Hunger Games: Mockingjay "The Hanging Tree", The

If the film-makers hadn't decided to waste so much time and money stretching this book out to two movies for no good reason, then we probably would have gotten something like this.

Ever since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it seems like it’s been the trend to break up a trilogies into fours. Jerick has done the service of editing Mockingjay into one film. I’ve read the Hunger Games, but I don’t remember specifics, so I can’t say how this flows with the book. I can say that this film, for me, really strengthens the films. The flow from part 1 to part 2 was unnoticeable to me. Jerick has really done a great job of strengthening the narrative and making this the film that it should be.

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)!

My wife and I watched this edit and thoroughly enjoyed it. The tagline for this edit, "The Epic Finale Hunger Games Fans Deserve", is 100% accurate. The Hunger Games took a page from Harry Potter and Twilight and split the final book into two movies because "there was just too much story to tell". What that obviously means is they wanted to milk the franchise. What Jerick does here is condense the story into a single 2 hour and 50 min. movie, making it a much more enjoyable and non-bloated finale. We didn't miss anything that was cut. Picture and audio quality are excellent, and I didn't spot any edits.

My only criticism of the film is I didn't care for the attack on the damn in the beginning. I wish it remained where it was and had the movie start as it did theatrically (minus the quote... that was a good call). Other then that I cannot recommend this edit enough.

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