Board 8 > How satisfied were you with how Mockingjay ended The Hunger Games? [BEE W13]

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FAIR WARNING - I promise there will be zero spoilers in the opening posts of this topic series, however everything after that could be Spoiler City. After all, we're exclusively discussing the final moments of some of the most beloved and long running series in the history of popular media... so proceed with caution!

Welcome to Best Ending Ever, the topic series where Board 8 will decide the best (and worst) endings in the history of film, television, literature, and video games. Each week we'll cover a well-regarded or controversial new entry.

For this 13th week of BEE competition our question is, 11 years later... How satisfied were you with how Mockingjay ended The Hunger Games? Technically you should vote based on the young adult novel trilogy by Suzanne Collins, but the four part movie series had basically the same ending, so you can still have your say if you haven't read the books.
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Too perfect! I set up the Sitcom Showdown to decide once and for all which had the better ending, and what we ended up with was The Office and Parks & Rec in an... exact tie at 2.62! Someday we'll find out if their fellow Comedy Night Done Righters Community and 30 Rock want to make it a four-way-all-tie.

But first we'll return to the world of books for a second time!

BEE All Time Rankings
* 3.77 for how Trials & Tribulations concluded the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney trilogy
* 3.51 for how Return of the King concluded The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy
* 3.32 for how S5 concluded Breaking Bad
* 3.31 for how Infinity War & Endgame concluded Phase 3 of the MCU
* 2.71 for how The Deathly Hallows concluded the Harry Potter book series
* 2.62 for how S9 concluded The Office
* 2.62 for how S7 concluded Parks & Recreation
* 2.23 for how Mass Effect 3 concluded the Mass Effect trilogy
* 2.02 for how S6 concluded LOST
* 1.71 for how Rise of Skywalker concluded The Star Wars Skywalker Saga
* 1.65 for how S8 concluded Game of Thrones
* 1.14 for how S8 concluded Dexter

Paging doctor @azuarc ...

voted 3 here. i don't think the series is all that good, and book 3 was arguably the worst one, in terms of tedium... but it made sense within the world, took things to the stakes where they belonged, and provided a pretty dang good "war/revolution is hell" message

also the ending is dope

It appears I have been summoned to rain hell down on this weary thread...my goodness, how could I have not noticed for almost a full day?

This will be a heavily spoilered post. Consider yourself warned.

*inhales deeply*

Mockingjay is the single worst book I have ever read. Nay, I dare say it is the single worst book ever written. There are many, many books that have been published that I haven't heard of, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. There are even works of fan-fiction and half-baked "books" by amateur writers who couldn't compete with this utter horseshit not fit for wiping my ass with. (The pages would chafe.)

The Hunger Games starts off with so much promise. We have a book that is one-third setup before taking place in an exciting "game" environment for the remaining 2/3 of the story. Although many feel the worst part of the first book is Katniss herself, I think she makes for a compelling heroine within the context of the setting -- which is decidedly just weird enough to be interesting without being batshit crazy -- and she has the grit and sense of self to believably survive in an environment where others would not. The ending, of overcoming the gamemakers, is satisfying.

Then Catching Fire lands. If THG is really good, then CF is merely an okay follow-up. Collins spends a bit too much time worrying about her back story and her worldbuilding, to the extent that only one third of the novel takes place in the quarter quell itself. The rest is the build-up, the pageantry, and the hush-hush intrigue lurking in the background. There are definitely some developments that are dubious, but it ends with a twist -- District 13 is alive and well and leading a resistance.

But then Mockingjay begins. And dear God, where do I even start?

The idea that there's a rebellion against a greater power? Good. It almost allows us to set aside the fact that there's no actual hunger games in this book (aside from, arguably, the end charge in a symbolic sense.) That Katniss is being used as a media symbol for a propaganda campaign? A little weird. That she parlays this into actual fighting? Extremely forced for the sake of giving the book some "action." Mockingjay is a departure from the first two books. Collins knows it, the reader knows it, and she's jumping through hoops to try to distract us unsuccessfully.

Katniss is a psychological wreck. So is Johanna. Peeta is worse. Gale is being sus. There's definitely some undertones that District 13 is up to some shit, but as a commentary on war and on the idea that it's taking a corrupting power to defeat a corrupting power, it works. The book isn't awful.

For the first 80%.

