HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY-PART 2 theatrical experience

• Theater style: Dolby Cinema-AMC Prime
• Screening particulars: DCP, the weekend following its release.
• Attendance: About 30.
• Number of cell phones seen after lights down: 0, but that’s part of the beauty of AMC Prime. The rows of platform seating make it pretty much impossible to see a cell phone if someone below you pulls one out.
• Audience participation: Pretty into it. One woman in particular started crying about 20 minutes before the end and barely ever stopped. I’m surprised they didn’t have to put her on oxygen.

Spoiler-free, Super Short Synopsis

The final film in the Hunger Games series. Katniss Everdeen decides the only way to end the rebellion is to head into the heart of the capital and dispose of fiendish, skinny Santa Claus herself. (P.S.-For the non-hungry gamed, not really Santa Claus. Donald Sutherland just looks like him now.)

Spoiler-free, One-paragraph Impression

Pretty good. Catching Fire is the absolute champion of the Hunger Games tetralogy, but this one is a satisfying finish without pulling any punches. After a slow start, Mockingjay-Part 2 starts working it’s way through one thriller sub-genre after another, and that’s a pretty cool way of making the second half of the least involving book of the series interesting.

Let’s back this up a little bit. I LOVED the first book. I was in the middle of reading another book — probably something Stephen King’y — when my wife made it clear to me that it was very important to her that I read The Hunger Games. Sigh. A little YA, sci-fi bit o’ business. Okay. I said I’d do it after I finished my current book.

Now.

What?

I need you to read it now.

Right now?

I want to talk about it. I think you’re going to love it.

So, a few days later I’m sitting in my car outside of a Starbucks because I realized my open weeping had gotten a little too loud to stay inside said Starbucks. I was reading a very moving death scene in that first book. Readers, you know what’s up.

Viewers of the first movie won’t know what’s up because director Gary Ross pooched the emotional resonance of that entire flick. Which really bothered me, because Pleasantville is an outstanding movie, so he knows how to direct. Also outstanding is Paul Thomas Anderson’s music video for Fiona Apple’s version of “Across the Universe” from the Pleasantville soundtrack.

That music video has more emotional potency than the whole first Hunger Games movie. Because Ross kept hiding emotional punches underneath layers of camera shake and misguided POV shots. That scene that had me crying like the first day of pre-school as words on a page was played on the screen as a POV shot of wind blowing through the trees. A space completely outside of the moment. The entire effectiveness of that scene hinges on two characters drawn together in one devastating moment. One watching her little life slip away, they other trying to comfort her and staying with her until she’s gone. It’s heartbreaking, it’s awful, and it’s a very specific moment playing between two people on two faces. In a massive stretch of woods, surrounded by insane dangers and psychopaths, this is a very quiet, intimate moment playing out. And it’s all in the space between their faces. It tells us everything about Katniss. We’ll stay with her forever, the way she stays. It’s a moment Ross stole from us. Instead of seeing strength, kindness, sorrow, and the senselessness of human warfare, we see how the wind makes branches move.

So, I loved the first book. Loved the second book. Could not get into the third book.

When Francis Lawrence took the reigns for Catching Fire I was optimistic. I really dug his Will Smith-fronted I Am Legend. Now that I’m thinking about it, the scene I just spent an hour talking about in the first movie could have used some of the unblinking humanity Lawrence used in the heartbreaking “Say goodbye to the best friend” scene in I Am Legend.

Catching Fire killed it. We saw that in a packed IMAX screening and arrived late enough that we had to sit in one of the front rows. Despite the warped perspective, that movie played beautifully to that packed house. Gasps, laughs, shouts, groans. It did everything to us we could have asked. Lawrence found really clever ways of putting the brutality in our faces while keeping it PG-13, without it feeling false, and without shaking the camera like a bottle of pulpy orange juice. It was a fully realized, emotionally viable Hunger Games movie. So when he signed on for the last two and Danny Strong — Jonathan from Buffy and Doyle from Gilmore Girls — signed on to co-write after his success with Lee Daniels’ The Butler, I thought — Okay. It sucks they split it into two movies, but at least there’s two reasons to check them out.

We caught the Part 1 on our couch at home and I thought it was solid.

Finally… 839 words into a review, let’s talk about the movie we just saw. No spoilers.

The obvious distinctions of a Dolby Cinema-AMC Prime theater over regular AMC Prime are slightly different controls in the recliners — two buttons instead of one — and each chair has a subwoofer in it. The subwoofer thing is cool for a movie with a lot of explosions, which MockingJay-Part 2 certainly provided. But the regular AMC Prime chairs are a touch more spacious and comfortable.

The beginning of Mockingjay-Part 2 feels like more of what came before, Katniss being riled into speeching at masses of dirty, inspire’able folks. I, however, wasn’t particularly inspired. I dug it when it happened in the first half of this two-parter, but this time it felt like — Oh, that’s right. I didn’t really care for this book. Here we go. Thankfully, that feeling didn’t last very long. Mockingjay-Part 2 quickly morphs into a sci-fi war movie, with the enemy booby traps and exploration of what the rebellion is doing to everyone providing plenty of visual and emotional interest.

As our little team of heroes is forced to take cover at a certain point, this flick turns into James Cameron’s Aliens for a half hour. It’s awesome. So incredibly tense. We were all shifting uncomfortably in our seats, trying to anticipate when the inevitable terror was going to start. Lawrence and the sound team mess with us incredibly well by cutting the tense music out of the scene way earlier than any scare is supposed to arrive. All we can hear are the team’s exhalations of effort and splashing their way through the echoing maze of pipes. It could happen at every dark corner. Super effective.

When they get back above ground it starts to play like a tense political thriller, once again very effectively.

There is a scene at the end of the book that I was very curious to see how they would handle. Ultra brutal and devastating. It’s something movies would typically never do. But the movie handled it perfectly. Mixing a touch of childlike wonder to the moment before the brutal horror is unleashed. And it is not disguised in any way. Right there in front of us where we have to deal with it. That’s how The Hunger Games is supposed to be.