I will forever applaud the fact that The Hunger Games does not have a simple happy ending, nor is the love triangle magically resolved so that everyone gets their way (*cough* Twilight *cough*). Instead, it sits in its own trauma. War is hell and neither side are rarely morally victorious, societies are not remade overnight, power corrupts and power vacuums will often create dictators (even of otherwise decent people), and heroes do not get happy ever afters. It's messy and disheartening and real. Well, real enough for a YA fantasy about a woman who is just really good with a bow and has a hot streak of stubbornness 😂
The film pulls this off moderately well. We definitely get glimpses of the underlying messages, particularly with Gale and his descent into anger and fear, and the moral bankruptcy and dehumanisation of his enemies that comes with it. But I feel like other major plot points are left to languish a little. Peeta's ongoing fight against his drug-induced conditioning is present, and the actors do a solid job of what they've been given, but it still rings a little hollow, and isn't helped by his sudden appearance on the battle field. If this was intended to show Coin's own descent into villainry, it doesn't land, and this highlights the second narrative miss: Coin turning evil is an obvious outcome of the story, but still needs some level of foreshadowing and growth. Honestly, both of these criticisms should equally be levelled at the two prior films, both of which had opportunities to dive a bit deeper with these characters, and neither of which took those chances. Coin, in particular, should be a character that we, as the audience, distrust, and so as Katniss continues to side with her, it should make us feel uneasy. But the film making here isn't that clever, and the script isn't given the space needed to achieve it. Perhaps this was an issue with the actual books – I can't remember, it's been too long – but it still could have/should have been fixed for the films.
Similarly, whilst I respect the decision to kill Prim to drive home the atrocity of the false flag attack, and really like that this is used as the key moment to write Gale out of the love interest race, Fennik's death can get in the sea. Again, the film doesn't justify his return to combat well enough – dude finally got married to the love of his life, why is he throwing that all away? – and it feels like he was written in just to die a heroic, but ultimately fairly meaningless death. Castor was already a good enough jolt of emotion, you didn't need to orphan Fennik's child as well. Plus, it leaves us in this odd position where they need seven Victors for the (frankly just weird) final vote scene, but only have six characters left, so we get an unnamed black Victor with a single line. Also, because the film-makers largely wrote Annie's character out of the plot, her letter in the end just feels a little odd. Why not make this come from Katniss' mother instead?
The endings aside, as a story the film does work well and (largely) makes its points. Like the previous movie, it feels like only half a narrative (because it is) but at least it has an ending (even if this is made a little weird by the above, and the oddly candy-sweet meadow scene). I'd still love to see this redone as a TV series, though again, casting is just on point throughout and would be hard to beat. Still, we lose so much of the depth of plot by overly focusing on Katniss and the action. Don't get me wrong, the action is done really well (and, again, I applaud the fact that they came up with another creative way to effectively repeat "Katniss is in a Hunger Games again", though I'd have loved for Snow to realise that they could weaponise the Game Masters after the army barracks are destroyed, rather than just use a throwaway comment, because it is a stroke of genius), but if you're trying to drive home "war is harrowing, messy, and rarely achieves the outcomes you want" then those deeper character moments are definitely lacking. Still, fun enough, and a decent end to the series.