Respect for the Mockingjay

As I write this the final Hunger Games film Mockingjay Part 2 is now out in cinemas (I loved it myself despite it being too long) and it has inspired me to write about this question I've had rattling around in my mind for a while now.

Why has this series not gotten more respect?

Now I know that this will be a very divisive response (which I can understand but its good to generate some well meaning debate) but that is really just how I feel in all honesty.

And there are 3 big reasons:

- First off as a vision of the future this series has been almost impeccable at executing it in a way that feels very believable for a modern day audience but also has its roots in the best versions of how we view a dark future be it Orwell's 1984 or be it our own human history which for much of the 20th century had such a thing in the Soviet Union (and more than once did we come close to Nuclear Armageddon between them and the USA much like the Capitol and District 13 did prior to Snow's rise to power.)

The other part of this is also the utterly brilliant way it depicts how we view both the games and its victors and in our own life it is not too similar to how we tend to idolize celebrities something that has become more and more prevalent in our society over the past 10 years with the advent of Social Media as well as more and more 24 hour news stations.

I mean how many times have we watched interviews with them or followed them on Social Media or had their picture on our wall or in our diary in our youth and in the Hunger Games series the Victors are very much treated in a similar fashion (look at the fangirl screaming over Finnick in Catching Fire that would remind you of any number of male heartthrobs) or the way the Capitol adores Katniss much like we adore Jennifer Lawrence in real life (one of her scenes in Catching Fire reminded me a lot of Lawrence's interviews.)

As for the Games itself well again there are real life parallels be it Ancient Rome and the way it used its Gladiator games to bring the masses in line or indeed how some view the Horse Racing and Greyhound Racing sports or Boxing or UFC cage fighting (these feeling best manifest themselves I think in the first Hunger Games film where they play the most important role.)

- The second is that this series has been willing and able to trust what I call the storytelling river and the instinctive decisions that it requires and what was required after the events of Catching Fire was war and the Mockingjay Book and Movies delivered on that promise at least in my own view.

And this became as the Mockingjay movies came along very refreshing for me as it felt like an antidote to so many of the big films be they the near endless parade of Marvel Studios movies or Jurassic World as these films and with them the series became more willing to go darker and darker and actually show the consequences that arise from its big action set pieces.

This has been something that has made me more and more fed up with the Superhero movies that we get so many of these days I mean look at Captain America the Winter Soldier a film that promised a darker tone in terms of its story and the character motivations and action scenes that would lead to a fundamental shake up of the Marvel Cinematic Universe but then just completely chickened out in the third act as if to say "Don't worry kids we didn't really mean to do that everything's going to be just fine."

And that wasn't the only time just this year Avengers: Age of Ultron made a very similar promise (a darker tone, a true threat to the Avengers and the World and the events playing out in such a way that would leave the world in ruins, its governments angry and the heroes bitterly divided) a perfect setup wouldn't you say for Captain America: Civil War right?

Wrong Age of Ultron just became more of the same jokes, childish action and well let's blow stuff up real good and real big but just don't show us the consequences okay this is a film kids want to go and see okay.

And don't get me started on Man of Steel although Dawn of Justice from what we've seen so far promises to rectify some of those criticisms though such promises have been made before and never kept so I will wait and see.

But with the Hunger Games the softness falls further and further away with each film and the latest gets very dark and very sombre which is the correct way to go and this film was not afraid to show how dark War gets and how we can suffer as a result.

- And lastly there is a wonderful heroine in Katniss Everdeen a hero I think worthy of sitting on the same shelf as Luke Skywalker, Connor MacLeod, the X-Men and the Z Fighters to use as examples I personally love.

Katniss is also someone who is very driven, determined but also someone who thinks things through and consistently assess each situation around her, she's not someone I think who shoots first and asks questions later she only kills when she has to and when she does she doesn't brush it off like other heroes do it stays in her mind and haunts her over the course of the series.

She's also someone who can be uneasy to like at times but again over the course of the series she earns the deep respect of both her friends and her enemies much like some political leaders do in our own world.

And lastly she is also a ground breaker for heroic female characters in film and I firmly feel now that the final film is now out for viewers to go and see that we live in a post Katniss world where the choice of gender in heroes can be safely made to be a woman if the filmmakers so desire as the groundwork has been laid, groundwork that George Miller then ran over at full speed with his Furiosa character in Mad Max Fury Road.

But yet with all of those strong positives why hasn't this series gotten more respect, the kind that the original Star Wars movies or the early Indiana Jones movies or the Back to the Future series got when they were released?

Sadly the reasons I feel are 2:

- The first is that we effectively live in the age of the fanboy and not just in the sense that those are the principal ticket buyers but also those are the people (Mr Kevin Feige would be one of them I feel) that are now helping to make these movies.

And traditionally those people that have embraced that geek culture (I like to believe that that has changed somewhat in the last few years) have normally been skinny, geeky looking and not that good at playing sport in other words not the kind of people who normally get the girls racing to their stead or indeed paying any kind of boyfriend/girlfriend attention in high school.

And now like I mentioned above those people are helping to make those films and I can't help but see that that sort of juvenile attitude towards girls and women (again I like to believe that this changes as people grow older) has become more and more reflected in the Superhero movies (how many times have we seen a demand for more female heroes in these films) and maybe it's that or maybe it's a reflection of the books not really having many female heroes or maybe it could be a little bit of both or indeed neither of those things.

At that same time though female heroes have been a rarity in those sort of films, James Cameron was one of the exceptions with his Sarah Connor character in his 2 Terminator films as well as how he used Ripley in Aliens and Marion from Raiders of the Lost Ark was great and the new Star Wars films under Kathleen Kennedy's leadership of Lucasfilm are promising to make the brand more appealing to women which has rarely been the case over the years.

- And the second is that the more this series trusted its darker storytelling instincts along the river the more I feel the movie going audience has walked away (the very contentious split of the third book into 2 films could also have done this.)

In a way I feel like we're back in the 80s to a certain degree in that the majority of the big movies are inherently happy movies, they have a very soft feel to them, are very light and humorous in tone as well as being sort of fantastical.

The first 2 Hunger Games films had that fantastical tone as well as building towards the dark wartime ending of the last third and it's no surprise to me that those were the most successful of the series as it let the audience have its cake story wise and eat it too much like the Winter Soldier did.

And for me personally I have just gotten to the point where I'm like "I'm an Adult now and I want those sort of films which are more darker in tone as well as the happy stuff" and I suppose it's why Mockingjay Part 2 mainly because for at least 8 to 10 weeks straight I had to put up with nothing but soft happy movies like Pan, Oddball (I thought that films run would never end), Pixels, the Martian (which I really loved BTW), the Walk and Blinky Bill (which I also enjoyed) to name as examples.

And all during that time I just kept hankering, starving and CRAVING! A dark movie for grownups and they were out there (Sicario, Black Mass, Crimson Peak and Legend) but I just couldn't get to them no matter how hard I tried to do so and those sort of films just don't get made much anymore like they used to do and if they are made then they're effectively banished to the independent and art house markets and as someone who wants to feel like an adult at the movies sometimes this can get incredibly frustrating.

But I am now getting to the point of repeating myself with this column and I will leave it here but I hope that everyone enjoyed reading it and it got them thinking a little bit.