S01E03 — Mockingjay
SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for every book in the original Hunger Games trilogy. We do not discuss or spoil the prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
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Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.
We review the final book and two Mockingjay films to round out The Hunger Games original trilogy. The choice to split the final book into two films made for quite the discussion!
Listen to the other episodes on works in The Hunger Games:
Final Verdicts
If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)
Most of us found Mockingjay‘s film adaptations to lack some of the elements we found most engaging in Catching Fire. We generally agreed that the book was better; however, Josiah preferred Mockingjay: Part I to its book inspiration.
Tim: The book is better
Donna: The book is better
Rebekah: The book is better
Josiah: The film is better (Part 1); the book is better (Part 2)
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Full Episode Transcript
Prefer reading? Check out the full episode transcript below. It’s AI-generated from our audio, and if we’re being honest… no one sat to read the entire thing for accuracy. (After all, we were there the whole time.) 😉 We’re sorry in advance for any typos or transcription errors.
[00:00:00] Rebekah: Dad, we’re not even going to tell you what note to start on. You just go. And if you want to do the flat seven, you can or not do anything and do it snappy this time. The book is better,
less snappy. I
[00:00:20] Donna: think
[00:00:20] Josiah: the book
[00:00:23] Rebekah: is better
podcast. We are a clean podcast comparing and reviewing book to film adaptations. And when I say clean, just. To clarify, I am talking about the fact that we do not use naughty words and we do not talk about, uh, we don’t like make crude jokes and stuff, but we are going to talk about some deep and heavy topics, particularly on this episode.
This is Our episode on Hunger Games Mockingjay, which is the third book and the third and fourth movie in the Hunger Games franchise. Uh, this episode is going to contain spoilers for all of the Hunger Games franchise, with the exception of Songbirds and Snakes, which we’ll review later, but not today. Uh, my name is Rebecca.
I am the sister slash daughter of the group. And you know what? I’m going back to saying group because I like it and it sounds right to me. So that’s who I am. Um, I’m the one that always thinks the book is better no matter what the movie does because I’m just, uh, you know, prejudice that way. And I thought that a fun fact we could share about each other or about ourselves I guess today would be our favorite fictional world, the one we would most want to live in from any book or movie, considering the world we’re going to talk about today is maybe the worst choice that you could make.
And so, um, mine is really easy and I hope I’m not taking it from anybody else, but you guys let me start the podcast. So it’s not my fault. If I am, um, I would want to live in the Harry Potter world because. Um, you know, because I’m familiar with it and who doesn’t want to be able to do like fun magic, like making a bubble on your head so you can breathe underwater.
So I don’t know. I think that the magic aspect seems like a lot of fun. I like how like different they are than all of those blasted muggles and I don’t know. I just, there’s something about that that’s so charming that, uh, and I’m, I mean, the Harry Potter’s like. One of my favorite series of all time. So that’s mine.
Who wouldn’t want to
[00:02:40] Tim: be where someone like Voldemort is Alive and well,
[00:02:45] Rebekah: oh, well, I’m thinking I say Sorry spoiler, I’m gonna say post Voldemort Harry Potter. So like after the final battle That part of the world.
[00:02:57] Josiah: I’m Josiah Haynes. I’m the brother slash son of the family. And you know what? I think I’m going to say it.
Fiddle
[00:03:07] Donna: sticks.
[00:03:08] Rebekah: What? I said we don’t say naughty words on this podcast.
[00:03:12] Josiah: I… Generally, as I’m brainstorming frantically right
[00:03:19] Tim: now,
[00:03:21] Josiah: I don’t think I’d want to live in a medieval setting, even though I love fantasy. Uh, because the world is, it does, does generally get better in most ways as time marches on. But I do, I mean, I kind of like the idea of post Hunger Games, Pan Am.
We live different lives. That they have great technology, they’re in a new era of, uh, defeating oppression. Spoiler alert for the end of this podcast.
[00:03:53] Rebekah: We already said there’s spoilers,
[00:03:54] Josiah: so you’re good. And, uh, yeah, generally people are getting along, uh, post successful rebellion. The underdogs, the oppressed class, uh, victored.
But they also kind of surgically cut out some of the most authoritarian people in the rebellion. So they should be left over with some pretty good people. Good point. Got some good technology there, so. Uh, that’s a pretty, pretty good world to live in. Can’t think of many. I mean, Star Trek. If that, if Star Trek counts, that’s probably going to be the…
[00:04:28] Donna: So I’m Donna. I’m a wife, mom. of this amazing group and,
[00:04:35] Rebekah: um,
[00:04:40] Donna: I’m going to say I would live in, uh, the first Die Hard is in 1988.
[00:04:48] Rebekah: Oh, yeah. Just any book or movie. Oh, it didn’t have to be an adaptation.
[00:04:53] Donna: Oh, that’s excellent. Spoiler. I just found that out yesterday. Um, so I found that was pretty cool. But that, during the 80s, I mean, that was my end of teen, beginning of adult years and other than the main subject matter of what was going on, you know, they’re out in California.
It’s the fun, silly, glitzy parties that You know, we make fun of and, but life still depicted life as a little, surely more carefree than it was, I guess.
[00:05:28] Rebekah: But just out of curiosity, since the Die Hard plot is all set in that, you know, area and building where all of that was going down and spoiler alert for Die Hard, if somehow you’ve lived under a rock for several decades, um, do you want to be in the building that Die Hard took place or you want to live like in that world, but that’s it.
I mean, you could be part of the action. I’m purely thinking
[00:05:52] Donna: of the time period. Ah, fair enough. Time period and, and, uh, you know, I’m old and nostalgic, so I don’t know. Love it. The
[00:06:00] Josiah: book is called Nothing Lasts Forever.
[00:06:03] Rebekah: Nice. Depressing. Future episode. If you want us to do that episode anytime soon, email us bookisbetterpod at gmail.
com. Leave us a rating. Yeah, rate us first. If you don’t rate us well, don’t email us. I’m just kidding. Actually, if you rate us badly, please stop listening. I don’t know why you’re here.
[00:06:20] Tim: Or help us improve. Wow.
[00:06:22] Josiah: That was,
[00:06:23] Rebekah: that was
[00:06:23] Donna: the only positive response to what I said. And
[00:06:27] Rebekah: somehow you came up with it. I’m really proud of you.
I’m, I’m proud of who you are.
[00:06:30] Tim: I want us to, I want us to be the best that we can be. Um, I am Tim. I’m the dad and, uh, husband. And I would go one of two ways. I would either go backward, um, technologies and all of that kind of stuff. And live in the world of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. Um, which seems idyllic,
[00:06:59] Josiah: simple.
