The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 2015

Mockingjay Part 2's biggest mistake is being completely faithful to the book, considering that it is the worst one of the trilogy. They had the chance to make the story better but chose to stick to what they had. Being the final chapter of the story, it has emotional bits, but miserably (and unfortunately) fails to sell them, rushing the scenes which we were supposed to remember the most.
— @aag's review (https://trakt.tv/comments/62697, and we need proper internal link markup on Trakt!)

Seriously. The big dramatic moments are unbelievably rushed—there's no time to dig into them. There's too much focus on bad CGI and not enough on characters. Basically every character is 2D at best, except maybe Katniss and Peeta. But that's also due to sticking true to the book. None of the characters in the books were particularly well fleshed out, either, as I recall (from reading them 3 ½ years ago).

I also found the story very predictable. Obviously there's some amount of subconscious influence from having read the books, but it's also just absolutely clear when the big surprises/twists are going to happen, and what they'll be. They end up not being surprising at all. (Not to belabor the point, but the book had this problem too.)

My other big issue—which applies to the whole series—is that we barely see anything that happens away from Katniss. I know it's quite common in YA novels to present a limited first-person perspective from the protagonist's point of view, but in a big political saga like this I feel like that severely limits the storytelling.

Had to watch this in two parts because it was so. damn. long! And honestly? Not worth the time. Two and a half hours of a snoozefest.

The story is predictable, which made it boring - for starters. Once again, all these more significant deaths happened, but were brushed off so quickly, which made it harder to emotionally connect with the movie ( especially Finnick, who was my favourite character in both the film adaptation and the original book series ). I understand that they can't allocate time to every single death, but the rest of the movie is filled with useless scenes, especially in the last 20 minutes, which frustrates me to no end.

Not only that, but the story seems to be very much centered on Katniss and Peeta - which, granted, seems logical, but we've had the past three films to go about their story, and I feel like it would have been nicer to have had a look into the perspective of the others or at least give more screentime to different characters, rather than being boxed into some love triangle that was cringey at best.

I can't say I'm going to watch this ever again.

Well, that was rather disappointing unfortunately. Not that I can say that I am very surprised though. The first installment in the series started off being "okayish" and the rest of them slid downwards towards mediocrity. This, the final installment, is a notch below mediocre as far as I am concerned. I really cannot understand all the hype about these movies. None of them really shines even if you try to look at them as young adult movies which they really are.

This one was downright boring. There were numerous scenes where Katniss or some other character was just dreaming away or sitting around brooding. It took quite a while for anything to start happening in the movie.

When something started happening it was the same mess of political, unbelievably stupid, propaganda, messy and unintelligent fight scenes, Katniss walking around looking, I do not really known, disconcerted, sad, disturbed, whatever.

How the chief villains (yes plural) was one could figure out without too much effort. The moment the flyer came into the picture and started to fly over the refuges and the children not only I but all of my kids as well guessed who had sent it.

There is really only two things that I liked about this movie. One is that Donald Sutherland was really good. The other is the ending which, although being 100% predictable, was quite satisfying. Well, that scene (everyone having seen the movie knows which scene I am referring to) is where I consider the movie to have ended. After that it was only boring filler scenes remaining.

I read the Hunger Games trilogy back when it was first released. The first book was interesting, the second book was just more of the same, and the third...well...even more of the same, just in a much bigger setting with even less of a story. And what book do they make two, entirely too long, movies from?

As you can see by the date, I never bothered with this one until I could borrow it from a friend, and thank goodness for that. The movies follow the exact same pattern as the books. The first was decent enough, the second a carbon copy of the first, and the third just plain sucked, and then you have the fourth...

Mockingjay Part 2 has nothing much going for it. The action is decent enough and Jennifer Lawrence looks as good as ever, but it has just the same serious flaws as the third book. Surprised yet?

It drags on and on, but the parts that were almost decent in the book ended up being hastened through. Sometimes I wonder if the directors actually read the books their script is based on...

Unless you have suffered through the first ones and just want to see how things end...don't bother with it. Not worth the time at all...

"Tonight, turn your weapons to the Capitol!".

After the dull filler that was Mockingjay Part 1, I mean splitting movies into two parts isn't a great idea with some book adaption movies that don't need it, because the books themselves were not long and flowed together nicely. And yes Harry Potter did the splitting movies into two because well, the book itself was freaking huge, so huge that a little toddler can reach the top shelf by standing on the freaking book. It's completely pointless and now every book adaptation movie is doing it just to cash in more money.
I didn't like Mockingjay Part 1 that much. Nothing interesting was developed in that movie and part 1 was nothing but a set up to the next movie, which you should never do, because when you do a marathon of all of the movies, part 1 is the one that you want to skip. That's what Part 1 was 'a set up' and it doesn't stand on it's own as film (In my opinion). But all that a side, I sawed Mockingjay Part 2 a few days ago and it wasn't that great. It was way better than Part 1 when comes to something happening, but that's not saying much, because while I was watching the movie I had the same uneasy feel that Part 1 gave me and not in a good way. It isn't a bad movie, but it wasn't great.

The one major positive that I can give that was all throughout The Hunger Games franchise was Jennifer Lawrence. She has so much to do here and really makes her character shine in this movie. She once again dose a great performance that wasn't over acting or being too dramatic, but it was simple and locked down. She was without a doubt the best part of this movie.

