Hunger Games: Mockingjay "The Hanging Tree", The
HotUser reviews
Then Mockingjay 2 started and boredom started as well for me. No one needed more Hunger Games and I would have loved this one to be sliced and diced just as the first one, but it wasn't. The parts that were cut were all chosen carefully and did indeed tighten the 2nd part and make it a better movie (still far from good). The ending was great and finally insterted the pain, sorrow, silence and emotion that was so needed.
The editing was flawless, sound- and videowise. Great image quality and so easy to get through vimeo (I hope that is not dangerous for you to upload such contents there).
So, to sum it up, I was hoping to watch a version of Mockingjay that I could keep as a good movie, but this has not happened. Again part 2 ruined it for me and the great ending could not save the edit from being a one-time amusement. Thank you, Jerick for a wonderful part 1 edit. This was masterful.
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)!
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.
First - moving the Peeta propo to after Katniss sees the designs causes a rather large plot hole. The beginning of the film gives the impression that nobody knows what's going on with Peeta. No one has seen him, etc. With this in mind, Katniss' demands for full pardons for Peeta and the other victors now loses all impact and generally makes no sense. The scene has dialogue that hints at anti-rebel speech, but that also makes no sense based on what WE know at this point in the film - that no one has heard anything from the captured victors. While this could be ignored in a minor scene, Katniss' decision to be the face of the rebellion is the lynchpin of the entire film.
Second - There isn't enough time between Peeta's warning and rescue to make his "HiJacking" seem viable. It feels like it occurs over the course of a day which seems incredibly short. I would reinsert the roses sequence, just to add a small amount of time between the underground bombing sequence and Haymitch talking to Katniss.
I strongly encourage others to view this edit, and look forward to sharing it with friends and family.
Thanks so much for writing a review, I'm glad you enjoyed the edit and it means a lot that you took the time to do so.
Regarding your concerns about the edit. You're right that I did move the first Peeta 'propo' scene to a bit later in the film, but I disagree that it harms the film's narrative. In the scene with Finnick and Katniss, Finnick clearly states that the Capitol has taken Peeta, Johanna, and Annie captive. We see Katniss' dreams are haunted by the memory of Peeta so it is no surprise that she makes his rescue a condition of becoming the Mockingjay.
As for the reason that Katniss decides to become the Mockingjay, she makes the decision immediately after visiting District 12 and seeing the incinerated corpses of everyone she used to know. To me this was more powerful than the combination of District 12 and Peeta's questionable distress at the time of his first 'propo'.
Lastly I agree that the amount of time that Peeta was 'hijacked' seems short. I actually felt the same way when I watched the original film and was interested in finding out exactly how long the Capitol had abducted him. Surprisingly it turned out that it was only 2 months. This is why the edit begins with 2 months earlier...District 13, to give the viewer the sense of the correct amount of time passage that you mentioned.
Thanks again for watching and showing others!
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.
User Review
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.
First of all, I never read the books, so I don't compare the movie to them. Second, I am no expert on editing whatsoever. I am just a tremendously huge fan of the fist two Hunger Games movies who was pretty disappointed by the final films.
One of the biggest problems for me back then was that the films dragged on forever because they split the story over two movies. Jerick gave me a movie with just the right pacing and an incredibly strong start with the film beginning with blowing up the dam. Also, I don't remember anything that I missed from the original cut, so again, I'd say damn good job here.
I watched the film together with my girlfriend who has never seen the original two films and she enjoyed it as well. She felt a few points weren't perfectly explained, but to be honest, I felt the same way with the original cut, where I had to read about a few things to full grasp every detail.
There was one weird cut, where all of sudden Katniss is hiding in the pipes or wherever, where we felt like "huh? Why is she hiding there all of a sudden?" But I don't really remember if this was that different in the original cut.
All in all, from a movie watcher perspective, this is the edit that should have made it to the public. Thank you, Jerik, for giving me the movie I wanted to see.