The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (2014)

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 is the third instalment of the Hunger Games series and continues the story of Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and her revolution against the Capitol. The film starts just where the last one left off with Katniss living underground in District 13 after escaping the hunger games and discovering that her home, District 12 has been destroyed. Katniss’ family and Gale (Liam Hemsworth) – her lifelong friend were rescued from District 12 and Finnick (Sam Claflin) and Beetee (Jeffrey Wright) were rescued alongside Katniss from the Hunger Games Arena, however, the Capitol have captured Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), Johanna (Jena Malone) and Annie (Stef Dawson) – Finnick’s lover. President Snow (Donald Sutherland) plans to use the tributes he has captured as psychological weapons against Katniss and the rebels at District 13 by torturing Peeta and showing his weak state on live TV which not only has psychological damage on Katniss but also makes Peeta look like a traitor and is ultimately trying to make all the rebellious districts back down. To countermand this, President Coin (Julianne Moore) and Plutarch Heavensbee (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) decide to make their own propaganda videos using Katniss to represent them as their Mockingjay, but Katniss agrees to do this if they agree to rescue the captured tributes. These videos are streamed across the whole of Panem and inspire all the other districts to rise up against the Capitol and begin their revolution.

When I initially heard that Mockingjay was being split into two parts I didn’t agree with it as nothing really happens in the first half of the book, so it felt like the director was just jumping on the band wagon of splitting a single book into multiple films in order to get more money (the only case in which I think this has worked well is with The Hobbit Trilogy), after seeing it, I still think that it should have been made into one single film but the way that this film is done works well in terms of building up to the final instalment. Starting off with the pros; the acting in this film is excellent especially from Jennifer Lawrence who portrays the amount of raw emotion and weakness from Katniss brilliantly whilst maintaining the strong, independent character that she is which makes I believe her best performance of Katniss to date. Josh Hutcherson also does another brilliant performance, although I hate his character – Peeta, I have to say that he did a brilliant job of showing the how Peeta changes mentally throughout the film and showing how much weaker and different he becomes. Another highlight actor who I have to point out is Phillip Seymour Hoffman who plays Plutarch so naturalistic and manages to literally bring the character from off the page in what is I believe to be his last film he made before his tragic death which is why I’m also glad that this film is dedicated to his memory. The soundtrack is beautiful and perfectly fitting for the film, especially with The Hanging Tree song sung by Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss, which was portrayed exactly from the book and is effective as it is simple yet powerful and inspiring, not to mention that one of my favourite artists Lorde sings the end credits song. The film on a whole is portrayed exactly from the book; everything that I saw on screen was pretty much how I had imagined it whilst reading the book, even down to the ways the characters interacted and their mannerisms were exact, I always commend a film that can pull off a book to screen adaptation well without cutting out too much as it is a hard thing to do – to bring figments of many people’s imaginations to life. I loved the level of detail that had gone into this film to make it seem as though it had jumped straight from the page, even the small details such as Katniss holding the pearl that was given to her by Peeta make the film so much more effective. There is also a great deal of new details which because of the 1st person narrative of the book were not able to explore through the book but have been able to explore in the cinematic adaptation. We are able to see new details which were not evident in the book but are very effective in the film in terms of character development and building the sense of revolution such as President Snow and his life in the capitol with his family and how his own granddaughter even admires Katniss, a backstory on President Coin and a visual representation on how the various districts rebelled. This last point brings me onto another great and probably my favourite aspect of the film which is the whole feeling of the rebellion that is built throughout the film, they used the basic concept of how the book represented the revolution with Katniss inspiring people with the propaganda videos and her inspiring speeches after the devastation the Capitol had caused but the book never really went into great detail of how the districts rebelled. However in the film, it does show us how the districts rebelled and how they are inspired to act after seeing the propaganda videos including my favourite scene of the film which even gave me Goosebumps – when the ordinary people of district 5 storm the dam whilst singing the hanging tree song. Another aspect of the film I really liked is how much character development and symbolic moments were in the film which I felt there needed to be in order to compensate for there being not much events enfolding in the film, but these symbolic moments allowed us to see how characters had changed mentally and how relationship had grown over the course of the past couple of films.

On the negative side of the film, structurally I found it quite weak as it didn’t feel like a complete film and more like an extended preview to the last film, this has to do with the fact that not much happens in this film in the way of progressing the story. This film feels like a kind of filler to develop characters and build the sense of a revolution which is no bad thing to focus on but I’d had preferred it if they had focused a bit more on the story as there is a lot of scenes from the book in this film which are dragged out and there is still a lot of content they will need to cover in the next film, which emphasises my thoughts that Mockingjay should have been made into one film as the events in this film could have been wrapped up a lot shorter and still had room for the rest of the events in the book. Overall, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 is a good film for fans of the franchise (like me) who will understand all the references and details drawn from the book but if you’re not a fan you won’t get the full enjoyment out of it and it is a good film although weak structurally. 4/5 stars.