Mockingjay Review: B

The theater was packed last Friday when I went with my family to see the new movie, Mockingjay. All of the people in the theater, including me, were waiting to see how the next Hunger Games movie was going to turn out.

Overall, I was really happy with the movie, and at the end, I came out of the theater pleasantly surprised.

I had read the books and seen the last two movies, so I had a basic idea of the context.

I have never said this before, but the movie was actually better than the book. It had more action and was less boring than I expected.

Also, the characters’ interactions and different issues lead me to have many emotions throughout the entire film. The different emotions that I felt were all similar to how I reacted to the book, so I really enjoyed that. At times I was laughing, especially during some of the interactions Katniss has with the older characters like Haymitch and  Effie.  There were times, too, that I was sad for the characters, or scared, especially towards the end where Peeta comes in.

Each character seemed to have more of a personality and felt more real than in the past movies. With the other two being so action oriented, I figured that this one would be less intense, but some of the dramatic scenes lead it to be more intense in some ways.

It was also important to me, that the storyline was similar to what Suzanne Collins had written. Overall, they did a good job of capturing most of the major plot points, as well as adding their own exciting movie twists such as the end scene with Peeta behind the window.

Naturally, there were still a  few things that I found subpar.

There could have been less scenes where the characters just talked and more where they went out and created an action scene. This was probably because the plot was so dense, that the first movie had to have more story telling and less action in it. That is only a minor issue though.

Also, In the book Peeta’s presence was very prevalent, contrary to the movie. He could have been introduced to the plot earlier to hold more integrity with the original plot.

Another issue for me was the fact that it is only part one.

Part of me liked the idea that it would be longer, because I enjoyed it, but then I also feel like for all of the people that are not true fans, it is a bad idea to break it in two, because the will not want to pay to see each movie if they are not invested.

There are many factors that may play into this. I think that one of those is that they may have just been trying to get money out of the viewers, asking them to come and pay to see two movies instead of just one.

I feel that when movie directors started splitting them into two in Harry Potter it was good for that movie, but now that more and more movies are doing it, it may just be for money and not because  it is better for that movies plot.

All in all, I give the movie a B, because it is pretty good, but not as great as it could be.