Review Detail

9.4 17 10
Hanging_Tree_front.jpg
FanFix April 06, 2016 12847
Overall rating
 
9.6
Audio/Video Quality
 
9.0
Audio Editing
 
10.0
Visual Editing
 
10.0
Narrative
 
9.0
Enjoyment
 
10.0
With the first two Hunger Games films being as good as they were, Mockingjay was definitely a let down, due in no small part to things being padded out over two films. This is Mockingjay as it should have been in the first place.

A/V quality was excellent, near Blu-ray quality, though I do wish the bitrate was a bit higher. Some of the darker scenes had quite a bit of color banding, but overall it was on point. I'd highly recommend doing a BD25 (or a higher bitrate MP4) for this. I'm sure everyone would be happy to help (I know I would be)!

Visually, no flaws. No jump cuts, no stray frames, perfection. There was a single audio edit that stood out: the fade out between the power outage during the bombing and Katniss and Haymitch in the tunnel afterwards sounded a bit off. But with everything else being so on point, that can be easily overlooked.

As I said before this is how Mockingjay should have been. The new opening sequence with bombing the dam, especially with the quote from the Treaty of the Treason preceding it, was very powerful. Excising the raid on the Capitol to rescue Peeta and company was seamless, though I did miss Finnick talking about what the Capitol put him through after winning the Games and why Snow wears his roses. There were two other sequences I missed: the roses after the bombing and Katniss singing The Hanging Tree outside of 13. After all, if the edit is named for that song, where is it? The only other bit that could have been restored was Gale originally floating the idea of the delayed bombings. The film was fine without it, but once it gets brought up at the end, it seems a little out of left field. But such minor niggles do not detract from the overall impact of the edit. Removing most of Peeta's broadcasts from the Capitol really emphasizes how drastic the changes he's going through are, and besides the aforementioned scenes, I'd be hard pressed to tell you what was cut.

This is a fine fanedit, and I look forward to seeing more of Jerick's work (Matrix Revolutions Decoded is next up)!
Owner's reply April 24, 2016

Thanks so much for taking the time to write a review aztek463. Send me a PM if you don't see the links for the 5GB version of this edit or my Matrix edit. I don't believe there are any quality issues in those copies. If you have a Vimeo downconverted copy you're bound to get some quality problems.

I'm glad you thought the beginning was powerful, that was the most complex editing work I had to do for this project. Removing Katniss singing "The Hanging Tree" and rescoring the track so that I could still use the song in the dam scene was very tricky and that it why I called the edit "The Hanging Tree"

I miss the scene with Finnick detailing his treatment by the Capitol as well, but including it just wasn't necessary and almost forces the edit to include the rescue of the victors which is one of the worst scenes in the films and completely ruins the pacing.

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