[00:07:00] Rebekah: I feel like that’s like an alternate world. You don’t really have to go back. It’s not so much going back as going sideways. From what our
[00:07:07] Tim: world would be. You know, we have TVs, we have phones, we have lots of technologies and things. Um, and the other is I would, I would choose to go forward into an idyllic future, uh, like Star Trek.
Star Trek, Roddenberry’s creation was a world without wars, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, interestingly enough, the reason that the books and movies… Uh, and series have been popular is the conflict because people don’t do all that well, um, watching something that goes from nothing’s happening to we’re living and nothing’s happening.
That’s not a very big story
[00:07:47] Rebekah: arc. Are you saying that’s not
[00:07:49] Tim: interesting? I’m saying that it’s not very realistic. But, I would rather live in that type of future than some of the other science fiction future that I’ve read about and watched. Um, where, you know, Terminator, or, you know, they’re going to destroy you as I, Robot, different, different things like that.
I would either go back to where it’s very simple. or move forward into the idyllic
[00:08:14] Rebekah: future. All right. So today we are going to be discussing Mockingjay. So like I said at the beginning, we’re actually going to be going over the book Mockingjay and reviewing both of the movies, um, all in one. And I’ll give us a little refresher on what this is about.
Uh, basically we leave off at the end of book two with Katniss waking up in district 13, learning that she and, uh, Finnick O’Dare were from the arena during the 75th Hunger Games, the third quarter quell, and they are in District 13 and they are now part of the rebellion that has begun. Peter Malark and Joanna Mason were captured by the Capitol at the end of those games.
So we begin in District 13, Katniss. It’s a very different in the books, which we’ll discuss a lot. But essentially, Katniss is struggling with the mental health issues that come along with. The significant trauma that she obviously experienced, um, they are living underground in District 13, led by President Alma Coin and Coin, along with Plutarch Heavensby, former game maker, head game maker of the 75th games.
Essentially want to use Katniss as the mockingjay to stir up the districts and turn the rebellion to their side. And throughout a lot of propaganda videos called Propos that they do and a very talented team of filmmakers, they do manage to do that. They turn the rebellion, um, finally taking District 2, which was the last stronghold.
the district. A lot of peacekeepers came from and they were most loyal to the Capitol. Once they take district two, and there’s a lot of other things going on in there that I’ll go over, but they take district two and then they are able to take the Capitol. And as Katniss with the star squad of, uh, Unit 451 enter the capital.
They realize they’re kind of in another third in the series arena Um as there are various pods meant to kill them or whatever Uh, they go through the capital city facing many issues and eventually make their way Uh to snow’s mansion, which is kind of the last stronghold of the capital Um in the ensuing fight katniss loses her sister prim to a trap that is most likely designed in part at least by her best friend, Gale.
Um, President Snow is in fact captured, and at the end of the movie, when the rebels and District 13 are declaring their victory over the capital, Katniss, as requested, is scheduled to kill President Snow, and at the last moment, Kills President Coin instead, the leader of the Rebellion. Oh, and, uh, after that, she’s basically kind of confined, put on trial, um, she’s acquitted mostly based on the fact that they think that she’s essentially in, mentally in, yes, mental instability is the reason given.
Uh, she moves back home and. Basically decides to kind of pick up her life where the pieces were left off throughout the book pita malark Who was um what they call hijacked while in the capital goes through a process of he had been hijacked by President snow and his followers to essentially believe that katniss was a mutt And to hate Katniss, so you kind of go through the whole book with him having varying degrees of disdain for Katniss Everdeen, um, throughout the end part of the novel, he realizes that there’s a, uh, something to the memories that, or excuse me, that Snow, uh, messed with.
He calls them shiny and he can kind of differentiate. And essentially over the next, months and years after the rebellion ends, um, he’s able to come back to himself, falls back in love with Katniss and the epilogue of the story is essentially that the two of them after a very, very long time are able to become married and they have children together.
And, um, other notable things that happened during this time are that, um, Finn, O Dare, who is uh, in the, in the Mocking J book, marries his love Annie. Um, he was part of the Scar Star Squad 4, 5, 1, and unfortunately dies a, an incredibly tragic death in the Capitol. Um, and so the districts do win, but at the, we’re at the end of the series left with the broken pieces of the people that essentially made it happen when she
[00:12:28] Donna: returned home.
She basically wanted to die. I mean.
[00:12:35] Rebekah: She had bed sores. Haymidge went back. Like, to that point.
[00:12:39] Donna: Thinking. Haymidge went with her under the thought, well, you know, what would they do with us anyway? I’m just going to watch over you. But as soon as he got home, he, he was drunk again. Right. And just reverted into all he knew.
And. I do think that one of the greatest scenes in the movie, what’s the second movie, but one of the greatest scenes of the last two movies is when Buttercup jumps up in the window and she flips out on him and screams and she’s not here, she’s not coming back. And the way they handled that I think was fantastic because The book was much darker through this point in time.
Um, she was just basically living in squalor, if Greasy Say had not come and cooked for her, she would have been no better than Haymitch. But that break, using that goofy cat that she mentions at the beginning of the first book. Yeah. And closing up with that cat and her being able to finally put a lid. On her initial grief.
I thought was super powerful. It’s yeah, it’s just insane. Um, but you’re right. She does at that point realize I’m here and I need to just go on.
[00:14:09] Rebekah: I didn’t die. I need to move along. Yes. It is also one of the most difficult parts for me. And this is like, I like everything tied up with a bow, which I’ve said in previous episodes, but in this book, while I think that it portrayed well, in the book especially, really not the movie as much in my opinion, portrayed well what it would be like to go through what she went through.
It… It was so awful to kind of get to the end and realize the only thing Katniss Everdeen ever wanted was that her sister would live. And the only, like, literally of the people that she loved, Finnick was really the only other person other than her sister Prim, like, throughout the series that she becomes close to over a period of time that, like, Everyone else lives and it’s like the one person and having gales like traps and all of that being the one to do it.
Oh my gosh, gutted me. Absolutely gutted me.
[00:15:03] Josiah: And how explicit is that? Did he definitely have a hand in that? The best he can say is… Did he have a hand in stuff
[00:15:10] Rebekah: like that? He specifically, when they were in two, He and BD were specifically, it was either in two or in, uh, command in 13, it might’ve been that.
Same. And they discussed a trap in the book and I think the movie, they just specifically discussed a trap in which you would drop bombs and then, yeah, the hummingbird trap. You would drop bombs where there’d be injured and you would leave it long enough so that medical personnel could get in and then you would drop stronger bombs to eliminate everything that was left.
Yeah. Yeah. So he like describes it in detail, which is why Katniss couldn’t get over that. Run to a place
[00:15:45] Tim: of safety. You would drop the second bomb in the place of safety. Yeah. Yeah, to take them out, which is absolutely horrific. Yeah. So it’s not, it’s not certain that it was the rebels that did it, but it is.
