All right, it’s time to review this popular film! I was fortunate enough to get to see it on Thursday night for the 8 o clock showing. Not bad eh? Got to beat the midnight screening by a few hours which was awesome and I probably should have written my review right then and there, but I like to digest it first. I usually have stronger opinions about a film after a few hours/few days have passed. I’d say that one day is plenty for this one and I’m ready. I didn’t really care for the first film and thought that the book was much better. That’s basically the same feeling that I got from this film which was definitely better than the first one, but not by much.

This review will mostly try to stick away from spoilers that occur during the film, but I can’t really avoid the spoilers from the first film….so bear with me on that. As we all know, Katniss ended up winning the Hunger Games on her last run as she thought of the berries plan. Peeta was spared and the world was saved! (Peeta went along with the plan, but it was basically her strategy so he was just along for the ride) Snow isn’t very happy about this and he forces Katniss and Peeta to tour the districts as they watch people get beat up and destroyed. They try (Unsuccessfully) to keep their composure as they go around deceiving people, but it’s not working.

Snow decides that he’ll force them into entering….The Hunger Games! This time, only the winners are allowed into the prestigious tournament so the stakes are going to be a lot higher. This also means that nobody is truly safe since the government could always pull a fast one…but I guess we already knew that from the first film eh? Let the Games begin!!

All right, where to start! There’s definitely a lot to say about this film and unfortunately, a good amount of it is negative. Let’s start off with the positives and work our way from there. The camera is much better for the fight scenes and it’s good overall. There are a few scenes where the camera does move very quickly during the fight scenes, but the improvement is definitely noticeable and it should be perfected by the next film. The training area for the tributes is a lot more hi tech and it makes the whole thing feel more like a serious training ground.

The costumes for the characters are also a lot better and while I can’t put my finger on which costumes they remind me of, they definitely seem familiar. These are more like battle costumes than what they wore in the first film and it’s good that they’re more experienced. Katniss is ready to win this time…or is she?

All right, positives are over! It’s time to get down to the nitty gritty. Let’s tackle one of the larger problems first. This film mixes several factors that I don’t like in a film: Romance, Animal Violence, Acceptance, and Corrupt Governments that mess with everyone. I’ll delve into each of these factors and I suppose that I should start with the romance.

Where to start! Peete and Gale are around of course. Gale doesn’t appear for very long, but he definitely makes sure to have his share of romance in those scenes. Peeta appears a lot and he also gets a pretty substantial amount of romance. Naturally they all revolve around Katniss as she leads them both on. I want to say that she doesn’t intend to make fools out of them, but it’s really hard to debate that. Katniss wasn’t very good in this film, but when you keep in mind that there weren’t really any good characters in the film, it helps to even things out. There was also a very unnecessary scene in the elevator that dragged on for wayyyyyyy too long and made Peeta and Haymitch look like chumps. Definitely one of the worst scenes in the film and if that’s not easily the worst scene in any film….you know that you’ve got trouble!

All right, let’s get into the Animal Violence. Well, we have forest animals getting hunted by villains guys like Gale and then we have Katniss shooting birds out of the sky. As if that weren’t enough, then we get a scene where baboons (Or a similar creature) attack the main characters and there are many casualties. We also get to see Fish being eaten which is pretty distasteful. I definitely had to take some serious points away from the film for this transgression and it was not something that I would forget.

Ready for the Acceptance? You’re probably wondering why that’s a bad thing so it’s time to get into a little bit of depth for this. It basically ties into the final negative as well which is that the people know who the villains are. Everyone knows that President Snow is a dictator and that he must be stopped, but nobody is powerful enough to stop him. Katniss and Peeta decide to work for the guy which helps to soil their morals as they watch other people get beaten up and destroyed. Either way Snow is going to continue on his path to eradicate everyone so why should they play along as all? It seems to be that they’re just making things worse by doing this when they could be making things better by fighting back.

On a side note, we had the “Hardcore” moment that most films try to gun for several times in this film. When the characters go on TV and are interviewed, one of them says the “Hardcore” word and everyone in the audience laughed and cheered. It makes me wonder if they would have clapped and cheered if the character had switched the word to Forget and still finished the line. Probably not, which is sad. I couldn’t take the character seriously anyway since she was basically out of her league.

This film deals with a lot of tragedy and sadness as Katniss gets to several of her friends beaten up and murdered in front of her. It’s sad for Katniss since she can’t really fight back and she just has to move on to the next thing each time. It would be good if she could try to avenge them and take Snow to jail, but that’s essentially impossible right now.

I’d say that the film overdoes it with all of the tragic moments. Snow is evil and he’s going to murder everyone…we get that. So is it really necessary to see him murder everyone and then see everyone stand back and watch? One scene was almost comical when the new general met the older one. Everyone knew what was about to happen except for the general himself which can definitely be tragic. Everyone who is around Katniss seems destined to die and this is one of those film series that won’t have a happy ending. There is far too much death and destruction for that.

This brings me back to the whole escapism thing. The film is just far too depressing and tragic to be a truly great film. It’s like Sucker Punch and Paranormal Activity. Whatever positives are in those films will always be overshadowed by the sense of dread and desperation that they emit. It’s the reason why films like Man of Steel and Avengers will always take down X-men and The Dark Knight. The film had some light moments scattered here and about, but it was pretty dark for the most part. I would say that it was even darker than the first

Finnick was one of the only Hunger Games participants who actually got a role. Most of the others either died off screen or just appeared for a few minutes and then vanished. Thinking about it, we actually don’t get many human fight scenes. The characters either go up against wild animals or are just running away from traps for the whole games. Some of the contestants weren’t even fighters which lowered the chances of a good fight scene even more. There isn’t really a soundtrack for the movie, but did you expect one?

Another sad thing is that Katniss should have been a good character in theory. She’s the hardened veteran who is back for one last time to destroy the other opponents. It sounds good on paper, but she starts to have stress attacks and the delusions overtake her. She’s also forced to do things for the camera which is pretty demoralizing. She should have just fought back and saved herself the humiliation. Katniss was also ready to lose to the general without a fight which was definitely another bad thing.

The ending of the film is a good and a bad. On the good side, it’s a perfect cliff hanger and in thoery, it’s how most great films should try to end. This is how I’d want Avengers 2 to end and then lead into Avengers 3. Picture the last line spoken in this ending and just increase the scale. It would be a pretty awesome way to end the film. On the negative side, Katniss is supposed to look very menacing and hardcore in the ending, but it didn’t really work. The scene was just way too long and she couldn’t pull off the facial expression.

Overall, this wasn’t one of the better films out there. There were just way too many negatives for me to count it as a good film. If the film had taken out the romance and animal violence it would have helped, but the film would have only risen to a 5 or maybe a 6 at most. If they had made the film happier and added some fight scenes, then maybe I could give it a 7. Sadly I can’t really expect that much more from the sequel since the book wasn’t even as good. This film was disappointing since I did think that the trailer was a big step up from the last one. The run time was also pretty good since it was nearly 2 and a half hours long and made up for the fact that the actual games take a very long time to begin. Unfortunately, I don’t have any hopes for the next one. This could be the beginning of the end, but if you liked the first movie then you’ll probably like this one as well. There was also a poison scene that I didn’t care for since it was a little too graphic for me but…I should probably end there. Check it out if you wish, but I’d sooner recommend playing Pac Man at your local computer!

Overall 3/10