Then the assault on the capital begins, and this is the moment when everything goes to pieces. No, pieces would be a disservice to describing just how bad of a clusterfuck the last 50 pages of this story are.

First, Katniss is rounded up with a large enclave of the cast, just so Collins can get the band back together. It's extremely forced and silly, particularly when Peeta of all people is shoehorned into the action. Sure, let's just put this unhinged, brainwashed, and unpredictable person who not long ago was shouting viciously how much he hated Katniss and was going to murder her by any means possible into her military unit. Then let's take this glorified bunch of figurehead fighters and put them on the frontlines so they can conveniently decide to wade into action the moment something seems to go wrong. Yup, totally believable. Especially when Katniss's incompetence results in all of them dying along the way except for -- conveniently -- Peeta and Gale. I can see what Collins is going for, but it's both abhorrent to the reader, and doesn't really work in a literary sense.

But oh, it gets worse. It gets so much worse.

On the final assault on Snow's compound, Katniss is separated from the two boys and has to go it alone. Snow is protecting himself with a ring of children, and District 13 airdrops in toys...and then medics...and then bombs the shit out of all of them. Why would you bother sending in your own medics if your intent the whole time was just to nuke the area? Tactically, this makes no sense unless you actively wanted your medics to be dead for some inane reason. (That reason is that Coin is trying to purge herself of the refugees on the medical staff, I guess.)

But the total asspunch in all of this is that among the people who were included in this "kill your own people" tactical gem was Prim. Prim, the character who has been on the sidelines being safely protected by Katniss. Prim, the character whose misfortune started the first book. Prim, who is literally the only thing Katniss is fighting for, and by extension, the reader is rooting for, is taken from us.

And again, if this was a book about the horrors of war, and there was a believable reason why she was there, this might even work. It'd be a total gut punch, but at least it would make sense. Instead, the plot had to be severely contorted around to even justify some of the foreshadowing behind this event, involving a character who had no business being there strategically, realistically, AND in terms of District 13's own rules about how old one had to be to serve as a proper medic, just to deliver a narrative development simply for the purposes of it being what Collins wanted.

Not Coin. Collins. The author basically did a complete 180 at this point, flipped a giant FUCK YOU finger to her readers, and took the story off in a different direction just to say she could. Just to deny us anything resembling a satisfying ending. And note I don't say "happy" ending. I didn't ask for a happy ending. But in carpet-bombing that space outside of Snow's mansion, she also torched her entire trilogy, her entire fandom, and everything she had going for her.

And I'm not even done, because for all I could rant about Prim dying in front of Katniss as a cheap plot device, there's two plot elements to follow that are even dumber.

The first is the present-time ending. Katniss wakes after, and is completely non-functional. She's basically a mental ward patient who needs severe supervision and control. Which, to be sure, is not what we want to see become of our heroes, but it makes sense that Katniss -- not exactly the most stable individual to begin with -- would end up here after watching the one thing she cared about excised from her life. But as the story fades back in, Katniss becomes shockingly lucid, has a conversation with the other surviving tributes regarding the reparations the capital will pay, which includes possibly having their children subjected to Hunger Games experiences, and Katniss is going to be placed in a position where she can execute Snow. Sure, completely believable. So is the fact that Coin lets the tributes decide whether to stage additional games, and leaves the decision completely in Katniss's hands, with Haymitch saying "I'll vote however she votes." I was sour here about Katniss's decision, but I'm able to let this one go in hindsight. Katniss is playing a long game, deciding that she hates THG, but she hates Coin more, and so instituting THG will be dancing on Coin's grave after Katniss kills her, tarnishing what remains of her legacy. As for her shooting Coin rather than Snow, who didn't see this one coming a mile away? This event which was supposed to be an awesome exclamation on the ending was so obvious it robbed any value it had. And the reader is so jarred by whiplash that they can't appreciate it for the execution, either.

But then there's an epilogue. I don't even know what to say about the epilogue. It's shit. It's unbelievable. It doesn't fit the tone. It conflicts with the rest of the book's messaging. It undercuts both the main story and the hairpin-turn ending. I'm at the max message size here, so just pretend I wrote another two long paragraphs dissecting it, assuming it didn't sap everyone's energy the moment they read it....and oh look, I still couldn't post it anyway. Gee, thanks gamefaqs.