That’s true. No one. It’s probably that. Yeah. And, and Gail never answers the question.
[00:16:06] Rebekah: It’s never specific, but Snow does. Yeah. It’s never explicitly stated that the rebels did it or
[00:16:10] Tim: didn’t snow. Snow tells Cat this. I’ll never lie to you. And I, he said that from early on. I’m curious, um, if we think he does, he’s terrible, but does he ever lie to her?
[00:16:24] Josiah: I don’t know. He totally could have, but no, he, he probably doesn’t. Uh. He probably doesn’t, I think that um, President Coin is enough of a, Suzanne Collins is writing her to be, yeah, this is an authoritarian villain who needs to be taken down. I think Suzanne Collins portrays that. Completely on the side of assassinating her was a good political thing for the good
[00:16:52] Rebekah: of the people.
I think so too, but I did want to talk about that. Is Coin a genuine villain? Like, is she painted as a genuine villain, or is she painted as someone who was the way that she was, was not actually evil or bad, but as someone who just could not continue to lead, and had to be eliminated for the new free world to, like, exist?
[00:17:15] Tim: I think she’s a subtle villain. I think there’s subtlety to her that helped them to survive. Um, and I was looking, looking at this to make sure to make sure of this, but, um, I, I thought, and I don’t know why I thought this, but I thought that it, that 13 survived simply because they were Strong enough to survive and the capital thought they were dead.
That was not the case They made a deal with the capital right to stop fighting because the capital could have been destroyed by their bombs So it would have been mutual Mutually assured destruction,
[00:17:54] Rebekah: which I don’t think is detailed in the movies at all.
[00:17:57] Tim: No, no, it’s not So I went back to the book to check that out to make sure But I think she could lead In that militaristic, everything has to be exactly this way and anything outside of that.
is punished. And then she goes so far as to, to say, well, you know, the, the children from the Capitol need to be killed because those who’ve suffered all this time under this oppression, um, won’t be satisfied until anyone that has capital citizen, had capital citizenship is dead.
[00:18:34] Josiah: Yeah. I think that the president coins nature is one of my favorite themes of the book.
I think that war is awful. And I think this book definitely goes to that. I think that propaganda is, is widespread and kind of easy to do. And that’s a big theme in this movie. But I really like the nature of Coin. And whether or not she is good or evil is a great theme that I explore in my own books that I’m writing.
Uh, not present Coin, but people like her. Where, um, I mean, a few things, including she… Um, was she the right person to lead during wartime? Absolutely. And then during peacetime, might it have been appropriate for her to step down? Mm hmm. But she wouldn’t have? Yeah. Mom? And
[00:19:24] Rebekah: so that’s… Do you, like, what do you think?
Is she a villain or is she just kind of a, someone that had to be eliminated, unfortunately?
Well,
[00:19:30] Donna: I had not thought about it until Josiah just said what she did with the district. It was genius. It was genius. That they lived under such a disciplined life, their, their, everything they did was disciplined and counted.
[00:19:45] Rebekah: Which Boggs makes, Boggs makes the point to say, if we had not lived like this, we would all have died. But,
[00:19:53] Donna: in my, before I heard him say what he just said, my thought was, but power became too much for her. Power corrupted. It, it, she, she fell under the corruption of power. And so… Um, certainly had they gone on.
And I love the way she said, I’ll humbly assume the role of president until we can have a free and fair election, interim president and Hamish says, Oh, and how long might that be? Well, https: otter. ai
So, I would say the villain part of her, I think was, I would, I would preserve that role in her relationship with Katniss, because I think Boggs, I think the, Boggs hit it nail on the head. You may not be thinking about leading Katniss, that’s not what you want, but she is. And now that you are the face of the Rebellion, she’s taken this chance to vault you up there, where you have support.
And if your first answer isn’t, Oh, well, of course, Coin should go on to be president, then you’re a threat to her. And she can’t have that. And so I think, I think that, that whole, the relationship between the two of them. Villain in that. Yes, very clearly a villain. So I was
[00:21:25] Rebekah: thinking about this today like more, but as I listened to the audiobook this last time, I think I was kind of trying to take myself out of the, oh, you know, I know we’re in Kat’s perspective, but what does it have to be like for anybody else?
And I genuinely, like, I know Katniss is a decent person, right? Like we all, Katniss is a good protagonist, like in terms of she saves the cat, which mm-Hmm. is a concept. Josiah has. Explain to us all a lot, which basically means kind of starts off doing something good or heroic for someone else to make you feel like you want them to succeed, even with their other flaws.
But looking at it from an outside perspective, while I don’t think, I would never call coin a good person. I feel like Katniss was not a good person in the same way, like the way she treated coin, the way she flouted what she was given in 13 in terms of like, Hey, your district’s gone. You rebelled, which is obviously a good thing.
Like in the end you rebelled it. But like these people gave you a home, I gave a home and a career to your family. Like. They are giving you the opportunity to not even have to do the same things as other people. Obviously, there’s a lot of like strings attached to it, but the way Katniss is, especially in the book, like, I don’t know if I was President Coin, I think I would be just as like reticent to help her or like support her or want her to succeed as the Mockingjay outside of becoming a martyr once her use was done.
I think the only thing that makes me want to say she was potentially a villain villain is that. Number one, she did send PETA to the Capitol in Squad 451, which obviously was a ploy to hope that she would either kill Katniss, or he, sorry, sorry, he, that he would either kill Katniss, or that he would do something like, you know, along those lines, or the other issue where the Capitol may not have been the ones that sent in the bombs to kill the medics.
The idea that Coin was the one that made that order, and she’d be willing to kill her own medics, was just… children and medics to win a war like That I guess that does make her a villain in my eyes at that point. Well,
[00:23:41] Josiah: a couple of things before I move on to the differences, I guess. But you say Katniss, you know, isn’t the best person.
I think that she does everything she does because she loves Prim. Yep. And she does not want to be in charge of this rebellion. And so it’s, even in her um, even in the silly things she does, so much of it is selfless. Although I, I do want to go on the record saying I do not philosophically agree with assassinations being the right way to go about making political changes, so.
Okay, fair. I don’t really endorse her assassinating Coin. I would have liked her to push for maybe… An election to happen sooner rather than later would have
[00:24:22] Rebekah: been ideal. And I think the whole assassination thing, from Katniss’s perspective, she was genuinely like, she thought she would die. She was planning on dying in that process.
Oh, she would have loved to. Yeah, so she wasn’t doing it thinking this is the right thing to do at all, is what it came off as.
[00:24:39] Tim: Well, it’s the right thing to do and I’ll die for it.