This is a very dark and grim movie with no comic relief from the other characters, and these no messing around here and that element in the movie dose work...sometimes. These many scenes in this movie that was overly sad and so dramatic, to the point that I said to myself "Oh my lord, this movie is so miserable and grim". I know a finale like this isn't going to end quietly and it worked sometimes, but sometimes it overly did it.

This is Philip Seymour Hoffman's last movie and I think the movie did justice for his character in a respectful way due to the actors passing. I know it was hard for the cast to deal with Hoffman's death, since he's character had a major scene in this movie that he never got a chance to film due to his death. I thought the movie did great job of working around it respectfully. R.I.P Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Now for the problems: The first half of this movie and the last is so freaking slow with it's pacing, to the point that it was basically killing the spirit of this movie with the lack of energy. The movie never made me feel like the stakes were high as it felt too easy. There was never a moment that made me feel like I was on the edge of my seat or biting my nails worried for what's going, because as I said before the stakes never felt high to me. That's really disappointing and I had so much high hopes for this movie to be an intense finale with a satisfying ending...well I got some of that, but not the satisfying or intense part.

Was the ending satisfying? well, it was fine ending, but not the best as the movie didn't know how to end. The endings were dragged out.

Overall rating: Mockingjay Part 2 will satisfy some fans of the franchise. I do think it's better Part 1 as I felt like a lot of things were happening. Unfortunately this movie dose have the same problems that Part 1 had with it's pacing and it's lack of energy. I didn't think this movie was great and I know for a fact that five years from now I will completely forget about this movie.

Splitting this film into two halves, especially in this manner, was a detriment to both. This time, the action begins almost mid-scene, like we'd merely broken for a commercial and not held off for a year of unrelated pursuits. I felt like I needed a "Previously on The Hunger Games" refresher, because it's just assumed you're going to remember everything and I, with my sliding mid-life memory banks, did not. Having read the books before the first film, those recollections were already weak and I'm still not entirely sure I associated the right names with the corresponding faces.

But I'm getting away from the point, and that's this: Part II is, quite literally, an act and a half of drama. It's also quite hollow, and maybe one thing has more than a little to do with the other. Without a third set of titular Games, it lacks the sense of adventure and originality that added such color to the first two films and settles in as a drab, depressing war march. A shame, since the visuals - a weakness in those early efforts - have suddenly become quite good. The world sprouts with beautifully absurd touches of life (or, at least, there's a sense that it did before the landscape was literally drenched in a viscous black goop) and the larger set pieces have a great sense of magnitude to them.

A pity, then, that the main players have all been beaten to the turf and can't muster so much as a smirk, even in their storybook endings. A grim, dazing, unhappy concluding chapter that, while technically adept, is both scatterbrained and railroaded to its last breath.

Its hard to put down exactly what is wrong with the final instalment of the Hunger Games series. After the first two well-received instalments, the decision to split the last film into two parts was unnecessary with very little of consequence happening in Part 1. Although it did get to explore more explicitly the themes that have been a hallmark of the series, it was largely at the expense of the plot. That is certainly not the case here and all the elements of the story should work. It’s certainly not a bad film - all the performances are great and the concept of using the Capitol as the arena is a clever one. The film continues to explore the consequences of violence and war, the use of media and propoganda, as well as the shades of grey on both sides of the conflict and Jennifer Lawrence once again gives it her all as Katniss. Unfortunately, the twists and turns of the plot don’t quite have the impact that the filmmakers probably intended and there is a realisation that the film series has focused so much on Katniss’ point of view throughout that the sacrifices and losses of secondary characters don’t work as well as they should as they have played such a small part in the films as a whole. It also doesn’t help that the use of the Capital as a Games arena is a clever concept, but it actually serves to undermine some of the themes, with a large proportion of time devoted to set-piece traps and chases that rely on effects and scale than the more personal violence that the previous films had dealt with. Its ultimately a narratively satisfying way of bringing the series to a close but it disappoints in not being quite as emotionally involving as the first two entries.

I have enjoyed the entire Katniss Everdeen series, and to be honest, I liked Part 1 of Mockingjay the best of them all. Unfortunately, Part 2 was not as good. I have not read the books, but my two daughters have, so I get the blow by blow commentary related to what important parts were left out, at least based on the opinions of 17 and 12 year old theatre prodigies.

If I understand how the book wrapped up, so much more could have been done with this film. Unfortunately, as Hollywood is want to do, acton won out over thoughtful and thought provoking.

My other disappointment with the film is, despite my long -term investment in the series' characters, I found myself becoming bored with them in this film. Let's face it, Katniss came a long way in the final two films, but she didn't grow from it. Gale never became anything but a side love interest and someone whom some would say believed in going to far in warfare. Out of all of the characters, Haymitch seemed to grow the most, and honestly, Woody Harrelson was the highlight of the actors portrayal of the characters. By the end, Jennifer Lawrence seemed to just be going through the motions. While she has, no doubt, made a barrel of cash from these films, she clearly has so much more to give artistically.

I don't think this comment is a spoiler. It is, however, a means to help the consumer manage her / his expectations. Mockingjay is a good film that could have been been great.