Four years of films and all of them in the same collection. For fans of The Hunger Games, who don’t live in mansions in Panem, having the complete collection of Katniss Everdeen’s journey in one package is quite the offer. How her journey on film compares to her book’s adventures is debatably different, but nonetheless meaningful regardless of medium. Lionsgate has seemed to recognize this with this Blu-ray set release, including worthwhile features (old and new — 27 deleted scenes across the films, two new features and 70 featurettes from all the movies) and offering up a gorgeous packaging that shows they acknowledge the fan obsession with The Hunger Games story.
Beyond the packaging, though, lies four individual films that clearly need reviewing, so without further delay let’s get right into it.
The Hunger Games
The first film is really a low budget ($78 million) sci-fi adventure that offered up two things — Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss and tense action. Lawrence propelled the first film and carried it on her back, much like the quills Katniss carries through the competition. She takes a low budget b-movie and firmly shows a serious actress can make it better. She had help with the likes of Stanley Tucci as over-the-top interviewer Caesar Flickerman and the horrifying cruelness shown through Donald Sutherland’s President Snow. Her supporting cast, mainly a mix of young and old, brought both good and bad to the story of survival in a broken world. For example, while I love Woody Harrelson is nearly everything, he seemed a bit out of place in the first film as Katniss’ mentor, Haymitch Abernathy. When he got in the groove of his character in later films, he was considerably better, but he was a bit uncomfortable in the first film. Same goes with Josh Hutcherson’s performance. He seemed nervous as Peeta Mellark, but in later films got in line with the vision of the story. The first film just felt like everyone was cautiously making their way through it, but not putting too much stock into another film being made. In short, they played it safe.
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As stories go, the outer shell of Katniss’ story was pretty thin. Why she was in The Hunger Games was predictable, how she ended up at the end was not surprising. The real beef to the first film was that wonderful survival middle, which helped to solidify Jennifer Lawrence as a force to be reckoned with, much like her alter ego Katniss.
Overall, the first movie was okay, though severely lacking in narrative and good dialogue in some places. You could see some struggle that director Gary Ross went through when trying to translate the book to film, but it ended up just fine on the bottomline. The first film hit $400+ million worldwide, which guaranteed another movie. And the second film really brought the goods from every angle.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
When you make a lot of money, you’re given more leeway, with the budget doubled ($130+ million) for the sequel, and a better story out of the bunch on the way, the second film in the series had a lot going for it.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is a more balanced piece of material than the first. You can tell by the writing and acting that there is growing confidence with the direction everything is heading towards. Director Francis Lawrence knows how to make some good characters come alive, as well as great action sequences (see Constantine and I Am Legend for details). There’s a more cohesive setup outside of the action sequences that bring out Katniss and crew better than the first. There’s a more sense of urgency with her plight and everyone involved shows their hand at what they have at stake with it. The action sequences aren’t relied on to drive the film, even though they should be, considering what’s at stake in the overall arc of the story. Everything seems a helluva lot more believable and it all creates a restless, shaky world that is nothing short of an uncomfortable experience for the audience. Added to all of that is the portion of the story where Snow is pretty darn ruthless towards Katniss and shows on more than one occasion how much he wants to keep the status quo amongst the people he rules. All of these things are put together in proper order, given enough time to grow and executed beautifully. A quarter of the way through the film you understand that this movie has turned into somewhat a political thriller, where Katniss and Snow are playing a game of chess to control the masses in their world. Again, the story is woven beautifully.
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Having said all this, I wish there was a bit more beef to the actual Hunger Games in the movie. I think that maybe there was a bit too much time spent on ally relationships and not enough with putting together pieces of action that played out the way they should have played out. In short, it seems a bit jumpy once the fighting begins, but it all comes back together by the end and firmly relies on the third film to make it all work. That’s not a bad thing, but they better get the third one right to preserve the good setup in the second film.
Anyway, by the end of the film you’re just dying to see the next one, which is a mark of a great film. It also proves that the bridge from story two to three is a strong one.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1
The last story of the trilogy was broken into two pieces. Lionsgate wanted to break up the last story to give time to properly close up the story for Katniss. While I personally believe that the studio might have been shooting for a Peter Jackson-esque payday (The Hobbit could have survived in one movie, but there was $300+ for each film to be had), because the last book honestly didn’t need to break into two separate stories, the budget provided for each part tells a different story. The first film was given around $125 million to work with, while the second $160 million, which is a lot considering the combined length of both (123 minutes in part 1, 137 minutes in part 2). That’s a lot of studio money and trust into what essentially is one single film.