[00:24:42] Josiah: It was not
[00:24:43] Rebekah: selfish. That’s fair. It wasn’t selfish. I mean,
[00:24:46] Donna: Snow was standing there with his puffy little lips. He coughs, he laughs and coughs a little bit, blood’s on his lip, his hands are tied, and she looks at the whole thing and…
And he said to her, we were, we were so busy watching each other.
[00:25:02] Tim: We were both being played. We
[00:25:03] Donna: were both being
[00:25:04] Rebekah: played. Yeah. I think that in the, that is one of the things in the movie that I liked a lot better than the book was getting to watch that scene. In the book, it goes by so fast and no offense, but like both of them are one syllable, four letter names.
I had to reread the pages where she actually. Tilted and kills coin instead of snow because at first I was like, why is she being arrested? She was told to do that. And then I realized, Oh, she killed coin. Like it didn’t even occur to me.
[00:25:29] Josiah: Oh yeah. I was such a stupid, stupid teenager. When I read these books, I didn’t even, I, I, and I told you this was very embarrassing and I’m telling you this because it’s funny for the podcast.
But when I saw the movie mocking Jay, after having read the book, I thought that they added her assassinating coin. Oh gosh. That’s how dumb of a reader I was,
[00:25:51] Tim: but it is a, it is a two sentence end of a Chapter in the book, it’s this simple. The point of my arrow shifts upward. I release the string and President Coin collapses over the side of the balcony and plunges to the ground.
Dead. Okay, I
[00:26:10] Rebekah: feel way less bad for not realizing it had happened. They don’t even use her pronoun as her, like to kind of get your brain in like, wait a minute, that wasn’t snow. That is so funny.
[00:26:20] Josiah: That, I mean, you, you hit the nail on the head when I’m writing things and I’m. I have a large cast of characters.
I have multiple characters whose names begin with J E. Oh my. We’re often in the room together. So, in order to differentiate them and just, instead of just saying their names, I often use their titles. I try and use traits that only refer to this one or that one. And yeah, saying President. Snow had to have been purposefully misleading.
President
[00:26:51] Rebekah: Coin. You can’t even say it right. You’re trying to
[00:26:54] Tim: repeat it. They’re very they’re very close together. They are both four letters. They both have the title of president. So when you hear President for three books, you’ve heard, or for two books, you’ve heard President Snow. Yeah. And that’s the bad guys, President Snow.
Which he is, genuinely. And you’re introduced to President Coin in the third book. So it, um, I think it’s designed, I think it’s designed for you to get to the next, the next chapter, which begins, I, I heard President Snow’s gurgling laughter. Um. That you go, wait a minute, wait a minute. What did I just read?
[00:27:32] Rebekah: I think that’s literally my experience, was what happened. I
[00:27:35] Tim: think that’s purposeful. I would wanted to bring up the fact that people are willing to give up their freedom temporarily during times of war. Yeah. Um, because that’s necessary, you know. For a better end. Right. Even, even if it’s just the one person.
You know, let’s think of a diehard type thing. You’re going to follow John McClane. He’s trying to get us out. You’re going to do exactly what he says to do. You’re giving up your freedom and your autonomy to get through the situation. The problem with coin. It’s that she doesn’t want to then allow you, uh, get it back.
Yeah. Yeah. She doesn’t want you to have that freedom back. So that, that to me is the, is one of those big themes in this. And I mentioned this a little bit later in my notes. So
[00:28:27] Donna: another thing that ties loosely to where, where we are a big issue for me in movies, I love to look at the casting and, and kind of rate.
How the casting made or makes or breaks the movie because I think it can a great screenplay Can be destroyed with bad casting Julianne Moore had just had won an Oscar in 2015. Philip Seymour Hoffman. Oh, right. For Capote. Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings. And then Julia, uh, Julianne Moore for Best Actress in Still Alice,
[00:29:05] Rebekah: which I’m not familiar with.
I’ve never even heard of that. Then
[00:29:08] Donna: Harrelson and Tucci have been nominated but had not won. Donald
[00:29:12] Josiah: Sutherland is considered one of the best actors never to have received an Oscar. Oh, yes.
[00:29:17] Donna: Yeah. And another thing about. Another thing about Sutherland, and I’ll, this is brief, is just that he said when he read the script at the end of his life he wants to look back and believe this was one of the greatest things he did because he felt like it was so It, it, the message that it’s told and the warning it gave to our country and just the world in general about how things could be, and that they shouldn’t be.
And he said that, that he really wanted to look back at the end of his life, which he said at the time, probably isn’t going to be much longer. I mean, he’s very elderly man at this point, um, that it was just, he, he had to be in the movie and I thought that was pretty cool because a lot of these. young adult, young adult things.
I mean, you get stars in them, but a lot of times they’re, they’re fluff. Sure. And to see some of the, the things that they did with this and the, the roles that were cast and the actors they had, I thought, I thought that said a lot about it too. All
[00:30:23] Rebekah: Starcast, definitely. Alright, so let’s talk about some of the things that they changed that were most significant between the book to the films.
And I will say, I think that this was during, I know, that this was during the period of time where splitting the last book in a series into two movies was kind of like the thing to do. So Twilight did it, the Harry Potter movies did it, the Hunger Games did it, um, anyway, it was What was part of Hobbit?
The Hobbit split into three What was first? Um, I think Harry Potter? No, that’s not right, is it? When was Twilight? I don’t remember. You can look that up. But I think that one of the issues that I will probably have come up a few times is some of my problems with this book to film adaptation into the two films was definitely that they spent too much time and like, it wasn’t a good, clean edit because they had two movies that…
A lot of that was weird, but I will say, there was one change that Josiah and I have discussed that we both think is one of the best things that they did. Do you know which one I’m talking about?
[00:31:25] Josiah: I assume it’s Effie being in the movie. Effie Trinket. I love Effie. Love Elizabeth Banks.
[00:31:31] Rebekah: No question. Yeah, so in the books, if you haven’t read the books, but you’ve seen the movie, Effie Trinket is in District 13, all sad because she doesn’t have all of her beauty and she didn’t really ask to come to 13.
And so she says she was kidnapped and they say she wasn’t. In the books, Effie is actually not really mentioned until the end where they kind of find her in the Capitol. There is an undertone of she was probably tortured by the Capitol, but they like locate her for the very last. It’s essentially the event where they, um, say Katniss killed Goyne, but, um, in the movies, she replaces the person in the book that is Plutarch’s assistant.
I didn’t even remember until I was rereading the book this time, Fulvia Cartwright, Cardew, sorry. Fulvia Cardew was this very vocal assistant of Plutarch’s in the movies, or in the, uh, in the books. She was totally cut, as were Katniss’s, uh, prep team. who were actually kidnapped ish, um, and tortured in 13.
Actually. Um, they’re found like with, you know, sores and in their own filth. And it’s actually a very in a cell because they had stolen bread. It’s a very dark scene. So essentially Effie takes the spot of Fulvia and of the prep team.
