The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part II

Directed by: Francis Lawrenceby: Micah Talbot

SYNOPSIS

Realizing the stakes are no longer just for survival, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) teams up with her closest friends, including Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), Gale (Liam Hemsworth) and Finnick for the ultimate mission. Together, they leave District 13 to liberate the citizens of war-torn Panem and assassinate President Snow, who's obsessed with destroying Katniss. What lies ahead are mortal traps, dangerous enemies and moral choices that will ultimately determine the future of millions.

Movie Critics• This film has a 7.1 star rating out of 10 on IMDB.• It is rated 71% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.• The New York Times called the film “rejoinder to another intolerant regime, that of a movie

industry that continues to treat women on and off the screen as a distraction, an afterthought and a problem.”

My ReviewFrancis Lawrence did an outstanding job directing The Hunger Games. It is a difficult task to take a

book and turn it into a film but Lawrence has exceeded expectations. When books are turned into films, a huge mistake that is often made is that the director directs the movie in a way that he/she assumes the audience has read the books as well. Many critical details are left out of the film. Part II of the Hunger Games does not do this. The plotline flows together and is coherent and that something that can make or break a movie. It may be an action film but it is more than things blowing up every couple of minutes. There is a complex storyline with developing characters.

Character development is also important in film making. Character Development is, by definition, the change in characterization of a Dynamic Character, who changes over the course of a narrative. At its core, it shows a character changing. Most narrative fiction in any media will feature some display of this. It is very intriguing to see the development of Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark, and Gale Hawthorne, through all four films.

i must say that it is annoying and a tired cliché for the last film series to break the last film in the series into two parts. The Harry Potter film series started this trend. The first seven movies average about $850 million. The eighth movie grossed over 1 billion dollars at the box office. Ever since then, every film series has attempted to recreate this formula. The Mockingjay book is only about three hundred pages in length. There is no reason that it should have been broken into two movies that have a running time of two and a half hours a piece. Nevertheless, the execution of the film was well done and is worth a watch.