Numbers obtained from IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes on November 21, 2015.
My rating IMDb Rotten Tomatoes
Critics Audience Critics Audience
6/10 65/100 7.3/10 70% 80%
I haven’t read the books that inspired this movie franchise, but I’ve enjoyed the previous movies so far, so I was excited to watch the final chapter (though I’m not a fan of “let’s break the trilogy into 4 movies”). Unfortunately, The Hunger Games: Mockinjay – Part 2 was not nearly as exciting as its predecessors.
This one starts right after Part 1 ended, with Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) recovering from the attack she suffered from Peeta (Josh Hutcherson). Still trying to understand what happened to him, she leads the rebellion against President Snow (Donald Sutherland). There’s also the love triangle, completed by Gale (Liam Hemsworth), who helps Katniss in her journey.
The film has a serious problem with its pacing: it starts off way too slowly in the first half only to get too fast too quickly in the second half. I felt like a lot of things were poorly explained to the audience, especially to those who haven’t read the books and are learning the story through the movie, like me. Besides, the climax scene could have been better executed, in my opinion. As I was watching it, I knew what was going to happen before it actually happens because the camera was so focused in one person for such a long time that it lost the “surprise effect”.
The supporting characters do way less in this film, so we almost don’t see Stanley Tucci as Caesar Flickerman, Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket, and the always amusing Woody Harrelson as Haymitch Abernathy. Woody was the one chosen to deliver some lines at the end that were supposed to be said by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who played Plutarch Heavensbee and, sadly, past away before the shooting was over.
All in all, I just watched it because I wanted to see how the story ended, but the very first Hunger Games is far superior to this last chapter.