[00:32:45] Donna: Her place was It’s so important, even though it’s so fluffy and begins the height of pretension.
I mean, it’s, it’s just that textbook picture of that. And then to come down where she and Hamage actually have a little bit of sexual tension there where there’s a little bit of physical, the thought of it, just a little. to it.
[00:33:09] Rebekah: I like you without all that makeup, but I like you sober. Yes, I thought
[00:33:13] Josiah: that was
[00:33:14] Tim: when you get into, into the second book, there’s, there’s a change in Effie up to that, up to that point.
She’s kind of like, she’s just the replacement for, for any champion that they don’t have, uh, in, in district 12. So she has to go there. And of course, this is a beautiful spectacle and all of that, that’s the way it’s described when you get to the second games, um, she recognizes and actually she’s in the movies, at least she’s the one who instigates the symbols, the things that they were in there that indicate that they’re together.
[00:33:53] Rebekah: Um, she starts to have a problem with the games. Yes. So she did not before. Yes.
[00:33:57] Tim: And, and so I think it was a really good idea to bring her back for the. for that instead of just a mention toward the end, which is really what the book does. And even having a problem to other characters that you would have had to true at least to the prep team would have been three people.
So you’ve got four actors. You’ve got to have lines and screen time for that are
[00:34:19] Josiah: fine, but they’re not like they’re not Effie trinket level of main character,
[00:34:24] Donna: right? Yeah. But I think it shows Collins wisdom. in writing that even as she began to see this as wrong, she was, she still had a fear of what that might, what those thoughts might do to her position.
You could feel that little bit of, oh, I should, maybe I shouldn’t have said that, or, or little bits and pieces of, of that, where She knew nothing else but the Capitol, and then to see something was going on, and I thought they carried that out a little farther in the movie, and I thought it worked well.
She never left, she never totally left the pretentious air about her, but at the same time, she allowed herself to be. see beyond what she
[00:35:16] Rebekah: had known. Her character development, I think, as not one of the main, like, three, really two people, and Haymitch is a third, like, that are main characters, I think her character development is the best done throughout the series, which is funny considering she was not even in the third book, you know, and a, without just a cursory mention.
So, um, let’s talk about the differences in District 13 from the book to the film. There
[00:35:43] Josiah: are more details in the book. Um, how much is the schedule on the wrist mentioned in the movie? Constant.
[00:35:50] Rebekah: Oh, no, not at all in the
[00:35:51] Josiah: movie. Yeah. In the book. It’s constant.
[00:35:54] Rebekah: Yeah. You stick your arm in the wall and it prints your schedule and it washes off.
when you go to do your shower that night. Yeah. And it’s a big deal in 13 that Katniss isn’t following her schedule. She hides, you know, and goes into all sorts of places. You see her hiding in the movie. There’s no mention of the schedule. Um, you don’t realize in the movie or it’s not mentioned that there are other district, um, Essentially refugees that had left.
So you find out about the epidemic from someone that’s a refugee from District 10 that shares that the epidemic several years ago killed a lot of the kids. And you know, in the book, he very clearly really says that like they’re looking for fertile stock. You know, they want people that can produce more little ones.
Does
[00:36:39] Donna: the
[00:36:40] Tim: movie, does the movie show that 13? Was there all the time after a, after a, a deal with the
[00:36:47] Rebekah: Capitol? No, they don’t mention that there was a deal made. It seems more like we hid. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think they didn’t know it. They also, you know, Prim in the movie is, you know, training to become a doctor and all of that kind of stuff.
In the book, you get a little bit more of that, more of her training, more of what’s going on. Um. She’s
[00:37:07] Tim: not just a 12 year old that’s allowed to do medical
[00:37:09] Rebekah: stuff. Yeah, she is like a main person that they’re like training very heavily. Um, and I think that 13 year old, I guess. So that’s, that’s probably the biggest things about the district.
I think that they, they showed a lot of it really well. It’s underground. It’s very militarized. The amount of people seems to match up with what’s in the book. They collect in the one room for like, Coin’s announcement of the Mockingjay deal, I think is what they ended up calling it. And like, all of that is very, very well done, um, in general.
So there, I think that was about it in terms of district differences between book and film. Um, what were some other differences that you noticed that stuck out the most?
[00:37:49] Josiah: One of my favorites, besides Effie being in it, is the restriction of Katniss’s point of view is taken away in the movie. So whereas when I was reading the book, I felt so confined, especially for the first half of the book.
I felt so confined by Katniss’s point of view. I wanted to see the war, a similar problem I have with Harry Potter 6. Um. Oh wow, yeah. I just never feel that there’s a war happening. People keep saying, Yeah, there’s a war happening. And then you finally get it in the second half of the book. But, um, For the first, for Mockingjay Part 1, the movie, I thought they did a good job.
of adding scenes outside of Katniss’s point of view that reflected there was a war going on. This is what the war is kind of like. This is the, this is how rebellion is happening. Uh, there was a dam, right? That was attacked.
[00:38:46] Rebekah: So that is added to the movie. And that actually changes a plot point, a very small one, but that, that is not mentioned in the book at all.
Cause I, I was trying to pay attention to when I was listening to that part of the audio book in the book. Katniss, when she goes outside with Finnick and sees after the bombing where PETA warned them ahead of time and all that stuff, she sees all of Snow’s flowers. She’s out there with Finnick, and she finally realizes that Snow is going to hurt PETA every time she does something to help the rebellion, and she crumbles.
And like, basically, I think Finnick turns to everyone and says she figured out how Snow’s using PETA, and everyone just groans because they’d been hoping that she wouldn’t put it together. So, they have to sedate her after that, and when she wakes up, Hamitch says, We were waiting to do this. We know we’re going to have to blow a lot of people that we have undercover.
We’re going to have to loot, like people will die, but we’re going to go get them out. So it has nothing to do with that. But in the movie, I thought it was a really good addition that people in the rebellion, like, uh, Get kill a damn in five district five that does the, um, they’re like the power source of the, of the capital and that’s used to knock out the power and that’s how they’re able to do the raid.
[00:40:04] Tim: Like Josiah was saying that that’s 1 of those things where you’re outside of her perspective. And so you get this indication that there’s actually a war and there are other people involved, not just this small group of people.
[00:40:17] Rebekah: Yeah, and in, I will say the other difference in that section is that the raid in the movie, they’re trying to communi they’re actually able to communicate with the people on the raid.
They have like a visual, all this stuff. In the book, it’s, again, from her point of view and a little bit different, where they say they’re not going to communicate the whole time they’re gone to be safe. There was no power outage that we’re aware of in the book, and so they don’t communicate until they’re back.
