We were bored last night, so we went out for it. I have to say, it’s a LOT better than the first one. The lack of shaky-cam alone was enough to make it 300% better, but even the direction and characters seemed to be done better.
It should make them LOTS of money.
Spoilery thoughts:
[spoiler] First off, Dragoncon goers ought to recognize a particular hotel and elevator that shows up a couple of times in the training sequence. I hadn’t let my husband know that they filmed in Atlanta, so he laughed out loud when he saw it. Native Atlanteans should also recognize a few other scenes as well.
Poor Liam doesn’t get to do ANYTHING in this movie. (he’s the chap who plays Gale, the hometown boy) I hope they paid him decently anyway.
It was nice to see Effie (the lady stylist) actually showing that she’s human and not a robot. Likewise Haymitch (their mentor) was capable and intelligent and drunk, instead of just drunk.
I loved all the Capitol scenes, but I thought the costumes and makeups weren’t as outre as they were before, which is a shame.
I LOVED President Snow’s expression when his granddaughter explained that everyone at school wore their hair in a side-braid now. [/spoiler]
This is the last of them I’ll see - the worldbuilding in the books disgusted me so that I hated the last book with a passion. (I was distracted in the first two books by gladiator games, but even then I was mildly affronted by the lack of logical worldbuilding.) I don’t think I could stand to see two movies made from *Mockingjay *without screaming at the screen about economics and resource management and human psychology.
The first book bored the hell out of, but I loved the first movie so will be seeing this one in the next couple days. I really want to see the full scene where Katniss does her interview in the white/black dress. It looks incredible in the previews.
Usually, the middle movie in a trilogy is a little weak. It serves more as a transition, setting us up for the ending. Not this one.
My left hand hurts. SWMBO was grabbing it and hanging on throughout the action scenes, which means they were really good. I am mightily impressed with Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss; she is simply incredible.
Go see it in IMAX. It’s worth the couple of extra bucks.
Saw it Friday night and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I love it and thought they did a good job with the movie. Of course, I loved the books, and book two was my favorite of all three.
Now, when I re-read them, I see the actors in my mind. It’s gotten to the point where I’ll think, “Oh, I want to watch that scene again,” only to realize the movie hasn’t been released yet.
My only quibble is that not everything that was in the book was in the movie. I realize it’s not realistically feasible to do that, but still, I want it all.
I have a question that occurred to me when I was rewatching the first movie and watching this one:
Do the people that fill the “busy work” roles in the Capital (like the Peacekeepers and the people at the consoles of the game room) live in the Capital? Do they dress in the fancy clothes and go to the silly parties after they get off work or are they brought in from the districts each day and then go back? I am sure it is more fleshed out in the books, which I have not read, but I don’t understand exactly how this all works.
It was fine. The two 13-year-old girls I took to it loved it; fortunately, I made sure we sat far apart so I didn’t have to deal with their squealing.
My 15yo son liked it, too - I get the very clear message that from a fanservice standpoint, it supports the book quite nicely.
I hadn’t read the books, but connected the dots just fine, but it didn’t stand on its own, to me, as a big action movie.
Minor aside: Jennifer Lawrence is a very good actress and seems reasonably credible with a bow - but man, she can’t run for shit. Just no athleticism or grace - from what I know about the books, that’s kinda important (i.e., Katniss being an athletic, wiry huntress), so it pulled me out of the movie a bit. I kept noticing how they explicitly cut away from opportunities to show her in a full body shot running. But they had to…
But that’s my issue; by all accounts that matter - see comments on my daughter and her friend above - it will do incredibly well.
for the first movie i understand the use of hand cam. the books are written from katniss’ view, using that camera gives the movie her view. going from her life in district 12 to being a tribute she is way out of her element and watching the way it was filmed you have that, “whoa, wait, what!” feeling she has.
this time around she is a bit more savvy and polished so the style has to change. from what i’ve seen in clips and interviews, mr lawrence has made the film more polished and refined.
i’m planning to see it on “black friday”.
some of the peacekeepers are from district 2. district 2 has a lot of back and forth with the capital.
