Mockingjay Still Doesn’t Bite

The Hunger Games franchise could have been great if it wasn’t built from the ground up for middle schoolers. Battle Royale understood what dystopia required—genuine dread, genuine consequences that stick. These films have the pieces for that: dead kids, a dictatorship butchering people, rebels getting executed in the streets. And then the filmmakers sand every edge down until it’s safe, managed, bloodless.

Not that I need pointless gore. That’s not the argument. But when your entire premise is a state murdering children for entertainment, and resistance fighters are being killed by the thousands, I don’t want to *imagine* that horror. I want to witness it. Feel it. Not have the camera turn away the second it gets uncomfortable or difficult. That’s what the books are supposed to be for, and obviously nobody reads those.

Still watching Mockingjay Part 2 when it comes out at year’s end though. Curious where they take it—Jennifer Lawrence, the final assault on the Capitol, all of it. I’m already annoyed because I know exactly how they’ll handle it—all careful, all managed, never actually showing the violence they keep saying is the point. But I’ll be there anyway.