So that’s all added, which I thought was a really good addition. There’s also a District 7 thing after the isn’t it? Yeah, that’s added
[00:40:49] Josiah: completely. Yeah. I mean, I thought that it was a great way to show that there’s a war and also Katniss not being there is fine, but it is also I think a better buildup than in the book, um, to the audience worrying, okay, this war is really bad.
Uh, our main characters are going to be involved in this very soon, and it’s like a countdown to when is this violence and chaos going to get to the characters that we personally
[00:41:25] Rebekah: care about. And in that respect, you’re talking about District 7 rebels after they see the, if we burn, you burn with us. Uh, that’s the ones from Joanna Mason’s district that, uh, they’re out with a bunch of peacekeepers in the woods about to do their lumber work and they do ruse, is it ruse thing?
The signal for the end of the work day or whatever. And after they do that, the guys all jump and they jump into the trees and essentially they blow up a bunch of peacekeepers, which I think is a really good addition. Commander Paler, her speech, all of the stuff that build up to the final, like going into the Capitol, was completely added to the book, or from the book.
It wasn’t in the book at all in the movie. Yeah.
[00:42:06] Donna: Yeah. I think they needed to make a bigger, bigger deal about Paler. Yes. Because, because she, you know, because of what her role was going
[00:42:14] Josiah: forward. She ends up being the,
[00:42:16] Rebekah: President. Yeah, after Coin dies, she’s elected.
[00:42:20] Josiah: I think that it, and I don’t want to talk about it a lot, it’s very real life, very existential, but the fact that, this is only in the books, I think, the fact that District 13 and the Capitol made a deal, the Capitol has known about District 13, uh, but they came to an agreement because of nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction.
stopping war, which I think is an interesting nuance. Um, it is.
[00:42:52] Rebekah: And it’s first met, it’s basically first alluded to in catching fire. When Katniss meets Bonnie and twill in the woods, they’re the ones that tell her when they’re running, she’s like, district 13 doesn’t exist. Where are you running? And they’re like, Oh no, the, the capitals videos about district 13.
They say there’s always in the footage, the same bird. I think it’s a mockingjay actually in. Yeah. It’s. It’s in the shot. And that’s how they knew that it was fake footage, that District 13 wasn’t actually a wasteland like they’d been told. And so they say that in Catching Fire. And then you kind of learn in, in the last book that it’s, you know, it was the whole mutually
[00:43:28] Josiah: attributed structure.
Pretty early on. Right? Like chapter two, chapter three. Yeah. Early in the book. I think
[00:43:33] Tim: most, um, most world powers that have been at war. Come to a place where they, where they can’t, they can’t defeat one another. They could destroy the other, but it would be at the cost of destroying themselves. And that’s happened with lots of different types of weapons.
The nuclear weapon obviously is, is a broader, larger destructive weapon, but that has deterred a lot of societies over time. You know, the, the fortress, if you getting into my fortress is going to kill most of your forces and destroy me in the process. Then neither one of us want that we can, you can build a fort over there and we’ll build a fort over here and the
[00:44:22] Josiah: status quo will remain unchanged.
So
[00:44:25] Rebekah: I, one change I thought was, I mean, we’ve talked about the sanitization of every other book to movie in this series, but one change that I just wanted to kind of go over was Katniss’s, uh, her trauma, her, her difficulties and then her recovery. So the first. Uh, scene of the movie is her hiding, I think, in 13, trying to kind of, it’s Mockingjay Part 1, trying to communicate that she’s not okay, she’s hiding, whatever.
In the book, it’s the first scene is her going into 12 the first time, when she wouldn’t let Gale get off the hovercraft, and she’s seeing the destruction of 12, and that’s when she sees the, the roses from snow, and all this stuff. And throughout the book, she kind of has a little bit of recovery, and then she will literally get so damaged that she ends up like in the hospital being sedated, whatever, halfway through the book when she finally comes back and she becomes so destroyed.
She goes to two gets shot and then comes back and is on a morphing drip. She and Joanna Mason have to go through like withdrawal. They both have, like, they describe themselves as like. basically unable to make it through a day of training with the very early, like, training recruits. There’s also a difference in, uh, the movie where Katniss and Gale, the first time they go out to hunt, they’ve been approved to hunt outside for two hours a day, she sees an elk and she doesn’t want to shoot it, which is interesting because in the book, her being able to go out and hunt, like, the first day she talks about, like, they were able to get a bunch of things and it was so freeing for her, but I think in the movie they were trying to use this, like, her recognizing, like, the innocence.
It’s also one of the ways that she grows in being able to see Joanna differently and having a more nuanced view of who PETA is after he’s been hijacked and all these things, but in general, like, then you get to the end of the book slash Mockingjay part two and she is. So, I mean, she’s burned at the end and she’s in confinement to the point where, like, she develops sores.
She doesn’t bathe, she doesn’t move, like, when she gets back to 13, or sorry, to 12, Greasy Say has to feed her. It takes years for her to, essentially, to sleep with Peeta after falling in love with him and going through all this stuff in the, in the epilogue. I think that all of the things that she went through in the books were so dark.
I mean, I had to literally stop reading the third book and start reading something happy go lucky because it was so dark. Um, I know why they did it for the movie, but she was a very much more destroyed character. Mm-Hmm. during this entire thing at the
[00:47:05] Donna: beg and at the beginning, or remember the beginning of the book, she finds out.
That, you know, she’s found out that her home is gone and all these things. She also, when they, when they find the prep team, and she, she agrees to be Mockingjay, and then they say, okay, we found the prep team. They show her Senna’s designs and all that. One of the things in the book they go through is. The, when the stylists are released, they’re all traumatized by the shape of her body.
And there’s a scar on her arm where Joanna crudely had to cut out the tracker and she’s a mess. Her, and her nails and her body, and they’re, they’re just kind of like, Oh no, they don’t say this. It was kind of like, Oh, this is how you were when we met you. We’ve got to do this again and pick it up and related to that, um, related to that in real life.
She had so. Um, destroyed her hair in the first two movies that by the time Mockingjay 1 came, um, I had to look it up because I wanted to make sure I got it, got it correct. Um, she’s a natural blonde. Uh, they have, she’s got brown, you know,
[00:48:19] Rebekah: brown hair and so
[00:48:22] Donna: they had been dying her hair and it was, it was just, the damage was just building and building and grow and continuing to get worse.
So a movie hair specialist named Linda Flowers, which I’m not familiar with that name, but solved the problem for the first film. By paying 30, 000 for five wigs of different brunette shades. But it says, sadly, Jennifer’s hair still ended up getting the chop due to over processing ahead of mocking Jay part one and two.
And I noticed in, I noticed in The second movie, and then into Mockingjay, I kept looking at her hairline thinking, with all the resources you have, she looks too much like she’s got a wig on. She’s a young girl. They should have done a better job. I always thought, and I don’t have a lot of complaints about the movies, but that would be one because In a couple of scenes I can remember very clearly.
