The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 Review

It’s pretty hard to ignore the thick layer of irony coating the release of the third installment in the Hunger Games series, “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1,” the week before Thanksgiving, so with that in mind, I spent two hours of my weekend of thanks checking out Katniss Everdeen take the helm of a Panem revolution—or, to be more exact, cry and do photo shoots—and here’s what I thought of Katniss’ latest cinematic adventure. Let me start by saying “Mockingjay” isn’t my favorite book in the series. The first book in the trilogy was my favorite, my problem with “Mockingjay” being that we’re taken out of the careful structure of the Games and introduced to a wider stage—Panem—with a much more significant conflict: the growing revolution. I recognize my problem is simply that I’m a creature of habit and felt comfortable relying on the clean-cut plot structure that the Games presented within the first two books: Katniss is sad about life in Panem, gets picked for the Games, fights for her life, then defeats the Games. But the trilogy wouldn’t be what it is if the scope didn’t widen in the third book. Either way, we benefit, because in “Mockingjay” we get something totally different from the first two books plot-wise; we get significant emotional development from Katniss, and we get the juicy political drama and revolution that has been all the rage in YA dystopian fiction lately. We get that in the movie too.

“Mockingjay” is a pretty depressing book, certainly the most dep…