The Hunger Games
is a franchise that has never really resonated with me. I read the first book in high school, and I
didn’t think it was bad or anything, but I found the plot derivative of plots
like Running Man and Battle Royale, and it didn’t inspire me
to continue reading the trilogy either.
So when the films came out, I didn’t really pay much mind to them, even
though I recognized that its fanbase was much better deserved than, say, Twilight’s, as The Hunger Games was a feminine empowerment fantasy rather than a
fantasy of submissive abuse. Now, in
light of the third film’s home video release, I’ve caught up on the film
franchise, and I have yet to have my initial impressions entirely rebuked.
The first Hunger Games
film is just bad. Poorly directed,
cheaply made, and utterly lacking of the internal monologue that made Katniss
an even remotely interesting character, it seemed made solely with the
intention of luring an inevitably satisfied fanbase into theater seats. Catching
Fire fared better, adopting a unique visual style and placing greater
emphasis on the use of the Hunger Games as a propaganda machine to quell an
unsettled populous. However, it felt
redundant in the overall arc of the story, essentially redoing the first film
to better effect but not really progressing the plot beyond its pivotal final
scenes. Mockingjay Part 1 is the first film to actually grab my attention
and keep it for the entire running time, mostly because this is the film that
strips away the mask of subtext and allows Katniss to grow as a character,
navigating her way through being the figurehead of the noble revolution’s
propaganda machine after having just been the puppet of their oppressors.
In the first two films, the social revolution plot was the
dessert that we waited five hours of collective runtime to get to. And now that it’s here, it feels like these
films finally have something interesting to say. The manipulation of mass media to effect
social change is a powerfully resonant theme on which to build a film,
particularly for the information-saturated generation that is the franchise’s
target audience. This isn’t as poignant
as something like Snowpiercer, but it
gets the job done, and it’s nice to see that all the fanfare for this franchise
is finally building up to something
noteworthy.
However, as the title implies, if this is the dessert of the
franchise, it is only half a portion.
For the entirely legitimate artistic reason of making Lionsgate
Films more money, the final installment has been split in half, continuing an
unfortunate trend in episodic cinema of bleeding a franchise dry until there’s
nothing left to pick from the bones. The
result in this case is a film that runs for about two hours with only a half
hour of plot-critical or interesting scenes.
The rest of the time is spent moping in the resistance’s underground
bunker or excessively establishing the atrocities that the Capital visits upon
the people of the Districts. In other
words, this film is ridiculously padded, and though the film does find a
dramatic severing point on which to end, it still feels like a ton of build-up
without the catharsis of a third act or climax.
And yet, for being the best installment in what has turned
out to be a fairly mediocre franchise trending upward, I’m willing to give Part 1 a pass. If you’re a fan of the franchise, you’ve
likely already seen it, and if you aren’t, then I wouldn’t go so far as to say
it makes the slog of the first two installments worth it. Yet, this was the film to finally get me
invested, and yeah, now I want to see how it ends. I’m not at the edge of my seat in
anticipation, but this was the film that made me sit up and take notice.
What’s your favorite young adult fiction adaptation? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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