Mockingjay, Pt 2 review

SPOILERS FOR BOOKS AND MOVIE.

I don't review without them, and it is at the top of my blog, but just in case: I'm not being particularly careful to avoid them. Or, actually, even trying at all.  If you don't want to know who lives or dies (and haven't already read the book, because there are no changes on that front), then this is probably where you should get off.

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Okay, still here?

First, I want to acknowledge that Mockingjay is an incredibly difficult book to adapt to any kind of dramatic form.  Most of the key elements take place in Katniss's head, and while having a fine actress like Jennifer Lawrence in the part helps matters, even Olivier couldn't have expressed a series of undiscussed decisions by a slight tip of the eyebrow.  It just doesn't work that way, unless you already know what the narration is.  Much of MJ is spent as Katniss begins to realize, with dawning horror, what the rebellion has become, and what it's doing to her and to her loved ones, finally culminating in the death of her sister in a false flag bombing meant to kill the last support for Snow by making it look like he bombed a plaza full of children.   The cruelest part was that the trap -- while never intended specifically for Prim -- was designed by Katniss's friend, Gale, who has become more and more radicalized as the story goes on, losing any compassion he once had.  (Though he understands it at the end, and I believe he can find his footing again.)

 Through it, Katniss has frequent fugues and times when she simply withdraws from the world and goes inside her head.  Many of her decisions happen in those head-spaces.  That is very hard to script.

So how did they do?

I had my doubts, but it was actually... pretty okay. Much better than I expect out of Hollywood, which has been the case throughout the series.  It's beautifully filmed, and most of the decisions made were, at the very least, not destructive.  And I don't mean to be damning by faint praise here -- Mockingjay is a very good, very thematically dense book, and I had a real fear that even these producers would drop the ball in the end and not really face the book head on.

Before I start, the major changes:
For some reason I can't even guess at, they decided to have Katniss sneak into the Capitol instead of just going with the star squad in the first place.  Since they promptly sent the rest of the squad in and didn't change from there, I'm not sure what the point of that was.  It couldn't be, at this late date, that they thought the audience was too stupid to figure out that she was just playing along.  Since the scene where she and Gale discuss the fact that she's planning on breaking away, that doesn't play.  So why? I dunno.  I guess it doesn't  ultimately harm anything (especially since it went exactly nowhere), except for the fact that we don't get to see the scenes where she and Johanna bond,  but I don't understand that call.

Katniss's injuries are much less severe.  She doesn't lose her spleen.  Her burns don't seem terribly bad, and neither she nor Peeta is close to death at the end, or even scarred.  Her mental state never degenerates into the self-destructive shock she goes into in the book, probably because it would have been too much screen time for an element too many people really didn't like.

They chose, finally, to address the importance of the bread scene, and in what I consider one of the biggest missteps, had Peeta attack her on that scene ("I should have fed it to the pigs"). The fact that he didn't do so in the book was one of the signs, to me, that he really was still in there. And original line, a wistful, "I must have really loved you," was more poignant.  Again, kind of an inexplicable narrative decision, but not awfully destructive in the long term.

There are about a million minor changes, but nothing that even a Evil Purist (tm) like me is terribly fussed about.  Most of the problems were in skipped characters. I'm sorry, but sending Prim in to talk to Peeta instead of his friend Delly is just stupid.  ANYONE would have made more sense than Katniss's beloved little sister.  I know they wanted to give her something to do, but come on. 

I'd heard that Prim's death scene was changed, but all I really spotted was that Katniss was standing on a truck instead of climbing a flagpole.  Otherwise, it's as written.

They switched the ages of the kids in the epilogue so Katniss would have a baby to talk to.  I'm perfectly fine with this change, though I hope it doesn't get picked up in fan art, where it's unnecessary.

I know why Tigress didn't remake them as much as she should have -- the audience is following visually, so you want your actors recognizable -- but it did make it giggle-worthy that, in essence, Katniss's only disguise as she went to kill the president was a big hood.

Elements?  Elements.

Character
There's a cast of thousands, of course, which means that no one gets much in terms of development.  Poor Finnick only got a handful of lines before his death, which left that scene without the emotional resonance of the book.  Haymitch got most of his book lines back, so I can be glad of that. (Haymitch is my favorite and I have given him more thought than I expect filmmakers to, so I'm not going to go on and on about how I wish they'd focused obsessively on this or that.  And they officially teased  Hayffie.  What more can a fangirl ask?)  Shoved into practically one-line-land are Beetee, Johanna, Annie, and, as mentioned, Finnick.  Paylor actually gets expanded a little, which is not a bad thing, since she's the one who ends up president, and seeing her in action gives a sense that maybe, just maybe, they've managed to get it right.

Snow... sigh. Look, I get that you snagged Donald Sutherland, and he is all manner of awesome, and is a fanboy to boot (he wrote a letter explaining all of Snow's motivations!), but time spent with his crew in scenes that don't really make any difference to the story is time not spent on the plot.

They worked around Hoffman's death pretty well.  The only significant Plutarch scene left was one where he talked to her about the end of the war, and it was re-written as  Haymitch reading her a letter from him, since he couldn't be seen with her right then.

