The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2

By now, the economic practicality behind the film adaptation “two-fer”—making two films out of a single book of source material—seems both obvious and inescapable. Overall shooting costs are lowered, release schedules become yearly instead of “every two-to-three years,” and a whole host of variables (actors’ age and availability not least among them) become less disruptive. Arguments can be made for it serving a legitimate storytelling purpose, as well—at 759 pages, Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was both a beast of a book and the culmination of a series more loaded than most with a complex mythology and robust cast of characters, all of which would demand some narrative attention in the film if audience needs for closure were to be met. But beyond all, the math just can’t be denied: the budget for the two films derived from Deathly Hallows was around $250 million, roughly the same as the budget for the single film resulting from the previous book. At $934 million worldwide, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was no slouch at the box office, but the same budget yielded more than $2 billion for the Deathly Hallows films. That’s some pretty tasty ROI. (Now, making three films from a much smaller, single book—“pulling a Hobbit”—that can take its toll on source material and audience enjoyment even as it lines studio coffers.)

All that’s to say—like most of the audience, I walked into The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 untroubled by the two-fer trend. Yes, the first Mockingjay film was a bit slow, even as it played up the political intrigue of the “arena-less” book of the series. And yes, unlike Deathly Hallows, there’s not really a compelling reason beyond studio economics for the two-from-one approach. But it was also a given that the finale, being generally faithful to the books as the entire series has been, would have more action than its predecessor. (It does.) And there’s the cast, anchored by Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss and counting some heavy hitters among the supporting cast. (There’s a fair number of Academy Awards and nominations among them, after all.) More than is usually the case, I went in knowing what to expect.