Battle lines are drawn in final 'Mockingjay' trailer

Posted Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 11:15 AM Central

by John Couture

When last we talked about trailers for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, the news was not very good. The Prim trailer was infamously bad and you sort of had a suspicion that Lionsgate would move quickly to get the bad taste out of our mouths.

Cue today's "final trailer" for Mockingjay Part 2. At first glance, the trailer seems to be building to a nice crescendo, but again, it's as if they are trying to pull the punch that we all know is coming. I understand the desire not to give away the whole enchilada in a trailer, especially for the last film in a franchise, but there's so little here that I wonder if the final film will suffer most from the last book being split into two films.

Granted, all of the action from the book will take place in this film, but one wonders if there will be the necessary beats given to allow the emotional catharsis that the entire franchise has been building towards. The books do a great job of delivering the final one-two punch and then letting it all sink in. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that the end will be rushed instead opting to focus more on the action sequences that lead them to the final confrontation.

To draw a parallel to Star Wars, imagine that instead of Luke and Vader getting their last (and only) father and son heart-to-heart talk while the second Death Star is on the verge of being blown up (spoiler alert, sorry), Luke says 'see ya, wouldn't want to be ya' and then leaves his Dad to instant disintegration.

There are so many complex emotional beats in the last 20 or so pages of Mockingjay that I'm afraid most of the subtleness will be lost in favor of heavy-handed emotional manipulation. But enough about my soapbox issues, enjoy the trailer. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 hits theaters on November 20.