Yeah, she’s too, uh, you know, she lives outside that movie and so Can you imagine going through all that with, with your hair? Yeah. She shaved
[00:49:27] Josiah: her,
[00:49:27] Tim: she shaved her head for the, for the mocking J one and two for the last movie to wear the wig so she could wear the wigs. Yeah. So yes, outside of that she would.
She would have had a
[00:49:37] Josiah: crew cut at best.
[00:49:39] Rebekah: Um, a couple other things and then we can kind of just talk about a little trivia and then give our verdicts. Uh, the interactions between Katniss and Peta are a little more obviously pronounced in the book. Um, she sees him at Finnick’s wedding. She also sees him when they let him come to dinner in 13.
And so in the movie, it’s like more He, she gets, at the beginning of Mockingjay Part 2, like, she just ditches and goes to two and all that stuff and then sees him a little bit later, but like, he comes and has this whole meal interaction with her and Finnick and Gale and it’s like so awkward and there’s, they have their friend Deli Cartwright that’s not in the movies and whatever, and then obviously, um, he comes to the district, or the capital for the final stuff, um, That was a little different too.
I will say just this is a random comment. It doesn’t need discussion, but in the movie Katniss sneaks away during Fennec’s wedding to get to the capital and then Coin and Plutarch decide to display it as their choice. In the book, she actually has to like go through her training. She finally gets her stuff together, goes through training, passes all of the stuff, and is put as a member of the star squad and they talk about what they’re going to do while they’re still in command in 13.
Coin didn’t make it. Yeah, Joanna couldn’t get through the last bit.
[00:51:00] Tim: Something that’s, that’s raised in the books, uh, is what’s real and what’s not real right from the very beginning. And at the beginning of, at the beginning of, of mocking Jay. Katniss is talking about that later on when he comes back, he begins, he begins to talk about that.
What’s real, what’s not real. And for me, that’s the way that the book ends with the epilogue when he tightens his living with Katniss and their children, he tightens his hands around, around her shoulders while he’s touching her. And she knows that there’s something else, some memory that’s gone wrong.
And he’s trying to remember, is it real or is it not real? Um, but I think that’s, I think that’s through the whole thing, what’s real and what’s not real. And it’s all a game. Everything that takes place. The way that the people in the capital overdo themselves and alter their bodies. And what’s the, what’s the name of the person that we meet in Tigris?
[00:52:06] Josiah: Tigris. Oh yeah. The old Silas, her,
[00:52:08] Tim: her body, but it’s very indicative of what the Capitol does. Nothing’s real. Everything is unreal and it’s very difficult to figure out what’s real. Um, snow and Plutarch are. Not snow, but coin and Plutarch in the movie are saying, Oh, well, we’ll say that was our plan. She’s doing our plan because she wants it to appear.
We have absolute control over her. She’s not doing anything. Rebellious. Rebellious, like she’s actually doing. And I think that’s a big theme that Collins wants, wants to
[00:52:48] Rebekah: explore. And I think it’s communicated well in the films. It’s different than in the books, but it’s done well in the films too.
[00:52:55] Tim: stop that from being a very big part of what’s going
[00:52:59] Donna: on.
And what did Tiger say? Snow loved me until I went too far.
[00:53:04] Rebekah: Moving into some, some things that changed at the end has to do with kind of a bit of interest around the movie was that in the book, uh, Plutarch is the one who communicates a lot with Katniss while she’s in, uh, She’s being held captive basically after killing Coin and Hamish talks to her in the movies.
The reason that that particular change was made is because Philip Seymour Hoffman died partway through the filming of Mockingjay Part 2. Now he passed away before Part 1 was released, February of the year that it came out in November. Um, but Philip Seymour Hoffman obviously was a big part of the movies and so the same year as Mockingjay Part 2 came out.
was the year that Furious, Fast and Furious 7 came out and Paul Walker had been CGI’d in which was essentially like a lot of people thought it was poorly done because it didn’t look great CGI even in the last. He used
[00:53:58] Tim: his brother who looked a lot like him in some of the scenes that were far enough
[00:54:01] Rebekah: away.
Yeah, and so in this case. Um, they did not use CGI to put Hoffman back in, they cut him from a few scenes, but they basically used existing footage and b roll and different things like that to insert him. I think they did use some things to like do stuff with his voice to insert lines, but they used existing footage of him so that they didn’t have to CGI his appearance in for the movie.
And I believe Mockingjay part two specifically was dedicated to his memory.
[00:54:32] Josiah: That was a tragic loss. I think I remember the press around that time. Cause I guess I kept up with it. Was that there were only two scenes that he had not filmed by the time of his, uh, passing. I thought it was done with more respect.
[00:54:48] Rebekah: Now, dad, you were surprised at the box office stuff for this.
[00:54:52] Tim: I was surprised at the ratings and everything. Um, the book rating got a 4. 1 star out of 5 stars, which it got less than than the others. Um, the production cost was 125 million for the first part of Mockingjay. For the second part, it was 160 million.
And normally you have to triple that for it to really be successful. And when you get to their total income, the first one definitely tripled at 755 million. But the, but part two had less, it was 6, 6 59, about just under six 60, which meant that it didn’t, it didn’t
[00:55:33] Josiah: really do that.
[00:55:34] Rebekah: Uh, it was literally the worst grossing of the four films.
The second, second book, the second book, or the, the very last movie was the, was the lowest one, number
[00:55:43] Donna: four, which, which
[00:55:44] Tim: is strange to me because. The last movie is the conclusion. It’s wrapping up the whole story and you begin to wonder if people had just gotten to the point where they said, okay, I’ve had enough.
[00:55:58] Rebekah: One of the
[00:55:58] Tim: major, well, it was 2014 and 2015 that they were released at Thanksgiving time.
[00:56:04] Rebekah: One of the major criticisms of the Mockingjay movies was like Prim’s death was shown fairly graphically. Like, and the tone and themes were so dark with all the stuff that went on in the Capitol. So with how much it’s sanitized from the book, people literally complained that the audience being, you know, preteens and teenagers in a lot of ways, like that it was too dark.
It was too violent. And I honestly think it would have been a better made movie had it been rated R and they had just kind of leaned into. Like the violence and just been open with it, but it was less, it would have made less money though, because it was already criticized for how dark it was. I
[00:56:43] Tim: also think that that part of that is the literal tone, not, not the tone of the movie, but the color tone.
So much of the movies was gray. It was
[00:56:55] Rebekah: so gray and
[00:56:56] Tim: flat gray and very. Greenish. I think I was no hope in that kind of thing. Mentally. I think you look at something like that and it’s just oppressive. It’s supposed to be. I mean, that’s, yeah,
[00:57:08] Rebekah: but I think part of that is again, you split the movies up, you spend double on production, but.
