The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

Here are three reasonably good-looking young people and a bird that is on fire for some reason.

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?

In these opening lines from the Prologue to Act I of Henry V, Shakespeare establishes what academics would later describe as a "topos of inexpressibility." The high and kingly matters of war and politics are so consequential, so deeply and intensely real, that it is beyond the ability of a playwright and a handful of actors to reproduce them; the players can only point to grander things than themselves and hope the audience will forgive them.

A moment ago, as I sat in front of my computer preparing to review the fourth and final film of the Hunger Games tetralogy, I was reminded of Shakespeare and his topos of inexpressibility because reader, I cannot fucking express to you how bad this movie was.

I feel so empty inside.

That was such a bad movie.

I mean, it was SUCH a bad movie.

Near the end, while yet one more excruciating, plodding scene offered us more flabby expository dialogue regarding the fates of characters we last cared about no later than 2013, I turned to John and whispered, "oh god, how much more of this must we endure?" and he was nice enough to say "ssshh," because the man who had been snoring behind us for the last 45 minutes* seemed to have woken up, and it was possible that he was once again attempting, against all reason, to enjoy the steaming shit-heap of a movie that was The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2.

The Hunger Games trilogy was an all-right series of young adult novels to read on three consecutive rainy Saturday afternoons and then forget about forever. John knew that I had read them and liked them, and for this reason he made the heroic gesture of not suggesting we leave halfway through the movie, which is a shame because, as he discovered while we were filing joylessly out into the night among other grim and disappointed theater-goers, I would have said yes immediately.

The young heroes of the Hunger Games series constantly struggle to overcome the deception and treachery of cynical adults who manipulate their behavior for power and profit. The third book of the series, Mockingjay, was split into two movies, creating a strong yet unintentional thematic parallel in which young fans of the series have been duped into watching two bad movies instead of one potentially good one, abusing their youthful idealism but doubling the money of the franchise's investors. And if not for this naked privileging of profit over storytelling, Mockingjay could have been a pretty good movie. Talented people worked on this thing. The set design was great. The costumes looked fantastic, especially this one grey outfit that Julianne Moore wore towards the end of the movie that even looked good with an arrow sticking out of it.† They had not one, not two, but THREE Academy Award winning actors, plus two really good actors from Game of Thrones, PLUS Donald Sutherland. The fact that there were so many great components made it all the more tragic that they had been assembled so clumsily into such a shoddy result.

As far as the plot goes, well, it's the end of the Hunger Games story. The movie has a pretty high body count, but none of the people who die bleed while they're dying because the movie needed to have a PG-13 rating and the MPAA, weirdly, has decided that you can show lots of people dying, including in this case some pretty young children, as long as you never show them bleeding. If nobody in this movie had died at all, but Katniss had shown her tits and Peeta had dropped the F-bomb, then it would have been rated R. America is weird. Anyway, if you want to learn anything more about the plot of Mockingjay, read the book, you'll have a better time.

I cannot even tell you how bad this movie was.

This movie was SO BAD.

IT WAS SO BAD.


*I am not making up the snoring man. His wife was sitting right next to him, and she just let him sleep. It was the right decision.

†Yes, Julianne Moore gets shot with an arrow. By Katniss. Who is supposed to be executing Donald Sutherland. I would have given a spoiler warning, but this twist is so heavily telegraphed that if I kept the secret from you, your ignorance of it would not enable you to wring one more drop of pleasure out of this dry, empty husk of a film.