So here it is, my Spoiler Review of the finale of the ‘Hunger Games’ franchise; ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay: Part 2’. I am warning you in advance, there are going to be a tonne of SPOILERS from the film below the first image, so only read this if you have seen the film or just don’t care if you find out what happens. If you are just looking for a regular review you can check out my non-spoiler review HERE and then come back here once you have seen the film. So you have been warned, lets begin.
I will start with the section of the film that i loved the most, as i mentioned in my non-spoiler review i thought the second act was INCREDIBLE, it did everything right and was the main reason i gave it a 7.3/10. The traps in this second act were such a great addition to the film, they were all unpredictable and exactly what you would imagine the creative minds of the game-makers to come up with. The flamethrower trap and the machine gun trap were small scale and clearly designed not only to kill, but to turn its victims into a pile of rubble, as the machine guns did with that concrete arch. Even the traps we only got a small glimpse of were really cool, those lights that burn anyone under them and the blades under the floor together made for a very intense chase sequence. But the real stars of the show were the massive oil flood and those damn creepy sewer monsters i believe they called ‘mutts’ that look like the monster straight out of the last episode of ‘Ash vs Evil Dead’. Firstly, that oil flood looked awesome, at first you see all of the exits closing shut and you just know that something is going down, and then a massive flood of a black oil-like substance comes crashing down and forces our group to find a way to escape. This scene was dramatic enough with one member already dead and one wounded, you’re just wondering if they are all going to make it. And then Peeta goes nuts, that bloody Peeta always causing trouble. He pushes one guy into the black stuff and he dies instantly and then he attacks Katniss… like, seriously man, chill the fuck out, escape the oil flood first and then kill her. That did add to the drama and really put me on the edge of my seat if i wasn’t already. And seriously, the game makers couldn’t have put in a bit more oil to make it rise even half a meter higher? Well it would have been a much shorter movie if that did happen.
Now for that part i mentioned in the sewers that may be my favourite individual sequence of the movie. This was intense from the very beginning, it sets up a very dark and creepy tone similar to the horror in Alien, you can hear the threat and you know something is there but you don’t know what it is or when it is going to show up. I loved that we didn’t actually see the monsters for a couple of minutes after we heard them, it made the entire sequence way more scary than it would have been if they just instantly showed up. And because they kept us waiting, when they did show up it was awesome and freaked me the fuck out. And that final confrontation between our group of survivors and the mutts was pretty damn epic. The way it was shot was very chaotic but also very easy to see what was happening. The action was great, seeing them all work together with guns and knifes to overcome the threat was cool. But the coolest moment of this scene was seeing Finnick drop into battle with his Trident just totally kicking ass. The way he used his weapon just swinging it around taking out these things like they were nothing was really cool. And he went out with a bang, literally, the mutts eventually took him down before they were blown up by Katniss. It was sad having seen him get married earlier in the film, not really the honeymoon he planned i guess. That marriage scene was one of the few scenes i would have kept from the first 30 minutes of the movie. Also the moments where Primrose and Katniss go in to visit Peeta were interesting character building scenes that were worth seeing. But everything else, the endless talking and planning and debating and boring moments like that i could have done without, we got 2 hours of that in Part 1 so i think that was more than enough.
Now, this sequence ended with two shocking, OMG moments, that had me like ‘WTF did that really just happen?’. At first we see these packages dropping from the sky above the civilians and children, and you hear the people getting excited reaching for them, one woman believing they are gifts. Well i’ve got news for you lady, those gifts were one way tickets to the afterlife, and after seeing the aftermath, with all of the dead children, if you didn’t want to kill Snow before, you damn want to execute him now. And just when you think it’s over, and Katniss is going to get into the Palace, you see Primrose helping out the wounded and then suddenly BANG, she gets exploded and Katniss goes down followed by a fade to black. That was by far the biggest holy shit moment of the film, and i needed a moment to take it in. But this is where the film’s ending ‘Part 1’ let me down. This whole time they were building up the assault on the Palace and repeating over and over again that Katniss IS going to kill Snow, leading you to believe that you are going to get an epic fight through the palace where she was going to confront Snow in his office and kill him. But we really didn’t get anything close to that at all, i didn’t mind what they did with this ending but for me it would have been WAY better had it progressed the way i thought it would, but gotta stick to the books i guess.
