I love the Hunger Games movies. But if I’m being completely honest, it still gnaws at me to this day how much Katniss Everdeen’s (Jennifer Lawrence) story falls off at the end. After two fantastic films, the series stumbles and ends up wasting the chance of a happy ending. And that although it was close enough to touch.
Why Mockingjay crashes in Hunger Games finale
In the first tribute to the Panem film, we accompany Katniss into her dystopian world and learn about the gruesome ones hunger games know. Exciting! In the second film, Catching Fire, she must return to the arena and also deal with the political consequences grapple with their victory. Even more exciting!
Then comes the big double degree: In Mockingjay Part 1 and Part 2, Katniss is faced with the task of bring down the whole regime … but instead of logically mutating into the pinnacle of suspense, the result is often tiring and tough.
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Hunger Games: Mockingjay 2
To be fair, I have to say that the last novel in the book trilogy * by Suzanne Collins was the worst for me. But it is all the more true: Stretching the weakest book into two films was the stupidest decisionthat could hit the Hunger Games series. Sure, successful franchises like Harry Potter and Twilight had shown how cinema revenues could be milked with a two-part finale.
However, the Hunger Games was thereby deprived of its coherent 3-act structure:
Instead, we got 1 with Mockingjay treading water Hunger Games finale. Set most of the time in a gray underground bunker, Part 3 repeatedly showed us how Katniss was being exploited – by the rebellious District 13 as well as the mighty Capitol. Just when the narrative should have tightened its tension screw one last time, it let up.
The Hunger Games conclusion could easily have picked up the strength of the first films
I always realize how little Mockingjay 1 in particular has to say in the last scene: Peetas (Josh Hutcherson) exposed Brainwashing is a brilliant shock cliffhanger. At the same time, it’s the first moment when the film really triggers something in me. And that says a lot after two hours of running time. A single, tightened graduation film would have (with less Gale banter) the emotional core of the series at the center can ask: Katniss and Peeta’s complicated (purpose) relationship that slowly evolves into more.
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Hunger Games heart: Peeta and Katniss in Mockingjay 2
Because even if The Hunger Games tells of the comprehensive rebellion against a future regime, it was ultimately primarily about the main character Katniss. But it will be common in parts 3 and 4 to the pure projection surface of a revolution. Not only do the rebels use her as a symbol for their purposes, the films themselves also repeatedly turn her into a boring protagonist who dutifully leads us through the war. In these moments, Mockingjay gets lost in petty battles and long-drawn-out conspiracies.
Only when Katniss and Peeta penetrate the heart of the Capitol in part 4 for the planned assassination of President Snow (Donald Sutherland) and thus enter an arena of the Hunger Games for the third time in the midst of new traps, will the finale take place back to its old strengths. Again we see a variation of arena combat with devastating twists at the end.
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Mockingjay runs away from his strengths
It is the simple template, according to which the fictitious Hunger Games themselves work: emotional and human surprises within a structure of fixed rules. Why shouldn’t the last two movies benefit from the same recipe for success on a meta level? Catching Fire managed that as a nerve-wrackingly good sequel. Mockingjay could have achieved this with cuts and a different weighting of the individual parts.
The new Hunger Games backstory has the opposite of the Mockingjay problem
Now, in the fall, we have a Hunger Games prequel set 64 years before Katniss’s arena debut and I have afraid again. Before the film adaptation of The Hunger Games – The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes makes the wrong decisions again.
This time, however, it’s not the worry of an unnecessarily stretched narrative, but the exact opposite. The thick book template * already has the chance of an in-depth Hunger Games film prequel that goes beyond a mere Easter egg collection. But the novel about the song of the bird and snake consists of two parts (arena and district 12), which could overload a single film.
I know: The Hunger Games are a struggle for survival and not a request concert. But would it be asking too much to hope for two films based on one book this time?
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