MOCKINGJAY - PART 1 movie review

Ah, another young adult novel adaptation series concludes, and... What's that? Wait. "Part 1"? What the

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 is (haha, you guessed it) part one of the final story in the Hunger Games series. Here we're reunited with Katniss after the events of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and we find that she's in District 13, the supposedly destroyed district of Panem but which actually is a secret underground facility where the rebels are biding their time to take the Capitol. Katniss is once again thrown into action when the rebel leaders ask her to become a propaganda piece for them and to become the symbol of their rebellion, their Mockingjay.

I quite like the Hunger Games series. In my opinion, it has the best YA novel adaptation movies post-Harry Potter, and they work just as well as popcorn flicks. That being said, I wasn't really looking forward to this film mainly because I didn't really like the book it's based off of.

But man, does this movie deliver.

The film turned out better than I expected, and that's mainly due to the talent behind it. Returning to direct the film is Catching Fire's Francis Lawrence, and he does the best job bringing a lot of what I liked about the book to life. He made a good film that brought us out of the arena into the real world. The scope of the film is much bigger, a lot of beautiful shots and set designs, a lot of bigger and more riveting action sequences, it felt like it was on a much more grander scale while still staying true to its roots.

Jennifer Lawrence is also back for her third outing as Katniss Everdeen, and she's still amazing. I do believe that she gets better in the role with each outing. Liam Hemsworth gets a bigger role in this film than in the past two, and it's serviceable. He doesn't have the charm nor charisma on screen as his brother does, but I accept that he's there to add to the love story, and I can live with it. Also returning is Philip Seymour Hoffman, now with his new partner in political shenanigans, Julianne Moore. These two are great together, they play off each other really well, and they're a nice addition to the film. Josh Hutcherson gets less screentime this time around, but he delivers one of the more powerful and more moving ones. Most of the film, he gives a subtle and emotional performance that only works because of the build up of the Katniss-Peeta relationship of the last two movies.

The acting is fantastic, and it's very well directed, but the film does suffer from the studio's decision to split the movie into two parts. Now, I'm not entirely against the idea of splitting source material into two parts. I believe parts one and two of Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows worked really well individually and as a pair, I also believe splitting The Hobbit into three parts was justified, but the problem with this film is that there really isn't a clear need to have to split it into two parts other than more money and yet another cliffhanger. 

The problem is that Mockingjay the book clearly doesn't have enough substance to stretch two movies, yet they still tried to stretch out every single plot detail of the book to add screen time, but those stretched out plot details don't really add anything to the overall film. 

The film doesn't totally suffer from it, I still liked it, a lot more than the first actually. It serves as nice build up, but nothing more than build-up. I question why we couldn't just have one solid two hour and forty five minute movie with the solid build-up immediately followed by the meat of the story. I don't know, maybe I'll warm up to this movie more after I see part two, but it just really sucks that I have to wait for one entire year before the story and the character arcs that I'm invested in get become well-rounded and resolved storylines.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 is still a more than welcome entry into the series, despite some flaws. It's a damn good YA novel adaptation that's has stellar acting, fantastic directing, and some really intense action. Now that I know what I'm in for, I can't wait for Part 2.