After it fades to black Katniss wakes up after the Rebels stormed the palace, captured Snow, and Coin has taken over the palace. It took me a while to actually figure out what had happened and the moments where Katniss is walking around confused just made me more confused and annoyed that i didn’t know what was going on. When Katniss finally finds Snow in the greenhouse you get to see a rather interesting confrontation that definitely didn’t play out as i had initially thought it would. And with ONE SENTENCE the writers managed to turn our 4 films of hate towards Snow into an incredible amount of hate for that bitch Coin. Snow was still a very bad guy, but with the revelation that it was Coin that was responsible for the bombing of the civilians and Primrose’s death, my priorities of who i wanted dead first, changed. Again it slows down and goes in an odd direction with Coin offering survivors of the rebellion the chance to vote for a hunger games involving the capital’s participants. Seriously, that is just the dumbest idea i’ve ever heard of and why they even suggested it or agreed to it beats me. That wasn’t a great scene but we then get to finally see what state Gale is in and he mentions to Katniss that he clearly failed to protect Primrose whose death was a result of a plan that he may or may not have been directly to blame for. She tells him that she wants nothing to do with him and just like that i guess she chose Peeta over Gale, a decision i think we all wanted, or at least i did.
Then we get the final showdown, Snow is tied to a pole and we see Katniss leading a crowd of civilians down an 800 meter long aisle. Seriously, couldn’t they have just like shortened the distance instead of making her walk for 20 minutes just to put an arrow into someone. I would have looked at how far i had to walk and just said ‘fuck it someone else can do it for me’. But she is finally standing there, bow drawn, Snow smiling and it looks like she is about to put an arrow into his head. But guess who is standing directly behind Snow, on a platform with her arms out, in clear view of Katniss and the camera shots that put her always in the frame, Interim President Coin. Knowing the circumstances of Primrose’s death and the positioning of Coin in this scene, it was quite obvious that of course she was going to shoot Coin instead. It would have been way better if they made it look like she was definitely going to shoot Snow, they should have positioned Coin out of view of the camera and at the last moment shown the arrow go into her. It would have been a more surprising moment, but seeing her die anyway was still satisfying. And yeh it was cool to see the people get their revenge on Snow, probably tearing him limb from limb off screen so that the film could avoid an R rating.
Now for ‘Part 2’ of the ending which i thought was handled very well and did close out the franchise in a good way. I thought the way they decided to close out the film and the franchise was well done, they gave closure to most of the main characters we have gone on this journey with and i feel that pretty much everyone got the ending they deserved. The only farewell i feel wasn’t as effective as it should have been was that of Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s character Plutarch. And that most definitely was in no way the fault of the film or the film makers in any way. The very unfortunate death of Hoffman in 2014 meant that some of his scenes were not able to be completed. There is a final scene in the film where Haymitch visits Katniss with a letter from a certain character named Plutarch. Now at the time i wasn’t 100% sure that it was referring to Hoffman’s character as i wasn’t aware of his name, but i just assumed that was the case because we hadn’t seen him in a while. The contents of the letter was written as a farewell to Katniss and the music was emotional but not having Hoffman there to deliver the contents of the letter in person did take away from the emotional effectiveness of the scene. It was a shame but clearly nothing could be done about it. Katniss then goes back to her home district with Haymich and Peeta, now completely deserted and has a really emotional moment with the cat that had a strong connection to Primrose. I also liked the final scene where it shows Katniss and Peeta living happily with their two kids. It was nice to see them happy in the end and together, nothing really to complain about there, a fitting end for out main characters.
There you have it, that is my spoiler review for The Hunger Games Mockingjay: Part 1, i hope you enjoyed it, and until next time, cya.
Everything Movie Reviews 