Hey youtubers it’s Charlie and this is going to be my Mockingjay Review.
Hopefully you’ve had a chance to see it.
Just in case I’m going to do a non-spoilery part first and then I’ll get into favorite
moments with specific stuff.
I’m not quite as connected to the Hunger Games books as much as Song of Ice and Fire,
I only read the first one.
So when I saw Catching Fire and now this one I didn’t know what was going to happen.
You can feel this giant shift in the tone of the franchise within the first fifteen
minutes of the movie.
The first two films were all about this big epic event.
The Games.
And now that the line has been drawn in the sand between these two big powers inside Panem
it’s much more about the power of propaganda.
Propaganda was a big part of the first two movies, like when they made the tributes go
on Ceasar’s show.
It was very clear that all that was bullshit and all the characters trying to survive it.
Now Propaganda is the Games.
Or you could say it’s taken the role the Games played in the story.
A big call to action to the masses of Panem.
It’s just that now we get to hear the other side’s story.
And they do have a lot of fun telling that story inside the movie.
The circumstances are super depressing and Katniss as a character is still very much
a reluctant non-traditional hero.
But they’re still able to get some good laughs in.
It’s even funnier when you listen to what the actors say about pranks they played on
each other while they were filming.
Liam Hemsworth said that anytime he’s ever had a kissing scene with Jennifer Lawrence,
just to be funny she’s always eaten a ton of garlic or something really gross right
before they do it.
Elizabeth Banks as Effie also brings a lot of humor to the story.
Of all the films so far I enjoyed her the most in Mockingjay.
She’s always been the Clown but now she’s like the Sad Clown, which for some reason
seems funnier to me.
I was never a giant fan of Woody Harrelson’s Haymitch.
In real life he does share a lot of Haymitch’s qualities but I always felt like he was miscast
for the role.
He has this strange acting style that feels like it just doesn’t fit with a really serious
genre film like this.
I think he works better when he’s allowed to be super crazy, like in Zombieland.
The Hunger Games movies feel like they take themselves really seriously, which I don’t
mind, but Mockingjay is by far the most serious of them all, and Haymitch doesn’t feel like
he belongs.
Julianne Moore and Philip Seymour Hoffman were great together.
They’re both amazing character actors so you instantly forget it’s them.
It’s always fun to watch actors disappear into their characters.
They made it a big point to state that they didn’t use any CG to complete Hoffman’s
scenes.
He died before he’d finished his last few scenes and they chose to just give those lines
to another character.
It’s not something you notice but the producers made a big deal about explaining what they
did.
Just to address some of the criticism of breaking the movie into two parts.
I think the funniest comment I saw on twitter was Duncan Jones, the director who’s doing
Warcraft right now.
He said something like “The Only reason to break the third movie in a trilogy into
two parts, is because you want to buy a big ass yacht.”
I kind of agree, Mockingjay was written as one book just like the other two.
If they could do the other two books in a single film.
They could have done Mockingjay in one film too.
If you really hate that people are doing this with franchise movies now, you can blame Harry
Potter and Warner Brothers.
They’re the first big franchise to do the two part finale.
Warner Brothers also did it again with the Third Hobbit Movie.
The Hobbit was originally going to be directed by Guillermo Del Toro and be just one film.
But then Warner Brothers turned it into two films, added a bunch of made up things that
weren’t in the book.
Then added a third film with even more made up stuff.
And now studios can suddenly turn a 500 million dollar profit into 2 or 3 billion dollars
over a 10 year period.
So this trend isn’t going away anytime soon.
Disney is doing it with the Marvel films now.
Avengers 3 is going to be broken into two films.
Let’s all be honest though, we’ll still spend the money to go see everything.
I’m just as big a part of the problem as the studios because I support them financially.
Whatever.
Mockingjay is still a really fun ride, if you haven’t read the books there are some
great big set pieces that will freak you out in a really awesome way.
The ending was a nice WTF.
And if you have read the book you’ll still be crying your eyes out the whole time.
If you haven’t seen it yet it’s totally worth the money to see it in a theater.
Here’s my big question for you guys, what was your favorite moment and do you care that
they broke it into two parts to make more money?
Now it’s time to get into spoilers, I’m going to do my Top 5 moments so careful if
you haven’t seen it.
Here we go.
Number 5 - President Snow Facts
Like I said, I hadn’t read the Catching Fire or Mockingjay books, so there was a lot
I learned about President Snow when Finnick went on the air.
When they were jamming the airwaves with spam.
They were spamming as a way to attack the Capitol's defenses.
Which was also a pretty cool trick.
Remember how I said propaganda was the core of the film this time around.
The propaganda are the games now and there are only two participants in the ring.
Finnick explained that he survived inside the capitol by trading secrets, so it was
fun to listen to him spill his guts about how President Snow rose to power.
Like the fact that he uses the white roses to cover the smell of blood in his mouth from
wounds that will never heal.
Number 4 - Katniss In The Studio
The first time they try to make some fake propaganda was like the first time the movie
let itself have fun.
The whole beginning is so depressing and serious.
All the Hunger Games movies in general begin with the absence of action and even sound.
It’s one of the defining characteristics of the franchise in that they begin on such
downer moments.
So watching Katniss try to act was pretty funny.
And it brought Haymitch back into the story.
Even though he felt very out of place in district 13.
Number 3 - Jennifer Lawrence Singing The Hanging Tree Song
I don’t think I’ve ever heard her sing in any of her movies but I thought it was
beautifully melancholic.
You’re happy and sad at the same time.
The song is very appropriate to the story of the movie, but just in general it was a
great performance.
Number 2 - Effie Trinket Hates District 13
Elizabeth Banks was so much more fun this time around.
Sad Clown Effie Trinket has all this wit and style and no one in District 13 gives a shit.
I was never a huge fan of fancy Effie during the first two films, but she’s like the
pressure release valve for seriousness.
Effie For the Win.
Number 1 - Peeta Is Completely Nanners Because I went into this not knowing the story
I thought President Snow was either going to turn Peeta into one of those genetically
altered dogs like in Catching Fire.
I just remember that in one of the other books the dead tributes get their DNA spliced with
big freak attack dogs.
I thought that was what they were going to find when they were traveling through the
Tribute Center.
The way they edited that whole sequence teased a major reveal, so I was kind of dissapointed
when they just cut away.
It felt like it was building to something else than them just being cut off from communications.
The actual reveal, that Peeta was cranked up on Tracker Jacker venom was a great ending
though.
Right now I’m trying to finish a couple of videos before Walking Dead tomorrow.
I’ll post my Korra Q&A next and then I’ll try to get Constantine out.
If I run out of time I’ll just get that out Monday.
I did see Big Hero 6 and Interstellar but didn’t have time to do videos for them.
Since TV is going on break in the next couple of weeks I’ll have a little more time for
Hobbit whatnot and some Star Wars Episode 7 too.
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Thanks for watching, I’ll see you guys tonight.
High Fives!