Intense 'Mocking Jay 2' leaves characters flat
I went to see The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay part 2 out of an obligation to the part of me that needs to see a complete story and also because the Embassy Complex Theater was giving away prizes (and I didn’t have to work). If Mocking Jay part 1 had not been offered on a flight I took across the Atlantic, I would have been happy to let the series end with that story, much like I did for the books when I didn’t bother to read the third one after being disappointed by the second book.
Spoiler Alert Mocking Jay part 2 delivers intense scenes that aren’t afraid to draw out the tension for longer than most movies would dare. This leads to great payoffs and a few jump scares that are worthwhile. The film feels grittier than previous movies. Josh Hutcherson and Jennifer Lawrence have an intense scene at the beginning of the film that shows they both know how to act. The pods and the mutts are both involved in sequences that are intense. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast is relegated to insignificance much like President Coin is trying to relegate the Mocking Jay, or at least Mocking Jay’s life, to insignificance. Woody Harrelson’s Haymitch, Elizabeth Banks’ Effie, Liam Hemsworth’s Gale, and everyone else in the show is little more than a prop for Katniss Everdeen to use as she journeys through this story of survival. In this film, everyone plays as two dimensional, which might have been okay if Katniss herself weren’t so flat, and herein lies the biggest problem with the Hunger Games trilogy or quadrilogy… whatever. Katniss Everdeen never changes and never does anything that affects her life or the outcome of the scenario. Katniss has no character arc. She remains the same person throughout the films showing no growth. In a person, this may be admirable. In a comedy or a TV show, it may be normal. However, in a drama, especially one where terrible things happen to the main character, there should be some effect on that person. Instead, Katniss goes through the film series without so much as a movement in any direction that suggests development or choice. Spoiler Alert Even the choices that Katniss made seem to have been set up by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Plutarch. In the end, she doesn’t so much choose to be with Peeta as much as she chooses not to be with Gale. And there is no one else in the picture for her to choose from. For what is supposed to be a happy ending, The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay part 2 leaves any thinking or intuitive member of the audience with a vague uneasy feeling – as if the perfect picture will snap at any moment to bring back the nightmare that was Panem and its districts revealing that the Mocking Jay and the people who died around her did so for no reason. |
|