The Hunger Games enters its final franchise furlong: the third novel has been split and doubled like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, though not tripled like the Hobbit. Perhaps unexpectedly, the story of Katniss Everdeen still has energy and internal coherence. It seems to be on the point of evolving away from young adult drama towards superheroism, as if the whole thing has been a huge origin myth, showing Katniss becoming Mockingjay, a sleek, black-robed ninja with a quiver of deadly arrows, like Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye from the Avengers. Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) has now been persuaded by the rebellious districts to be the inspiring “Mockingjay” figurehead for their fightback against tyrannical President Snow (Donald Sutherland) who has captured Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and is forcing him to take part in bizarre propaganda interviews, disavowing his rebel comrades, though Katniss sees he has been brainwashed. The late Philip Seymour Hoffman is the calculating PR chief Plutarch Heavensbee, another character with a name out of a strange Edwardian novel. The film plays on our real-world experience of warzone reporting, news management and spin. The Hunger Games is declining in power, but not as steeply as I thought, and this weird, operatic nightmare still inhabits the screen with confidence.