Peeta and Gale.  Okay, I've said Hutcherson was miscast, and I am actually very pleased to take it back this time. Yes,  he still looks nothing whatsoever like Peeta, and his romantic chemistry with Lawrence is still nil, but here, he brings a very strong sense of the character, and, romance or no, he and Lawrence do a wonderful job with the inherent strong affection between these two characters, which isn't easy, given the material in this section of the story... but is absolutely essential to the plot. While the overt story is Peeta recovering from his hijacking with Katniss's help, the mirror story is Katniss re-learning who she is as well, as she chooses Peeta's kindness and quiet determination over Gale's increasingly frightening anger and vengeance.  The years of working together really pay off here.  Hemsworth's Gale also deserves a lot  of credit. He manages to take the character where he needs to go without ever sacrificing sympathy, or making it seem like Katniss is in the wrong to have anything to do with him.  His final scene, where he acknowledges how badly astray he went, is lovely.

Of course, it's Lawrence's Katniss that carries it all, as it should be.  Like I said, she doesn't go through the psychological injuries that she does in the book, but Lawrence manages to get across her  confusion and dawning horror as the movie goes through.  Without Katniss all of it falls apart, and we get good Katniss here. The scene where she finally realizes that Peeta wants to recover, and tells him about his favorite color, and that he double-knots his shoes -- it's taken verbatim from the book and it's absolutely GORGEOUS as a performed scene between them. The scene where she decides to kill Coin really does manage to get across thought processes without dialogue, with just looks between her and Harrelson.

Plot
It's the second half of Mockingjay, covering Katniss's trip to District Two, the surge into the Capitol, and the aftermath of the war.

I said that I thought they were right to split it into two parts, but after the whiplash-worthy D2 sequence, I have to admit: They probably should have split it into three.  I mean, dear God.  It was about fifteen minutes in when she'd (a) recovered from Peeta's attack, (b) asked to be sent to Two, (c) gone to Two, (d) been shot in Two, and (e) gotten back and been told that she couldn't go to the Capitol.   Until she actually got to the Capitol, I was sort of hating it for all the whipsawing, stone-skipping storytelling.  I mean, I can buy brevity, but this was the equivalent of telling Cinderella, as "Cinderella had dirty clothes, then she got new ones," then lingering in loving detail on the run down the palace steps.  It covers the bases, but you kind of miss something.

But once Peeta arrived in the Capitol, I was happy more or less until the end, even if they did start stutter-jumping around around the plot again for a few minutes.  That was most of the movie, so no complaints.  The battle scenes were horrifying, and they really did show the rebels explicitly opening fire on the fleeing civilians, including a featured child civilian.  The talks among the dwindling band were great.  The man playing Pollux (sorry, I don't remember his name) was really fabulous.  And the mutts in the sewers.  EGADS. Those things were exactly what I imagined when I read the book, and they were terrifying. 

The main issue, of finding out that Coin had been every bit as manipulative and dirty as Snow, is quite well handled, though I still think it was poorly set up in the last movie.


Style
Stutter-jumping story aside, this was a very well-filmed piece.  The choice to mirror Katniss's behavior in Peeta was brilliant, highlighting the real, underneath story.  In the book, Peeta mutters a lot. In the movie, they chose to make it explicit.  As Katniss opens by stating her name and origin, which she did in the beginning of the last movie, Peeta's mutterings are, "My name is Peeta Mellark.  I'm from District Twelve..." Etc. That was an excellent choice.  They chose not to have any light moments, really, except for the wedding and the epilogue.

And on a small shot  notice, I have to say, in the end... there's a montage as Katniss and Peeta heal, and there's a simply beautiful shot of them sitting in the doorway and watching a rainstorm together. It's a sweet, simple moment, and I think it's really a spot where I can believe that they're going to be all right.

Setting
I question the choice to have the Capitol so very gray looking.  It's supposed to be filled with candy-colored glass buildings, and I think the contrast of the war with the bright and beautiful city would have been more effective. But I guess I'm never going to convince Hollywood of 2015 that THEY DON'T HAVE TO SHOOT IN PSEUDO-BLACK-AND-WHITE to be be taken seriously.  Did I shout that?  Sorry, didn't mean to shout.  The Capitol apartment where they take refuge is quite luxurious (and for once, there's a future TV set up that I feel like a rich person might actually spend money on), but we don't see much of it, and it's very dark. I always imagined the Capitol as light and airy... a contrast to its behavior.  This just looked like an above-ground Thirteen.  They could have been cold and colorful and still contrast with the final scene, which is warm and natural.

The final, epilogue scene, in the mountains outside Twelve, with Katniss and Peeta playing with their children, is beautiful.   Full stop. I don't have anything else to say about it; I just wanted to say that.  I kind of just wanted to be there, too.

Theme
There's a lot that gets wrapped up in the series -- love triangles, politics, commentary on the media -- but all of it boil down to the line that Peeta says in the first movie, and Katniss returns to here: "I don't want to be a piece in their Games."  The whole idea, from start to finish, is that you can't let yourself be swallowed by circumstances. You can't let go of yourself, of your inherent sense of right and wrong, no matter what cause you think you're fighting for, because in the end, that will destroy both you and the cause.  Choose humanity. Choose the dandelion in the spring.

So, with that, the series ends.  Was it exactly perfect? No.  But in terms of movie adaptations of books?  This series has been a resounding success. Good job.