Anyway, the thing about the ending is after the rage that I experienced reading the rest of the ending, I was so spent, so empty, so numb that all this ending made me do is go, "uhh....what?"

It also made me wonder just what it was Collins was even doing, because we go from fun action-adventure thriller to full-on horrors of war. And then Collins backs off that in this ending, as if to say, "Heh, just kidding guys. It's not so bad. I didn't just ruin everything you cared about, see?"

Which, TBH, is the worst part of the whole thing. Collins doesn't even commit. She commits war crimes of the literary kind by showing the actual war crimes that ruin her whole trilogy, and then she doesn't even have the audacity to stick to them. If at least the whole point was that war is awful and people die and there's nothing you can do about it, the ending would have a purpose. As it is, she simply lit her own manuscript on fire, and all I can feel is insulted. That there was a writer who decided to scoff at her own fanbase for ever liking anything she wrote, to the point that she scuttled the ending to it not once, but twice.

I've read some bad books since, and nothing has ever given me such a vitriolic reaction to the story or the ending as Mockingjay. And before you say, "Oh, well it got you to feel something, so it must have been doing something right," no. Screw you. Not even close. The first 2.8 books got me to feel something. The last 50 pages took it away, as if I were some homeless orphan about to be adopted and taken in by a loving family, and then just before the papers went through, the family laughed, spit at me, and threw me out into the street again after putting a bullet in my side and breaking both my legs in gruesome fashion to be certain I would never walk again. THAT is what Mockingjay made me feel, and if you want to argue that there's some sort of literary or artistic merit in that, then fuck you, because I don't ever want to go through that again, and you should have both of your legs broken in a gruesome fashion so you can never walk again, and then see how much you like it.

The whole capitol ingress thing was bullshit of the highest caliber, and retroactively made even worse by the prequel, where they clearly didn't give a shit about their own citizens, too, with some having starvation conditions all their own, and you expect me to believe they diverted their entire lifestyle of excess budget into building a fucking minefield into every residential area and sewer?

But yeah, no, collectively the lot of the cast should rot for some of the stupid shit they pulled off just to let a broken figurehead run rampant. Unless literally everyone was like "oh, huh, I'm sure Coin killed her own medical staff for some reason, let's have her forehead sprout feathers."

I'll be slightly less sour about the "after it's all over" bit because it's still made clear that Peeta and Kat's panic attacks and shutdowns are irreparable, but not life-endingly so. Sort of got the "mental illness is debilitating but not the end of the world" message, which isn't too bad of a takeaway except it happened in the most contrived circumstances possible.

Not a solid 1, but nowhere approaching a 2.

I echo azuarcs rage. I dont think the ending of any other series has left me so angry after finishing it. Killing Prim was completely distasteful and insulting to the reader. Why did I read this story about Katniss sacrificing herself to save her sister only to have the sister die in a confusing and poorly written scene that felt like the book equivalent of an off screen death? Prims death was done for cheap shock value and added nothing to the story.

And shoehorning crazy feral Peeta and Katniss together in the epilogue is garbage. Its the most Ross and Rachel thing that could have possibly been done. And dont get me wrong, the romance subplots were trash to begin with. Katniss falling in love with whichever boy toy was injured worse at the time is gross. But man oh man did it end in an even dumber way.

Yep, Mockingjay is among the worst books I've ever had the displeasure of reading. I don't really fault Suzy Collins for having such a shit ending so much as I do Scholastic for egging her on to get the damn book finished so they could release it and make millions off of it. Creativity isn't something that happens overnight. That's why the turnaround time was so quick. That's why the book was so bad.

I'd actually forgotten that Prim died. Like... it was THAT forgettable. It was THAT pointless. And the whole insult on the capital (yes, I said "insult") was utter trash and didn't even go through a single revision. "She's going to marry whoever she can't survive without" was a dumb chapter cliffhanger that reinforced how garbage the romantic subplots were. And Katniss was starting to become unhinged because of the way those around her were manipulating and using her. There were many out-of-character moments and forced decisions that I can't help but think it was laziness. It showed to me that the series wasn't really all that good.

The first two were still pretty fun, but Mockingjay should never have existed as it was. It should have been a wholly different book that Collins was given proper time to write properly. Writers need to go at their own pace to deliver the best product. She wasn't allowed that, so she didn't care, and that's a failure on Scholastic as well as on her for not pushing back.

