When we last saw Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) at the end of Catching Fire, she, along with some of the other contestants, had been rescued from the Quarter Quell. In Mockingjay: Part One, we catch up with her in District Thirteen, where she, along with some of the other Quarter Quell survivors and escapees from the districts, prepare for the revolution. She has no idea whether fellow District Twelve tribute Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) is alive or dead. Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), the president of District Thirteen, and former gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) want her to be the face of the revolution. She just wanted to save her sister...but Mockingjay: Part One is, more so than the other Hunger Games movies, is about growing up and realizing that the world is bigger than you, your family, your friends, and your concerns, no matter how big or small those concerns might be. Mockingjay: Part One follows Katniss as she moves from reluctant figurehead of the revolution to actually believing in and fighting for the cause. Along the way, she gets bits of information about Peeta via interviews from the Capitol where he looks increasingly tortured and beaten.
It's an emotional rollercoaster, to be sure. It is exciting to see Katniss grow angrier at the Capitol and move beyond concern for her own and her family's safety to seeing the bigger picture. It's scary to watch Peeta's slow transformation at the hands of the Capitol. It's interesting to watch both the Capitol and the rebels try to manipulate the media for their own purposes. For as emotional as parts of it are, though, it also felt a little long. It's less action-packed than either The Hunger Games or Catching Fire; a lot of it is preparation for the bigger stuff that we know is coming in Part Two...but there's not enough left to happen that seems to justify a second movie. Don't get me wrong; I enjoyed aspects of it A LOT. I just think that if they had left it as one movie, they would have had to tighten it up a little bit.
It does include this song. The song was my favorite part:
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