they walk right into, and the blasts of the humungous automatic
submachine guns popping out of random walls shook the floor of the
theatre. One character is blown in half, but lives long enough to give
Katniss encouragement to go on (Cos she’s Katniss and someone has to
tell her how great she is, even if they must use their last breath to do
so!). Another character is boiled alive in oil while saving Katniss
(from Peeta!) with his dripping corpse strung up above the heads
of his compatriots.
Quite
intense and frightening are the Mutts; the Capitol’s freak mutant albino
zombie killing machines who basically bite and tear apart anything they
get their hands on. When they are mentioned earlier in the film, I
expected the doglike creatures we saw towards the end of The Hunger
Games, but nope, these are upright, humanoid, extremely fast-moving
thingies in full frenzy with very sharp teeth. I’m no zombie fan, but
these guys were scary.
The
other puzzle for Katniss beyond how to stay alive long enough to kill
Snow (and decide between the men in her faint romantic triangle,)
is who can she trust? She hadn’t been big on the “T” word after
enduring the guile and cunning necessary to win the first Games, and the
subsequent betrayal by her mentor, Haymitch, and undercover rebel
gamesmaker, Plutarch Heavensbee, who forswore their promise to save
Peeta instead of herself at the end of the second visit to the arena.
Katniss is fairly docile (for Katniss) in going along with
President Coin’s commands after the leader held up her end and saved
Peeta, but certain words and actions as the lady gets closer to her
dream of taking over the Capitol puts Katniss is real doubt over what
exactly she’s fighting for.
One of
the things the Hunger Games franchise had going for it was being smarter
than the average teen flick. Their sharp, witty scripts, great cast,
and brisk pacing centered around a teenage heroine smart and girly
enough for the main female demographic to identify with, while making
her tough enough amidst thrilling action sequences for guys to feel like
they didn’t have to say they’d been dragged by their girlfriends into
coming. The filmmakers kept the heart of their main character at
the center, whether it was in Katniss’ sacrifice to save her kid sister
from the first Games, her keening over poor little doomed Rue, or
feeling the weight of friends she’d made and lost horribly in the middle
of the Quarter Quell. We get a bit of Katniss feeling sorry for herself
here, but it has begun to feel token and rote. Yeah, Katniss, we know,
they’re all dead because of you, sob, sob, sob. Give it a minute, I’m
sure someone will come along to tell you how you shouldn’t feel bad and
how important you are to the revolution, etc., etc.
I
sense part of the problem is the source. The previous films had
been masterpieces of making silk purses out of sows’ ears, because,
quite frankly, the books don’t start off that great and only get worse
with each successive volume. They’re barely readable by the time we get
to Mockingjay. In the books, Katniss - like many other heroic
characters - is what is now termed a Mary Sue; an avatar of the author’s
wish-fulfillment. A bulletproof paragon, free from direct blame,
consequence or insult for their (always justifiable)
transgressions; who exists only to be praised and idolised. She’s
bratty, stupid and unlikable from the start (Haymitch actually
mentions her unlikability in the first film’s script), but she is
completely insufferable in the last book. I’ve always applauded
the filmmakers and Jennifer Lawrence for elevating Katniss from the
miserable wretch on the page, to someone at least relatable and
sympathetic on screen.
Another failure of the novel is how very much Collins presses the love
triangle between the three D12 teens while there’s a freaking war going
on. The filmmakers thankfully reduce this aspect to a faint whisper,
though the onscreen resolution is forced, cheesy and clumsy.
Having such a bare bones template, the movie folks filled it with a lot
of noise. It’s often entertaining, popcorn-chomping noise, but a very
different sound than the far more competent, satisfying prequels. Even
the big, heartbreaking moment of the entire series barely makes an
impact in all the Sturm und Drang. As opposed to other tear-jerking
attempts in this movie that seem heavy-handed and insistent, this hugely
important sequence felt rushed, as if people were ready to go home and
so they wrapped this momentous scene up as quickly as they could.
Thankfully, there are some notably good things in the production,
notably the cast. Effie Trinket is once again her glamourous, fabulous
self! After the pain of seeing our peacock plucked of her trademark
finery as a refugee in the District 13 barracks, the success of the
revolution has clearly afforded La Trinket {Elizabeth Banks} the
chance to stock up on some feathers and hairspray, and all is right
again with the world. Sadly, while brightening up the screen, she isn’t
given terribly much to do, and I missed her ditzy, oblivious
commentary.
Donald
Sutherland chews and chomps almost rambunctiously through his last bow
as President Snow, reeling off mad grins and dry humour as bitter as his
poisons as the rebel threat comes closer. I wished there had been
more scenes between him and Jennifer Lawrence because they were the only
time the clearly done-with-this-franchise Lawrence really seemed to pop
into life (Even Buttercup the cat seemed tired of Lawrence’s
histrionics). Sutherland’s chilling (NPI), world weary,
hushed tones made Snow the most compelling character in the whole
movie.
Way
too late and too little in the film do we have the raving Games victor,
Johanna {a delightfully snarling Jena Malone}, who bursts in to
Katniss’ presence, shaven-haired after her torture at the Capitol and
more rage-filled than ever. Woody Harrelson proves his ownership of
Haymitch Abernathy, the alcoholic mentor of the D12 kiddies, but as with
Effie and even Johanna, any laughs are muted as the script focuses more
on the war action and forced gravitas than the characters. Even in the
Battle Royale-grimness of the first films, the wit and gallows humour at
unexpected moments gave the movies much of their charm.
Despite its faults of an oddly-paced, charmless, hollow script and
obvious filmmaker ennui, this last installment is still enjoyable (fast-moving
albino zombies!) and worth seeing on big screen for its action
thrills. Mockingjay Part 2 is neither the worst film I’ve seen this
year, nor even close to the worst sequel. It’s merely the weakest in
what had been a surprisingly good series. Pity it had to happen in the
final chapter.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
Nov.
20th, 2015
Click
here for our review of 2012's The Hunger Games.
Click here for our review of 2013's review of The
Hunger Games: Catching Fire.
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