I’m interested in hearing more about this. I haven’t read the books, only seen the first movie. It doesn’t really elaborate much on economics etc, so I don’t know enough about the world to criticize it. Can you tell me what your criticisms are?
I do think it’s implausible that people would en masse celebrate children being forced to kill each other, even the children of “the enemy” (and in the film they’re not really enemies anymore, having been long subjugated). A subculture of very cruel people, perhaps, (still doubtful tbh) but a whole society en masse? I don’t think so.
That Gamemakers are citizens of the Capital; ditto for Effie, Cinna, the prep teams, etc. Appearances aside not everyone in the Capital is idle rich. Peacekeepers mostly come from District 2; very few Capital citizens sign up (unless forced to by debt). It’s a 20 year minimum commitment, during which one is forbidden to marry or have a family (one of many allusions to Ancient Rome). In theory residents of other districts can sign up as well.
Sure, but I’ll try to keep it short - I don’t want to threadshit my own thread.
The books are written from Katniss’ perspective, and so focus exclusively on what she encounters, sees, and thinks about. Since she has no clue how the larger world runs, that works well for the first two books, both focused on the contrast between District 12 and the Capitol, and on the cruelty and difficulty of the Games.
Mockingjay starts to get into the larger revolution that has adopted/co-opted her as their symbol of hope, and that’s where things fall off the rails for me.
The Capitol depends entirely on tribute from the Districts to survive - power, tech, soldiers, foodstuffs, all comes from these Districts. In the books, the Districts are specified to be fairly small, very far apart (surrounded by uninhabitable or inhospitable wilderness) and very depopulated. Those scenes in the movies with people standing together in the square for the Reapings? That’s supposed to be EVERY CHILD that lives in that district, plus many of their family members.
Looking from that, to the resource-spending of the vast masses in the Capitol, there’s just no way for the system to work for that long. 74-75 years where that few people in each District, with no tech assistance and no modern tools and equipment supported that huge mass of Capitol citizens? Not a chance.
During the games, I can ignore it because we’re focusing on Katniss and her experiences, but once the focus widens out, it just becomes impossible for me to ignore, and it drives me batty.
The first sentence is the only one correct. Has it been awhile since you read the books?
Katness clearly says that District 12 is by far the smallest, least important and most disregarded District. That’s the only one. The other Districts are larger and much more important to the Capitol. For instance, District 11 (where Rue and Thresh are from) is HUGE with a very large, very spread out population. Katniss doesn’t know how many people live there, but she guesses that they must have a pre-Reaping lottery to make sure the kids who are chosen as tributes are in the square since only a fraction of them, let alone the rest of the people, can fit.
Even in District 12, not everyone can fit in the square. She says that the side streets are full of people watching on large screens put up by the Capitol.
I can type in the specific parts of the book that reference these things if you’d like. The Wikipedia page about the Districts give info about them all, though not the populations since that’s not something Katniss knows. Still, it’s pretty obvious that they’re all bigger.
The Districts themselves don’t support the Games, only those in the Capitol (and even then, not everyone since there are rebel sympathizers). Sure, some people from some Districts do think it’s good, such as those who bet on tributes, those who live a cushy life thanks to the Capitol, and those who have been brainwashed into believing it’s an “honor” to die for your District and the Capitol, but most don’t. The Districts are forced to treat it all like a big barrel of fun, with banners and music and parades and feasts, but it’s a major cause of resentment.
The Games have been going on for 75 years. They’ve been a constant since birth for early everyone. In the Capitol, it’s normal for these people to treat it as entertainment because it’s always been presented as fun and exciting and interesting. They don’t see the tributes as “real” people, they’re Not Like Them. They can love the victors like pets but the tributes and victors are outsiders and their deaths aren’t important to (most) Capitol residents.
Look at our own society and what we support as entertainment. A few more degrees and who knows? Look how long it took us to start thinking that maybe animal testing should be looked at and changed to make it more humane, or even eliminated whenever possible. That’s not for entertainment but it’s somewhat of an analogy. Most Capitol residents see the tributes as entities who would die, no big deal, for their benefit/entertainment.
It has been, yes. I read them when they each came out, and didn’t go back and re-read the others, so for the first, it’s been a good while.
