On Friday, Nov. 21 2014, Mockingjay Part 1 was released into theaters. I had an opportunity to go to the pre-screening earlier that week and it was pretty amazing. Mockingjay is part of the Hunger Games trilogy. The trilogy is basically about the capitol ruling the 12 districts for the past years. Every year the districts have a drawing of two people to compete in “The Hunger Games” in which those chosen will fight to the death until one victor remains. Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark have sparked a rebellion by both winning the games. In Mockingjay, Katniss is leading the rebellion against the capitol.
Personally, I am not a huge fan of The Hunger Games, but I decided to go anyways. When I had arrived, the line was super long and full of fan girls. The movie itself was less intense than I had expected. Compared to the book, the movie summarized the story pretty quickly though. The movie was about two hours long.
The characters in this movie include Katniss Everdeen starred by Jennifer Lawrence, Peeta Mellark starred as Josh Hutcherson, Gale Hawthorne starred by Liam Hemsworth and many more that people tend to forget about.
The movie started off with dramatic scenes of Katniss and Finnick’s struggle to get back to their mental stability. I understand that they went through a lot but in contrast to the book, I feel like Katniss is trying her hardest to get back up while in the movie she sulks about how Peeta isn’t with her, as opposed to the societal issues. In addition, Katniss is chosen to represent the rebellion as the mockingjay but refuses the position as she is constantly worried about Peeta. District 12 has been burned down by the capitol and once Katniss goes to visit the remains, she finally decides to be a part of the rebellion as the mockingjay. The opposite happens with Finnick though, in the book it sounds as though he is mentally and physically unstable, while the movie shows him with more strength than I had expected.
Throughout this movie I couldn’t help but think that this is our society nowadays; injustice is happening all over the world. The downside is that no one is going to take the chance to stand up because the government is the ultimate ruler.
The movie ended on a cliffhanger, causing people to itch for the next movie which won’t be coming very soon. The projected date for Mockingjay Part 2’s release is Nov. 20 2015. Before the credits though, there was a message “In Loving Memory of Seymour Hoffman” Seymour Hoffman played Plutarch Heavensbee and died on Feb. 2 2014. I thought that message was really sweet.
All in all the movie was well done and explained the general plot well. It was able to capture my attention throughout the whole time. Like Catching Fire, I was impressed with the actors’ abilities to fit their character so well. At the end of the pre-screening night, the contributor’s gave out free movie posters and T-shirts which reminded me very much of the Hunger Games itself; which I thought was very ironic.