While it was news, it was hardly unpredictable that the third installment of The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay, was going to be split into two movies. It makes perfect sense; it's the densest, heaviest book in the series. (Heavy as in "Doc, that's heavy.") But while the year-long gap in between these releases might be cause for alarm for die-hard fans, the part of that story that we should all be the most concerned with is how it's told and how it will be adapted. I'm referring to the first-person perspective of Katniss Everdeen.
The entire book is about things happening without her knowledge, and us (the readers) only finding out about really important things when she does. That really can't happen in a movie, let alone a two-parter. Because that will be very annoying.
Possible spoiler alert: I will be talking about things that happen in Mockingjay, which happen as a result of things that happen in Catching Fire, so if you don't want to be spoiled, you might not want to come any further. Instead, for something else to do, here are The Hunger Gifs.
The final book in Suzanne Collins' series is pretty wild, with Katniss convinced into acting as the symbolic leader of the rebellion against the Capitol that instituted the Hunger Games and then seeing that the rebellion's leadership was not much better than the Capitol after all. It's a dark, violent, and graphic story that started out disturbing enough, and for several people, it was a little less easy to read. When I read the first two books, I breezed through them. This is significant because while I think books are great, I am just not a reader; it takes me forever to read books. Mockingjay reminded me that no, I had not suddenly become one of those groovy people who devour books. It took me considerably longer to muddle through that one, and I wasn't alone.
Because while we muddled, so did Katniss. Mockingjay, while a good book, might as well have been called Mockingjay: In the Dark, because that's pretty much where our hero was for the bulk of the book. While all this warfare and rebellion and planning was going on, we were inside the head of the girl who wasn't supposed to know about any of it. Surprises and plot twists are one thing, but how are they going to make two movies out of that?
But it's not as if Lionsgate and the producers of The Hunger Games haven't run into this problem before because, obviously, the first book was also told from Katniss' perspective. And they did a pretty decent job of dividing the focus between what Katniss saw and what was happening outside of her (extremely) limited view of things. But they will have to amp that up big time for all three sequels, especially Mockingjay.
Oh, you probably wanted to know when those two movies are coming out: Mockingjay Part 1 will hit theaters November 21, 2014, Mockingjay Part 2 on November 20, 2015; Catching Fire is coming November 22, 2013. (via io9)
