The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (1 Viewer)

This is the latest blockbuster franchise adapted from a literary source to stretch the final book out into two movies. The first half premieres this Friday.

So far, the reviews are holding at 86% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes -- an excellent score, slightly above the 84% fresh for the first film but slightly less than the 89% fresh for the second film. The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy has given it the most notable negative review so far, calling it "...an overgrown and bloated trailer for a film yet to come" and saying that it "spreads perhaps 45 minutes of dramatic material across two far-too-leisurely hours."

Director Francis Lawrence told The Huffington Post that Philip Seymour Hoffman still had two scenes left to shoot for the two-parter when he died of a heroin overdose. Out of respect for him and his performance, they opted to rewrite the scenes with other characters rather than try to fake his presence with stand-ins or digital trickery.

The first film was shot by Tom Stern on Super 35 and cropped to 2.4:1. Catching Fire was shot by Jo Willems using a mix of cameras and techniques. Most of the film was shot on 35mm using anamorphic lenses. All of the stuff in the arena was designed for the IMAX aspect ratios. The bulk was shot using IMAX cameras at 1.43:1 and with planned crops at 1.9:1 for IMAX digital and 2.4:1 for regular cinemas. The stuff in the arena that was impractical to shoot with IMAX cameras was shot Super 35 protected for 1.43:1, with planned crops at 1.9:1 for IMAX digital and 2.4:1 for regular cinemas. Due to the compressed shooting schedule and the amount of scenes shot in low-light conditions, Lawrence and Willems opted to shoot the two Mockingjay films digitally using ARRI Alexa cameras.

I have my ticket for the Hunger Games marathon on Thursday.

So neither Mockingjay will be IMAX?

TravisR said:

So neither Mockingjay will be IMAX?

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It appears definitely not for Part 1. Most IMAX theaters will go right from Interstellar to the third Hobbit movie. If Lionsgate releases Part 2 in IMAX, it will be an upconvert like the original Hunger Games was.

Adam Lenhardt said:

It appears definitely not for Part 1. Most IMAX theaters will go right from Interstellar to the third Hobbit movie. If Lionsgate releases Part 2 in IMAX, it will be an upconvert like the original Hunger Games was.

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Thanks for the info! I enjoyed Catching Fire in IMAX (especially how they didn't switch over to IMAX until the games started) but I can live with paying $10 to see Mockingjay over $19 that it would cost me to see it in IMAX.

Catching Fire was my favorite integration of IMAX footage and 35mm. No changing aspect ratios for no apparent reason and footage from IMAX and Super 35 blend together better than anamorphic 35.

Adam Lenhardt said:

This is the latest blockbuster franchise adapted from a literary source to stretch the final book out into two movies. The first half premieres this Friday.

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What were the other ones? Just Harry Potter and Twilight, right? Or does The Hobbit count also?

(Frankly, I can't keep up with all these franchises. I'm nostalgic for the days when James Bond, Matt Helm, Flint and Godzilla were the only series I had to keep track of. And nobody called them "franchises" back then. )

Or "product".

I just watched the first movie again, and was struck by just how good of an adaptation it is. It does an excellent job condensing the material while capturing all of the key emotional beats of the story. And it does a great job expanding the political subtext from the book to create more interest for older viewers. On an entirely superficial note, I love the use of Century Gothic for the credits in these movies. There's something evocative about the starkness and simplicity of it, that undercuts this massive promotional engine. Reminds me of the kind of credits 1970s sci-fi dystopias would use.

Barring anything unexpected, "Catching Fire" is on the agenda for tomorrow.

I just got back from the marathon and enjoyed Mockingjay very much. I liked how it handled the material better than the actual book did. I rank Mockingjay part 1 2nd in the series.


I have no idea if as reported above it was shot on Arri Alexa digital, the image closely matched that of Catching Fire and the end credits had the Panavision cameras and lenses logo and none for Arri.


Sound quality in the theater was excellent, I could understand every word and the sound system did not sound overly stressed during any of the 3 movies. I am withholding commenting on image quality as I think the projector was slightly out of focus, the sharpest looking of the 3 films was The Hunger Games. I will try to watch it again in a different theater on Sunday.

