The Franchise That Kept Blinking

The Hunger Games should have been something else. All the raw material was there: a fascist state that murders children on live television, a resistance movement built on grief and strategic image management, a heroine who’s genuinely traumatized rather than just cinematically weary. And instead of following any of that where it leads, the films spent four entries sanding every edge smooth. Battle Royale came out fifteen years earlier and had the nerve to commit. The Hunger Games films just kept blinking.

I’m not lobbying for gratuitous violence—I don’t need fountains of blood to stay engaged with a story. But when you establish a dictatorship that sends children to kill each other for televised entertainment, and then cut away from every moment that might actually disturb someone, you’ve made a different film than the one your premise promises. The horror ends up living entirely in the audience’s head while the screen stays tasteful. That’s a choice. I think it’s the wrong one.

Still, the trailer for Mockingjay – Part 2 is here, and I watched it, because I’ve come this far and I need to know how it ends. (Books exist, I’m aware.) Jennifer Lawrence sprints and fires and screams through a capital city rigged to kill its own population—apparently the final stretch turns the streets themselves into a death trap, which is at least more interesting than another cave conversation about Peeta’s psychological state. People I’ve watched across three films will die. Whether the franchise finally earns the weight it’s been dragging around since day one, I genuinely don’t know. I’ve been wrong about these films before, in both directions.

Kaboom, I suppose.