Would you ever consider doing a band/artist's final album for this series as long as it's about as certain as anything that's been done on here so far that there won't be another album/revival?

It was clear that Collins was not the best writer in the first chapter of the Hunger Games. It was so poorly written that I had to set the book down and only returned to it because I had nothing to do. She could not write exposition at that point at all. It was on-par with some B8 battle royales written here back in the day. It then became clear that she was alright writing action, so I stuck it out, but whatever.

I actually thought the Catching Fire movie was really good. There was a single scene, when I saw it in theaters, that I thought about negatively.

Killing off Prim made me very angry, but I thought Katniss shooting Coin was great because I thought she was awful. I honestly don't remember much else about the ending.

Underleveled posted...

Would you ever consider doing a band/artist's final album for this series as long as it's about as certain as anything that's been done on here so far that there won't be another album/revival?

Hmmm interesting idea... could you name a couple bands/albums that would be good subjects so we can consider it a little more?

Only watched the movies but I'd mostly say I only liked the first one. Don't really remember much of what happened at the end tbh. (meaning I didn't vote, but figured I'd post anyway)

The ending itself is okay, it was a pretty realistic and fitting conclusion for the overall trilogy. But the book itself was...not very good or enjoyable.

Raka_Putra posted...

The ending itself is okay, it was a pretty realistic and fitting conclusion for the overall trilogy. But the book itself was...not very good or enjoyable.

yeah, i mostly agree with this

the rage-rant was pretty entertaining to read, but i don't agree with too much of it, possibly because i was never particularly invested in the franchise

pyresword posted...

Only watched the movies but I'd mostly say I only liked the first one.

That's kind of crazy- Catching Fire (the movie) is sooooo good. Especially compared to what came before, and after.

Ngamer64 posted...

That's kind of crazy- Catching Fire (the movie) is sooooo good. Especially compared to what came before, and after.

yeah catching fire was freaking awesome as a movie. would overall say movies 1 and 2 we're clearly better than their coordinating source material. didn't watch movies 3 and 4 because i am firmly against the whole splitting of movies that shouldn't be split - same with the hobbit

Never watched beyond the first Hunger Games movie but it is not better than the book

Solid adaptation though

Only saw the movies but I recall not liking Mockingjay all that much. Voted "Not great."

Thank you azuarc for those detailed posts. Only thing I outright disagree with is that I believe Catching Fire is easily the strongest book in the trilogy.

As for Mockingjay, I knew something was wrong about 50 pages in. It didn't have the inspired feel of the first two books. You hit it on the head with the comment about how the Games only appear symbolically in Mockingjay, and that hurt the book the most IMO. Mockingjay felt like a generic sci-fi war thriller because it abandoned its unique concept and made no effort to replace it with something creative. It'd be like if Indiana Jones 3 cut out the archaeology and left it purely as an action film about punching Nazis.

BlueCrystalTear posted...

Yep, Mockingjay is among the worst books I've ever had the displeasure of reading. I don't really fault Suzy Collins for having such a shit ending so much as I do Scholastic for egging her on to get the damn book finished so they could release it and make millions off of it. Creativity isn't something that happens overnight. That's why the turnaround time was so quick. That's why the book was so bad.

Didn't know this, but you're 100% right. "Never rush an artist."

I'd actually forgotten that Prim died. Like... it was THAT forgettable. It was THAT pointless.

It isn't setup properly and therefore has considerably less impact than it should. There could've been a scenario where Katniss tried to save Prim, then Prim sacrificed herself to save Katniss, and that might've had the emotional impact the story deserved. Instead Prim's character was utterly wasted.

Leonhart4 posted...

Katniss shooting Coin was great because I thought she was awful.

There are three problems I had with that:

1. Snow had been the Big Bad for the whole series, and Katniss had been so desperate to kill him, so why does she suddenly trust his judgment and side with him?
2. Coin was awful - and the point was meant to be "leaders on both sides are corrupt" but it more came across as "leadership = bad" because of Collins' sloppy writing.
3. It felt rather impersonal. Like... what was at stake for Katniss? And then she got away scot-free.

Leonhart4 posted...

