The Hunger Games – the YA movie franchise that refused to die. Maze Runner faded and Divergent passed sadly away. Yet The Hunger Games never quite flatlined, and even in this final episode retains a tough kind of nihilist energy and inventive pessimism. Its bizarre dystopia – something between Orwell’s Airstrip One and Louis XIV’s Versailles – is still watchable. It’s something to do with Jennifer Lawrence’s charisma as Katniss Everdeen, and a watchable supporting cast, including the final appearance from the late Philip Seymour Hoffman as spinmeister Plutarch Heavensbee. There is also a tremendous action sequence as the rebels enter the president’s abandoned city, to find that the forces of tyranny have left a terrifying surprise.
For her final showdown with President Snow (Donald Sutherland), Katniss embarks on an impulsive campaign – which her rebel comrades have no choice but to support – intended not merely to get televised propaganda coups against the president but to assassinate him. This final mission is carried out in an atmosphere of deceit and duplicity, which gives a real twist to Katniss’s final kill. A little eccentrically, she still carries her bow and arrow, which she uses not just symbolically, but in real live firefights, which makes reloading a problem. And it is frankly odd that Katniss keeps waking up in a different hospital bed having been injured in some sudden scene-ending flareup. But despite being over-extended, it’s interesting how much energy and ingenuity this story turned out to have.
