Surprisingly, and if we ignore Part 1, I actually enjoyed the movie more than the book.

Mockingjay Part 2 is the part with all the action and all of the stuff we actually enjoyed in the book. But again, I felt kind of felt deflated after watching this.

We are thrown into the action with Peeta being brainwashed and trying to kill Katniss. Then things slow down, there’s a lot of walking around wastelands again and not much really happening. I mean, let’s just leave that there and go straight to the part we actually care about.

Gale and Katniss are trying to sneak into the Capitol and Snow’s home to assassinate him. During this Snow’s building is taking in all of the Capitol’s children for refuge as they are the future. Gale’s plan (which was mentioned earlier in either part 1 or 2 but was glossed over quickly) gets into action where they drop ‘presents’ onto the crowd which explode and kill a bunch of people, then when people go to help a second explosion happens and kills more. The slow motion and music of this part is heartbreaking and seeing all the little kids reach up to get the gifts knowing that they’re going to die is horrific. It’s a really raw way of looking at civilian casualties of war and mimics life pretty hard. This is also the moment where Katniss’ sister dies which is obviously a horrible moment.

Comparing this moment to it in the book I hated it because it felt so rushed. I felt like we lost a whole chunk of the story because, being from Katniss’ point of view, she gets knocked out and the capitol gets seized. We don’t get to see that but in the movie there was enough going on when Katniss wakes again to make it watchable.

Then we have the ending. She kills Alma Coin instead, the woman who was going to take over Snow after he is executed, because she wishes to create a new Hunger Games using the Capitol’s children and Katniss does not agree with that. Snow dies anyway and Katniss gets to live happily ever after with Peeta. Kind of forced, kind of dumb but whatever.

But then we are subjected to so many endings where it fades to black but doesn’t end. We have the assassination, Katniss moving back to 12 with Peeta, then Katniss telling Peeta she loves him and then, finally, Katniss and Peeta in a field with their children. It just went on and on, the book ended with Katniss telling Peeta she loved him and that was a lovely ending but they had to include the cheesiness of the kid ending as well. It wasn’t needed at all and felt incredibly forced and just chucked on the end. It could have been quite good but it just wasn’t.

This movie left me feeling drained and that’s why I never reviewed it when I first saw it. I just didn’t know what to say. It left me feeling hollow and incredibly underwhelmed. I just didn’t like it and honestly I think it was a bad ending for a franchise that started so strong. I’m glad it’s over and I’m glad I never have to be subjected to it again but I do wish it had a better ending, an ending closer to the book, because then it may have felt better and left me happier then it did.

What did you think of Mockingjay Part 2?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding