Hunger Games: Mockingjay "The Hanging Tree", The

I'd be happy to discuss with you what you thought was lacking in the movie due to the complete removal of District 2. My arguments for removing the scenes are these:

The largest impact of the District 2 scenes on the film is the injury to Katniss at the hands of a Capitol fanatic and the resulting emboldening of the rebels as a result. The exact same description can be given to what happens when Peeta attacks Katniss after being brainwashed by the Capitol, so it works as a very simple replacement.

The other important exposition that happens during this sequence is the revelation that the District 13 army will do whatever it takes, however unethical, to bring down the Capitol. While this is an interesting development in the movie, I think it is much more powerful to leave this revelation to the very end so that at first you really question whether Coin bombed the Capitol children.

You say that District 2 is an important turning point in the war, and maybe it is in the book I honestly can't say, but it does not play out that way in the movies. There are no scenes in the movies that follow the district rebels and how their motivations develop, the movies focus almost entirely on how they respond to the propaganda that is being released about Katniss. Therefore her survival of the bullet wound and subsequent actions are no more powerful in the movie than her survival of the attack by Peeta.

Thanks for taking the time to write a review, I'm glad you enjoyed it so much! In regards to the attack on the damn sequence, the entire section where Katniss travels back to District 12 and then to the outskirts of the town where she begins to sing "The Hanging Tree" song was a real slog that was cut from my edit entirely. There wasn't really a way to insert the dam sequence without some sort of musical buildup. (I invented one from the existing score to begin the film) It's true that I could have inserted the singing scene after the visit to District 8 but it would have both been a very ugly edit and a radical shift to the tone of the film. The other option would have been to cut the dam attack from the film completely but I personally think it works as a more exciting start to the film.