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Sequels are a wobbly tightrope to negotiate – especially once a considerably expanding universe grows to a point where it has to ditch the shackles of what initially used to define it. What am I babbling on about? Well, let me use the third Hunger Games movie as a handy example.
As we all know, the first two films followed Suzanne Collins’ source material which both set a recognisable formula. After being introduced to the dystopian nation of Panem, we trawled around the social set up of lesser districts being ruled by the powerful Capitol before dropping our wide-eyed protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, into the action. After some mawkish, love triangle action, the middle section of the story would take us on a tour of what occurs before the titular Hunger Games, with the final third of the story/film shifting into The Most Dangerous Game territory as both Katniss, and pseudo-love interest Peeta, both struggle to survive while inadvertently firing up a revolution back in the other districts. However, with the third book, Mockingjay, Collins wisely opted to ditch that formula in favour of confronting a dystopian revolution head on – but here’s the rub: is the act of abandoning that dependable formula leaving the story in danger of feeling like it doesn’t fit? Will it still feel like The Hunger Games if there is no actual Hunger Games?
After the events of Catching Fire, a recovering Katniss has a brave, terrifying, new status quo to embrace. Following her latest act of televised defiance during the 75th Hunger Games, Panem is in disarray after it fired up people in various districts to rise up against the Capitol and it’s dictator, President Snow and in an attempt to keep order, Katniss’ home, District 12, was bombed into oblivion. While her mother and sister are safe, and everyone willing to fight in an upcoming war has been moved to secret bunkers in District 13, the other survivors of the Third Quarter Quell – including Peeta – are still being held in the Capitol.
Once well again, Katniss is introduced to rebel leader, President Coin who details her plans to make the young woman the face of the revolution in order to stir hope and bring yet more people over to their cause. However, just because Katniss has managed to light the fuse of revolution with her antics, it doesn’t necessarily mean that she actually has leadership qualities yet. While an increasingly irate Plutarch Heavensbee struggles to make her an effective propaganda tool, both old colleagues, Effie Trinket and Haymitch Abernathy are drafted in to once again guide Katniss towards her apparent destiny.
However, while Capitol missile strikes and rebellion push back seem to suggest that ground is being lost and gained all over the place, President Snow is playing especially dirty when it comes to the media. Sure, Katniss is improving in leaps and bounds when it comes to being the figurehead of a rebellion that needs her, but can she focus on the job at hand when Peeta is going on the air to denouse her as merely a young girl misled by terrorists?
While it’s obviously following the lead of Suzanne Collins’ books, I still think The Hunger Games: Mockingjay deserves a hell of a lot of credit for branching out into something new rather than trying to find a way to shoehorn in yet another Quell just because that’s what audiences are used to. Leaving dystopian gladitorial battles in the dust and avoiding the step-by-step guide of training in the Capitol, the franchise sucks in a determined breath, sets its jaw, and changes direction by heading fully into war movie territory. Oh, all the basic themes of the franchise are still here, such as the manipulation of the media to gain control, the corrupting results of power, and which boy is hotter, the butch one or the sweet one – but mostly gone are the Hunger Games basics that were introduced in 2012 and further refined in the superior 2013 sequel.
However, while bravery is certainly to be applauded, Mockingjay – Part 1 finds itself as the least of the Hunger Games offerings so far mainly because of two problems that prove to be inherent with it’s very existence.
The first is the unavoidable issues that rise up because of that ominous “Part 1” clinging to the end of the title. That’s right, it’s yet another movie that’s opted to split its source material into two parts in order to avoid ditching too much of the important stuff, but as a result, we get a film that’s mostly all payoff and who treats its absurdly stacked supporting cast as random chess pieces to pop on and off the board at will.
Obviously, Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss is still well served by the fact that the world now literally revolves around her whether she likes it or not, and I’m still amused that a major part of her arc is that she’s just not that likable as a person. But giving the likes of Josh Hutcherson’s Peeta and Sam Clafin’s Finnick way less screentime in favour of Liam Hemsworth’s overwhelmingly bland Gale proves to be something of a mistake. In fact, Hutcherson is one of the many formerly main characters who is forced into essentially a glorified cameo role due to the demands of the change of pace. While a subdued Julianne Moore gets to make a statement as President Coin and both franchise stalwarts Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Bank do a lot with the little time they have, everyone else are resigned to exposition duty. It’s odd to see such acting heavy hitters such as Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright, Stanley Tucci and Mahershala Ali scrabbling for scant screen time while Natalie Dormer’s documentarian gets so much and seemingly does so little.
Of course, such is the nature of the beast when you split a book over two films. What we have here is two hours of set-up, interspersed with big moments (hospital bombing, attack on a hydro-dam) to bump that scale up to epic levels. However, even though the film has a few pertinent (if obvious) things to say about the nature of the media and how the truth can be manipulated during times of social upheaval, it’s not enough to shake the feeling that we blatantly only have half of a story. Admittedly, the cliffhanger ending is appropriately shocking, and isn’t as frustratingly egregious as the abrupt finishes of such other filmed-in-one-go sequels as Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and The Matrix Reloaded. However, returning director Francis Lawrence can’t stop the film feeling like this is either more prep for the imminent Part 2, or merely an extention of Catching Fire rather than being it’s own actual thing.
Once again, YA dystopia seems to be curiously hot right now as the opening salvo of Mockingjay ups the stakes and expands the canvas. However, while the stage is set to bring the whole endeavor to its big finish, it does so at the expense of actually giving the film its own identity, while reducing the majority of an award-laden cast to a scattering of cameos. We hunger for more.