So I misremembered the details, but regardless, the overwhelming impression I got from all of the books was that the scale was just very off. It could just be me nitpicking - I do that. But I really did read sections thinking “there’s just no way this is being described correctly if it actually works” - and of course now, I can’t remember (obviously :D, see above) the details to say why.
The first two books carried me along, but **Mockingjay **I just couldn’t keep the suspension of disbelief any longer, and it really frustrated me that just as the world opens up to Katniss so we can see what’s going on through her, by that time I was so irritated with the underpinnings of the world that I didn’t care properly. Which I thought was a shame.
But who cooks the food in the Capital? Who washes the clothes? Who does all the boring day to day stuff a city needs? People from the districts or the spoiled Capital citizens?
Remember that Katniss was really poor. It doesn’t take a whole lot of automation and indoor plumbing to seem “rich” and “decadent” to her eyes. Most of us would probably fit right in the crowd of Capital.
Katniss struggled to put food on the table…literally. All of Katniss’ team are Capital citizens - hairdressers, makeup artists, tailors. But they bathe daily and have clothing without tears and stains, so Katiniss thinks they’re awfully fancy and soft.
I don’t think this is a spoiler, since it was touched on in book 1, but it wasn’t really referenced in the movie. Just in case, I’ll spoiler box it:
[spoiler]Avoxes–people who’ve had their tongues cut out–are forced to serve as Capital slaves/servants. One Avox in the book is a red-headed woman (a Capital citizen running away from the Capital, for reasons unknown) that Katniss saw get snatched up by a hovercraft while she was out hunting. She is a kitchen servant in the books. Katniss regrets not helping her, not that she could have done so without risking becoming an avox herself.
Another avox is a male peacekeeper from 12 who objected to the new regime in Catching Fire. He plays a significant role in Mockingjay, because he worked in the sewers in the Capital and knows their layout.[/spoiler]
The worldbuilding didn’t bother me much about Mockingjay or any of the other novels. There were plenty of handwaves snuck in that the world was passingly plausible. The problem with Mockingjay was that it was a terribly written book inside a handwavingly plausible framework from the previous books. Seriously, Mockingjay has to be among my top 2 or 3 worst slogs through any novel. I wanted to find out what happened to some of the characters that I put up with seemingly hundreds of pages of absolute nonsense, and it wasn’t in the least worth it.
(Not a threadshit, since the thread isn’t about the third book and the OP brought up their issue with it.)
Yep, I absolutely recognized the Marriott Marquis in that scene. and almost laughed. I’m not a native, but have lived here twice now - I knew they were filming up the road from where I work, but hadn’t paid much attention to where that filming actually was, so it took me by surprise.
I liked this one better than the first one, far more so, in fact. Had this one frustrated me in the same way as the first one, I wouldn’t plan to see any after this (and I went to the cheap Sunday morning show for this one because of that disappointment in the first one).
In part, I liked that
[spoiler]the Peeta character became far less wooden - I still don’t like the actor who plays him, but he did a better job of acting in this one.
I also like the it felt like they glossed over the right things - all the wedding crap, was hinted at in the right way, between Snow and the Plutarch character, without making us see it. The scenes with Snow and his granddaughter were good too, and something we didn’t get in the books, but that do a great job of showing the influence that the Games as well as Katniss & Peeta have.
I liked the anger from the victor-tributes. [/spoiler]
The one thing I didn’t like:
Prim. She’s much more developed as a character in these books. In the movie, she just shows up for the occasional scene - suddenly she’s helping their mother, stepping in for their mother, instructing their mother in the medical side of things. Having read the books, I know where this comes from, but in the movie, this side of her character comes out of seemingly nowhere.
That sort of bothered me as well. It literally makes no sense. Why is a Capital of what looks like millions of buffoons with high speed maglev trains, force fields and VTOL aircraft economically dependent on 8000 hillbillies for…what…coal?
Sort of like why is Peeta work in a bakery in a district where they eat black market squirrel meat to survive?
Here’s an idea for quelling rebelling. How about not having the children of the states you run fight to the death every year and starving them out for no apparent reason? Then they are just a bunch of people with shitty jobs and nothing to complain about.
Native Atlanteans should also recognize a few other scenes as well.