Part 1 has the unenviable job of being mostly set-up for the final conclusion to come in part 2, but still set up things and move things along for the conflict between the districts and the capital. Going by that yard stick, Part 1 was okay, maybe a tad slow, a tad showy in the acting, purposefully so. The script lumbers along, with some action tossed in to keep the subwoofers going, some introspective dialogue here and there. So, it's almost unfair to really grade it until I see part 2 to see how the whole thing comes together.


For now, I give part 1 2.75 stars, or a grade of B-.

This is one of the few movies where I will say the film is better than the book. That's a real rarity for me. Mockingjay as a book was so much 'in Katniss head', a matter of internal dialogue that you often found yourself outside of the storytelling. The way this film clicked together I found better in almost every possible way.


The film suffers in that it is clearly divided in the middle, so we get only some rising action, and some sense of plot movement.. it is mostly setup; but I thought that Jennifer Lawrence was sensational here, and helped elevate mid-level material to a real sell.


A-

Full disclosure: I thought 2012's The Hunger Games was a decent film, but the followup, Catching Fire, really impressed me. Fast foward a year and here we are with Mockingjay - Part 1, a film that represents a dramatic shift in gears for the franchise. It's considerably lighter in the action department that the first two films, but Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen still manages to captivate your attention, even though her emotional/psychological journey in this film is similar to what we saw last November.

A small excerpt from my full theatrical review:

We're introduced to new characters — a guerrilla camera crew led by Cressida (Natalie Dormer) — who follows Katniss and Gale (Liam Hemsworth) into the war-ravaged neighboring districts, filming her every move for broadcast later. And there are a handful of brief action sequences, one involving Katniss herself, and a few others that illustrate the rebellion spreading like wildfire through Panem.

Those action beats, however, are few and far between. Beyond that, the film feels oddly inert, as it's all but entirely devoted to laying the groundwork for the next installment. There's a glimpse or two of life in the Capitol, as Snow prepares to crack down on the rebels. But by and large we're relegated to watching actors mull about subterranean sets, biding their time until the revolution can begin in earnest. It's a far cry from the open arena combat of the previous movies, which may not come as a shock to fans of Suzanne Collins' novels, but for those filmgoers expecting a more action-packed outing, it may try their patience.

Ultimately, you just have to trust that Mockingjay - Part 1 will play much more satisfyingly in a double feature with next year's Mockingjay - Part 2. In the meantime, think of it as more or less a pit stop on the way to the series' final destination. After all, though you may be itching to get back on the road again, you've got to gas up for the final leg of the journey.

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3.5 out of 5.

I liked it but the bulk of the movie just ended up feeling like a set up for the next one rather than a complete story. I assume if they're accurately adapting the book, there's no way around that and I'm sure that critique will lessen once I've seen the second half next year but I couldn't help but feeling like I wanted more.

Seeing this tonight...can't wait!

I loved it (Mockingjay - Part 1)! It sucked me in and didn't let me go. Only the dumb-ass in the audience that failed to turn off his mobile phone ringer managed to pull me out of the movie. (I probably pulled a few people out of the movie myself when I said "Thanks, Douchebag!" when his phone went off.) The only negative is that now I have to wait another freakin' year to see how it all ends (I haven't read the books)!

The Booth Bijou gives it 4.5 out of 5 stars!

Mark

Unfortunately I think a lot of the critics were expecting a different movie than was delivered. I'm satisfied because I know the material that it had to cover and it did that very well.

I have to admit, despite the fact that she reportedly hated singing it, this to me was a real high point of the film.

The practice of stretching material, that could be covered in one well-edited 2.5 hour movie, into two bloated movies -merely so a studio can make more green- is getting old and needs to stop. The practice is destroying the concept of proper pacing in film making.

Edit: Thank God this terrible practice didn't exist when David Lean was making films like "Doctor Zhivago" and "Lawrence of Arabia".

Edwin-S said:

The practice of stretching material, that could be covered in one well-edited 2.5 hour movie, into two bloated movies -merely so a studio can make more green- is getting old and needs to stop. The practice is destroying the concept of proper pacing in film making.

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I get what you're saying but at the same time, having 4 or 5 hours for the grand finale of your series probably means that they're making a much more faithful adaptation of the book than if they compressed all the events into about half that time. Obviously, I can't say for The Hunger Games yet but I think the last Harry Potter book ended up working much better as two movies.