Never watched beyond the first Hunger Games movie but it is not better than the book

I think the biggest drop-off between the books and the movies is the loss of Katniss's voice. Her perspective is fascinating in Catching Fire in particular because she's a badass who's powerless because of people using her as a pawn. But a translation of a first-person book to a movie doesn't always go well because you still have to characterize the protagonist. J-Law does the best she can but the movie isn't written tightly enough to convey it all.

plasmabeam posted...

Didn't know this, but you're 100% right. "Never rush an artist."

I remember a couple of little things that felt so off to me. Like Katniss wanting a haircut after being "initiated" (despite her loving her braids) feeling very out of character. And the "survive without" comment I mentioned above. If Collins had gotten to revise the book, she might have noticed these things. It honestly felt like a NaNoWriMo draft that an idiot writer shopped around to publishers without going through the minimum two revisions. The entire point of NaNoWriMo is to create a draft, the foundation of something as opposed to an immediately publishable book, and Mockingjay is an example I'd use of why. Too many holes. Too many character inconsistencies. Too many weirdly-written scenes. She had the skeleton of something great, but that was just it - a skeleton. And...

It isn't setup properly and therefore has considerably less impact than it should. There could've been a scenario where Katniss tried to save Prim, then Prim sacrificed herself to save Katniss, and that might've had the emotional impact the story deserved. Instead Prim's character was utterly wasted.

This is why it feels like a skeleton. All the moments that should have emotional impact are not set up well, and they just sort of "happen" as they do. Prim is thrown in the trash for no reason and it feels like it happens out of nowhere, and that's why I had forgotten about it. It happened because Collins wanted it to, not because it was meant to. Prim didn't get the death edit so it was meant to blindside the viewer, but because Prim had hardly been relevant and her story was lacking, it didn't work. If Prim had been built up as something, and then we got what you describe, suddenly a sudden death becomes viable, and has the impact Collins wanted. But because she didn't revise the book, it has no impact and doesn't stick with anyone.

Similarly, Katniss executing Coin. It honestly felt like Snow pushed the narrative that Coin was responsible for Prim's death, without Katniss having thought that beforehand. She abruptly became too easy to push around, and it made no sense that she let the man she had longed to kill for the entire series do that. Katniss should've had more internal conflict and come to the conclusion azuarc did: That Coin would only have sent Prim there to kill her. And then her target would change to Coin. The thing is, this wasn't necessary, let alone well-executed. This was a failed attempt at a gut punch that tried to change the themes of the series at the last minute.

The best stories write themselves after a certain point. Collins didn't let that happen because her hands were tied. She finished the first three-quarters of the book just fine before her deadline loomed, and Scholastic was inflexible, so she rushed the assault on the capital. She wanted to kill Prim off, so she did, even though there was no story reason to do so. It's best to work with an outline that can change if the story tells you it should. This should have been changed. A lot should have been changed. But Collins had to finish the last quarter of the book quickly and was given no time to revise the rest. That's why what we got was shit.

BlueCrystalTear posted...

I think the biggest drop-off between the books and the movies is the loss of Katniss's voice. Her perspective is fascinating in Catching Fire in particular because she's a badass who's powerless because of people using her as a pawn. But a translation of a first-person book to a movie doesn't always go well because you still have to characterize the protagonist. J-Law does the best she can but the movie isn't written tightly enough to convey it all.

katniss's voice sucks though. i'd say the book is written poorly, and the movie basically cuts out the whiny inner monologue and conveys what it needs to very effectively. (generally to the effect of i put on a stony face, even though i was CHURNING inside)

Katniss's voice becomes increasingly whiny, and her development is in the reverse direction of the norm. That's what makes it so fascinating in the books, whether it was intentional or not. I like it because it's so unexpected, even if I enjoy her character most in the first book. As things around her start to happen, it goes to shit, and I can't say I'd enjoy Catching Fire as much as I did if any other character had been the narrator. The movies... she's a bland, uninspired attempt at a "strong woman protagonist."

I don't consider myself a Hunger Games fan. The first two books are good but I've read better ones. It's the third book that's terrible and is why I wouldn't consider myself a fan. I didn't even read the prequel.

Fantastic discussion this week!

Last chance to get your votes in, everyone.

WHOOPS things went a little crazy last week and I didn't get the next series up. We'll try for later today or tomorrow morning.

It just means more people will have a chance to recognize how bad Mockingjay was.

Was still too busy to start the next official poll, so instead we're going to vote on Disney+ shows this week!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/79946822