once again mockingjay should’ve been one movie but part 2 fares better than the first because at least this one has The Action (as well as the last two acts of the book lol). i didn’t properly appreciate mockingjay when i read it as a 12 year old or even when i was first watching this as a 15 year old because i don’t think my baby brain had matured enough to grasp the moral complexity and ambiguity of war and instead somewhat missed the superficial spectacle of the first two books but revisiting this 10 years later after the world has actively been on fire for what feels like that entire decade it actually really rips lmao!

it’s purposefully unsatisfying at points, especially when it comes to the resolution of this war, but that’s what makes it rip! mockingjay goes so much darker and deeper than almost every other YA dystopia story and that’s why the hunger games still endures and stands head and shoulders above the rest of the pack; suzanne collins wrote the conclusion this trilogy needed instead of what fans necessarily “wanted,” and it’s all the better for it - as well as being just as terrifyingly timely today as it was in 2010.

(also i’m simply such a fucking sucker for katniss and peeta’s happy-if-imperfect ending as it’s so honest yet still so heartfelt and exactly what each of them deserve and i’ll always absolutely and shamelessly adore that epilogue and that final line so this extra half star is for HER)