Honestly, the third movie I think makes you not want to go back. There’s no arena. It’s gray. It’s sad. And there’s no payoffs. The third or the fourth? The third movie. Before you get to the conclusion, I think that the reason that the fourth movie grossed the lowest might have been that by the time you get to the end of the third movie, it’s like this sucks.
Like there’s nothing redeeming. Like it just feels ill. But then wouldn’t, wouldn’t it
[00:57:35] Donna: just drive you crazy not to see how to resolve it? In my brain, I would think, oh, yeah, maybe that’s it, it’s just, it’s a personal preference. And I did have friends that said, when they just looked at the, at the premise of the whole thing, not having read the books, I had several folks say, eh, it’s a little dark for me.
I don’t, I don’t want to even start.
[00:57:56] Tim: You and I over the years have said, if you, you’re willing to watch movies that have bad guys that are. worse than I do. But if I’m going to watch it, if I start, I have to finish it. I have to see the conclusion. I could not have gotten through and seen everything falling apart and then say, well, I’m done.
It’s like, I would have to say, I’m going
[00:58:20] Josiah: to.
[00:58:20] Rebekah: I struggled. I struggled to get through the third book. like reading the third book. I wanted to give up because I was like, whatever, they probably win, but I, ugh, but I did. Honestly, I did because I wanted to know if she ended up with Peta or Gale. That was like the thing I had
[00:58:37] Donna: to know.
[00:58:37] Josiah: Cliché reason.
[00:58:41] Rebekah: Ugh, everything just feels awful. And like the one thing you can rely on, which is Peta being unfailingly in love with her is like, You can’t even rely on that. And then Gale is like, you can’t rely on him because it turns out he’s a killer. You know, like, it’s just so sad. You’re so crazy. I’m sorry.
[00:58:58] Donna: Two short things. One, Liam Hemsworth. Asked his brother for Chris Hemsworth, uh, to help him with audition practice. So Chris would play Katniss during rehearsals. That would have been fantastic to see. That’s great. The last one, the last little fact I came across to share is the Hunger Games cast. All suffered multiple onset injuries, including concussion, twisted knees, a suspected burst spleen, choking on fog machine smoke, a broken hand, bleeding eyes, and numerous falls.
I mean,
[00:59:37] Rebekah: oh, fun fact, one you did not mention in the second film in Catching Fire, Katniss, she lost her hearing in one ear. For several weeks after something that happened, which is funny because in the first movie slash book, she actually does lose her hearing it like in the story. So,
[00:59:54] Josiah: well, all right. Thank you for that levity.
All
[00:59:57] Rebekah: right. Final verdict. Timmy dad was the book better or the
[01:00:02] Josiah: movies. In this
[01:00:03] Tim: case, I would say the book had to be better because I could put it down, walk away from it and come back to it when I felt like I could to watch the movies all the way through.
[01:00:18] Rebekah: I will also remind you of something you said when we were re watching Mockingjay, I think part two, you even pointed out you couldn’t remember watching it and you’ve seen it several times. And so I think that that speaks, yeah, that speaks to how either whether it was the darkness or the tone or whatever wasn’t memorable in some way or another.
[01:00:39] Josiah: I will say, I mean, opposite of that, just sometimes, I mean, a book takes. What, six times? It’s like a 12,
[01:00:47] Tim: I think This one? 16 hour. I think this one’s a little over 11 to 12 hours. Okay.
[01:00:51] Josiah: Okay. But, you know, audio 11, 12 hours to get through a book as opposed to, in this case, four, four and a half hours to get through both movies, which is quite a long time.
But I mean, the movies are, it take, it’s a shorter experience watching the movies.
[01:01:08] Rebekah: All right, Josiah, what do you think, book better or movie? Well,
[01:01:12] Josiah: yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of mixed bags. I want to say that Mockingjay Part 1 improves on the first half of the book. I’m very sad that District 13 loses some of its…
backstory, but, um, the addition of Effie and adding stuff outside of Katniss’s point of view, I think was a great addition. Um, did it completely justify its existence as two parts? It was the shortest of the four films, Mockingjay part one. So I’m going to say narrowly, yeah, let’s say the movie was better on part one.
Uh, and. I’m, I’m even more narrow on part two, uh, because I think the book picked up in that second half, you know, the last 30, 40 percent of the movies based on, um, but there were some things that the movie visually did that made more sense to me, uh, than as portrayed in the book, whether it was meant to be confusing or whether the pacing was odd.
Um, you know, people criticize part two for having too much of an epilogue, but it was all there. And I mean, they cut stuff from the epilogue. They cut the epilogue short and it still wasn’t enough. So uh, just for the sake of brevity. I’ll say a little bit of a tie on part two. That’s funny. Oh, oh, and the book does Alma Coin better.
I think, I think she’s a little bit oversimplified in the
[01:02:51] Rebekah: movie. She’s deeper in the book for sure. Like more depth to her character. But the movies
[01:02:55] Josiah: have this, the visual advantage on showing us what Coin looks like, showing us these characters like Commander Paylor. Boggs. Yeah. All these people who are only in Mockingjay, I think movies are easier to connect to people, for me at least.
The, it’s, it’s a quicker connection because I see a human face instead of just reading a human name. But, uh, the, the book probably has it on part two, but it’s kind of a tie for me.
[01:03:26] Donna: about you mom? The movie is going to inch just beyond the top, but only by that thin of a margin because the book is so much, is so broad and gives so much the story that I wouldn’t have from the movie.
But the fact, the movie bringing in Effie. And I’m so, I love, I so love her character and a few of the changes they make there. And maybe because it’s so, so dark for, for that throughout this, this journey she’s on. The movie does. Give me a little bit of respite, but I still know it happened. So I’d put the I’ll put the movie for this
[01:04:10] Rebekah: one Um, I mean my opinion is generally one sided.
I always prefer the book as Discussed but I think that for me My favorite things about the movie adaptations in this case were obviously the addition of Effie Like you said, I love her chemistry with Hamish and I loved getting to see like And like you said, the, the dam being taken down and I think getting to see more of the war effort, I did really like that part of the movies, but overall, even though they were a little more sanitized and a little easier to swallow in a lot of ways, like than the book was, I still felt like there was just so much more depth in the book.
I guess we’re going to call it there for this episode. Thanks for listening. And we can be found most places online, most social media, et cetera, @bookisbetterpod. If you have feedback on our episodes, how we can improve, want us to cover your favorite book to film adaptation, give us a shout. You can email us at bookisbetterpod@gmail.com.
com. And uh, thanks for listening.
[01:05:21] Donna: That was fun. And what was the purpose of that?