Anyway, the first part focused solely on Katniss and her involvement in taking Panem back from President Snow. For most of the film she witnesses the horrors of all the districts. She visits terrible places and becomes Plutarch Heavensbee’s Mockingjay for his propaganda purposes to un-poison the minds of Panem district residents. Part 1 is a political thriller that slows its pace down in comparison to the other movies. The action is scarce, the focus is on character development and building solid plot points that are setup to collide in the second movie.
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For people like myself, who avoid books because we’re dumbasses, seeing how the story unfolds on film the way it does in comparison to the previous two movies, kind of takes some wind out of the interest sails. Director Francis Lawrence and the team of writers that worked on this did an admirable job of making the last book in the series somewhat interesting. As my wife tells me every time I bring it up, the last book is certainly the weakest of the bunch, so making it feel at least a bit intriguing is an impressive feat.
Beyond losing some momentum and interest, my biggest issue with the movie is the unbalanced narrative. Some of the parts could have been shortened while still making an impact on its audience, while others should have been lengthened a bit. For example, I think a bit more focus on Peeta would have been a great route to go. Knowing what he went through under President Snow’s capture and how he got to the place he got to mentally when we see him again would have been far more impactful than 20+ minutes of Katniss and company running downstairs to avoid President Snow’s shelling attempts.
In the end, though, part 1 is a bit of an unbalanced mess with storytelling, though still intriguing because the promise of the final piece of the narrative puzzle is on the horizon.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2
The final part of The Hunger Games trilogy (the story, not the movie releases) starts with a bang. We have Peeta trying to recover from his ordeal with President Snow’s folks, while Katniss has to keep one eye open for Peeta’s attacks against her. In addition, the rebels are gearing up for a final attack run on Panem’s capitol to finally unseat Snow from his perch and take the land back. There is a lot at stake in this final push, especially for Katniss, who is struggling with staying behind the frontline long enough to keep the district momentum going.
The tension of the final push is pretty thick in this last film. The momentum for Katniss to convince everyone to band together against Snow is the big driving point for the first part of the film, while a brief return to action is on the agenda (when I say ‘brief’, I mean it’s nearly the second part of the movie).
The first act of the film has Katniss visiting more district locations, getting shot during a capture of a district and running away to get in the thick of things during the final raid. In addition, she also struggles with getting Peeta back on his feet, while also struggling with her personal feelings about him and how to handle the situation. On top of that, she is also trying to find an easy way to let Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth) down from their broken relationship, although there relationship is far more believable than the one she has with Peeta.
As the first act is concluding, and all of these little bitty plot points are being tied up, the action starts with Katniss’ escape to the frontline to help out her fellow soldiers on the raid to the capitol. The next hour of the film involves Katniss and crew methodically working their way through traps and enemies to get to Snow’s gates. It’s such a slow part of the film, yes even for action, that tries to put back together Katniss’ relationship with Peeta, rather than focusing on the mission at hand. Had the action been the focus, maybe the characters (such as Mahershala Ali’s Boggs) would have come together a bit better. This part of the film seemed like it honestly didn’t know where it was going. It wanted to be deep, but not boring. It was boring, but not deep. Director Francis Lawrence, and writers, seemed confused on how this important piece of push needed to be handled. It was a mess, though it did have some exciting moments here and there (see the sewer scene for example).
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Once the third act begins and Katniss finds herself literally at the gates of President Snow, the movie gets knocked down a bit. *SPOILERS* Just when you get a tense moment where Katniss approaches the gates…BOOM! Bombs go off, she is knocked out and wakes up to a resolved raid on the capitol. She literally goes to sleep, wakes up and everything is done. If you’re waiting for this climax after all you’ve been through as a dedicated audience member, your return is a fade out, fade in. Incredibly disappointing are the best two words to describe this moment, as it seems a bit like a copout. I wanted this dramatic ‘Saving Private Ryan’-esque raid into the complex with lives being taken and everything going to hell around our central character, but all that was provided was a unconscious progressive effort. *SPOILERS END*
It seemed cheap at the end, even the conversation with Snow and Katniss was shallow and meaningless. For such spite and nastiness through three films, you would think this final moment would have been out of this world and unhinged. It was not, it was simple and shallow. I wanted the second part of this to be so much more than it ended up. It deserved a triumphant crescendo of action and drama during the raid, but it simply did not reach that point. Not even close.
With that said, as a whole, these movies are still fantastic together. They depend on each other for support, much like some participants of the Hunger Games, and without that support they become disjointed in a sense. The lone exception is the second film, which is phenomenal, even on its own. Fans of the books will still enjoy this collection, as well any Jennifer Lawrence fans out there. It’s a good story and a worthy attempt at something powerful.
