"This is the revolution. And you are the Mockingjay." (thoughts on Catching Fire)

The second movie in a trilogy can sometimes be a hot mess.  Sometimes, it turns out to merely be inconsequential; for example I enjoyed Scream 2 (and yes, I know that they eventually made a fourth Scream movie, but I think the first three were originally envisioned as a trilogy), but after all was said and done, I recall commenting to someone, "The second movie basically could have not even happened." Not much of real consequence happened in that movie, and there was some stuff that I wished hadn't happened at all. 

More often, the second movie in a trilogy is a hot mess in that it's not a self-contained movie at all; you can't understand it without having seen the first one, and it doesn't really end, it just stops.  This is not always necessarily a bad thing.  Back to the Future Part 2, for example, is my favorite of that trilogy, but I love it because it's insane: now they're in the future!  Now they're in an alternate 1985!  Now Doc Brown is literally drawing a diagram on a chalkboard to explain what's going on!  Now Marty's back in the 1955 of the first movie, and he has to make sure not to run into his other self!  It ended with the words "To Be Continued," and very little was resolved; I recall, as a child, being all, "Wait! He didn't even go back for Jennifer!," because the movie ended with Marty's girlfriend still left passed out on a porch in (I think) alterna-1985.  I was very concerned about Jennifer.

Anyway.  The point is, Catching Fire (the movie, and, really, the book, too) is kind of a hot mess in that there's a ton going on and that it's not really a self-contained story, but like Back to the Future Part 2, it is awesome.  Though I liked the first Hunger Games well enough (I really liked it when I saw it in the theater, then found myself with more issues with it upon repeated viewings), in retrospect, it spent a lot of time setting things up; I liked that with Catching Fire, they could just jump right into things.

For those unfamiliar with the story, Catching Fire begins with Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) back home after the Hunger Games.  She and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) must go on a "victory tour" of the districts.  Before she leaves, though, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) visits Katniss to tell her, basically, that he's not buying her act: he doesn't think she's really in love with Peeta, which means that she didn't threaten to eat the poisonous berries at the end of the Games because she couldn't live without him; it was an act of rebellion against the Capitol.  At any rate, that's how some of the people watching saw it, and if a girl from District Twelve can defy the Capitol and get away with it, why can't everyone?  President Snow threatens that she'd better convince the people (and him) that she and Peeta really are in love and, basically, get this whole thing under control.

The problem is, it's already out of her hands, and they'd better get this whole thing under control...or what?  Or maybe the people won't get to go back to their regular lives of, as Gale (Liam Hemsworth) puts it, working like slaves, nearly starving to death, and risking their children in the Hunger Games every year?  At one point Katniss suggests to Gale that they run away, but he tells her no: she is in this thing now.  There's no going back.  Thus, the following conflicts are in play:

1) The Capitol wants to keep control of Panem.  Katniss is a threat to that.  However, the people see her as a beacon of hope, so simply killing her would only fan the flames of unrest.  Thus, they must either control her or change public opinion about her.  They try to do both, unsuccessfully, over the course of the film.

2) Katniss wants to  go back to life basically as it was before the Hunger Games.  It's nice to no longer be starving to death, but she doesn't like the Capitol dictating every detail of her life, as they do now and will continue to do.  The problem is, she's trapped; as Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) tells her, there are really no winners of the Hunger Games-- only survivors.  She has to play by the Capitol's rules or risk harm to herself, Peeta, Gale, her mom, and her sister.  As various characters point out to her over the course of the film, however, what's happening is bigger than all of them, and some things are more important than basic day-to-day safety and survival.

This all comes to a head in the 75th Annual Hunger Games, in which the Capitol announces the tributes will be chosen from the pool of existing victors, which means that Katniss and Peeta are going back in, along with a rather motley crew of fellow contestants.  They become allies with Finnick (Sam Claflin), a ridiculously good-looking charmer who Katniss isn't completely sure she can trust; Mags (Lynn Cohen), the other tribute from Finnick's district, who looks to be in her seventies or eighties; Johanna (Jena Malone), who strips naked in front of Peeta, Haymitch, and Katniss in an elevator (the look on Jennifer Lawrence's face throughout this scene is pretty much the greatest thing of all time) on their first meeting and is generally a badass; Wiress (Amanda Plummer), who Johanna nicknames "Nuts"; and Beetee (Jeffrey Wright), an electronics expert.  It's different from Katniss and Peeta's first Games: they've all been here before; they're willing to form alliances; and they all know who the real enemy is.

There's a LOT going on here, but the movie handles it all fairly well: basically, we follow Katniss as she goes from thinking that if she just plays by the Capitol's rules, it'll be fine, to realizing that it was never fine and is never going to be fine unless something changes.  She basically has to adjust her whole way of thinking.  The first movie was all about survival.  This movie is about deciding what you want for yourself when survival is no longer your only concern.

So, very good as the second movie in a trilogy.  It raises the stakes and leaves a lot let to explore in the last part.  I liked it.