Piece of Cake: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1- The Parent Edition

If you loved the other two Hunger Games movies, oh baby, you're in a treat. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 is definitely a movie to see. One of my friends suggested to me that I give an entire movie overlook and rating. So that's what I've decided to do. So...
SPOILERS AHEAD, but for those parents out there that want to know if this film, or any other film I review, is appropriate for their children, I'm doing this for you. Okay, here we go:

THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY

PART 1

The movie begins with Katniss Everdeen hiding in a small shaft, shaking in fear. A flashlight illuminates the background, and a voice says, "Miss Everdeen? Miss Everdeen, you can't be here."

"I just had a nightmare, just five more minutes."

"We can help you sleep."

"Please, just five more minutes."

Katniss Everdeen: The Mockingjay

After some more dialogue is exchanged, three men come and grab Katniss, and she begins fighting back. She angrily screams, "Get off of me! Get your hands off of me!" The screen goes black and then fades in to her in a hospital bed. She hears somebody crying, and she goes to see who is shedding the tears.

"Finnick," she sternly says. Some dialogue between the two characters takes place, and we learn from Finnick that Joanna, Annie, and Peeta are all being held in the Capitol. The screen goes to a face shot of Katniss with a face that is somewhat shocked. It slightly zooms in before snapping to a black screen view, and reading in white, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1.

Katniss is having her hair done by Prim in a room when a black man by the name of Boggs (no racism intended) comes in to escort Katniss to President Coin, the president of District 13. In the meeting room is Coin and Plutarch Heavensbee.

They ask that Katniss be the face of the rebellion as the Mockingjay. Katniss does not agree, and angrily decines saying, "You should have saved Peeta." She gets up and storms out. Coin turns to Plutarch and says, "That's not the girl that you talked about."

Plutarch and Coin discuss what they should do about Katniss's uncooperativeness, and they conclude that they should allow her to go and see the remains of District 12.

Now Katniss goes to District 12 and is utterly shocked.

WARNING: Here, Katniss sees heaps of dead bodies that are charred and show disturbing images of skulls and ribs jutting out from still lightly attached pieces of grey skin. Some even look like gray people that are screaming out in pain, clutching their stomachs and ribs, that are greatly exposed.

This may not be the best image to show children. It appears shorty after Katniss steps on a skull, and don't worry, you'll hear it. Katniss will slowly look down, and the skull image will take maybe a second or three to show. This would be the time to shield any eyes.

District 12 in ashes

Katniss goes to her home in the Victor's Village and recovers her sister's cat, Buttercup, and goes into the same room where she met President Snow in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Present in the room is also a white rose. It's one of Snow's. She gags and quickly leaves the house.

Katniss then returns to District 13 agrees to be the Mockingjay in another meeting with Coin and Plutarch. However, she has some conditions: That the captured tributes, at any window of opportunity, will be saved from the Capitol. And when they are all liberated, they are all granted immunity. And that Prim will be able to keep her cat.

In the lunch room previously, there had been an interview on the T.V. between Caesar Flickerman and Peeta, and Peeta called for a cease-fire, saying that the war on the Capitol would kill everybody. "Everybody has to lay down their weapons now. No one can survive this." This is the reason that Katniss requests immunity to Peeta.

Coin publicly announces to all of District 13 Katniss's conditions so that she will be the Mockingjay. After that, Katniss is immediately put to work. She is put into a room where she is to recite a few lines for propaganda videos to bring people to the rebellion.
"Ah, you look marvelous darling. They'll either want to kiss you, kill you, or be you," says Effie Trinkett on the set of the propaganda video.

Plutarch Heavensbee, Left, and Coin, Right

The few lines that Katniss must recite are, "People of Panem, we fight, we dare, we end our hunger for justice!" Katniss repeats the lines a few times, and the staff aren't very satisfied. Haymitch Abernathy walks in and says, "And that, my friends, is how a revolution dies."

Haymitch calls for a meeting with Plutarch, Coin, Katniss, Effie, Boggs, Gale, and Beetee,where he asks, "I want everyone to think of one incident where Katniss Everdeen genuinely moved you. Not where you were jealous of her hairstyle, or her dress went up in flames or she made a halfway decent shot with an arrow. Not when Peeta was making you like her. I want to hear one moment where she made you feel something real."

There is silence for a little bit, and then Effie speaks up and says, "When she volunteered to take Prim's place at the reaping." She also says, "When she sang the song, when Rue died."

"Who didn't get choked up at that, right?" Haymitch says as he writes down both on the touch board. The ideas start rolling and then Haymitch says, "So, the question is, what do all of these have in common?"

"They were Katniss's," says Gale. "No one told her what to do."

"Unscripted, yes!" agrees Beetee. Then Haymitch proposes that they throw Katniss into actual battle, in order to give her the motivation to do good propaganda videos for 13. And that is what happens.

Katniss is taken to District 8 and we meet new people, Cressida, Pollux, and Castor. She goes to a hospital and meets the rebel leader, Paylor. Katniss is then taken to the hospital, and just seeing her face is enough for everybody to have hope again.

"Katniss? Are you here to fight with us?" a boy asks the Mockingjay.

"I am. I will." The boy places his three fingers on his left hand to his lips, and raises them towards Katniss. Katniss looks around the room and sees that every man, woman, and child is saluting her in the way of District 12, first introduced in The Hunger Games.

WARNING: Here, there are many injured people. When the company enters the room, many are in extreme pain and many are crying out. There are some who are bloody and have scars across their faces. I don't know how sensitive you are to blood, but I thought that this should be thrown out there, since there is a good deal of it in this scene.

The Hospital Bombing in District 8

Next thing we know, District 8's rebel hospital is bombed, and Katniss shoots down the two hovercraft that come to bomb the hospital. Outraged at the murder of hundreds of innocent people, Katniss says to the camera recording the entire thing,

"I want to tell the rebels that I am alive. That I'm right here in District Eight, where the Capitol has just bombed a hospital full of unarmed men, women, and children. There will be no survivors. I want to tell people that if you think for one second the Capitol will treat us fairly if there's a cease-fire, you're deluding yourself.

"Because you know who they are and what they do. This is what they do! And we must fight back! President Snow says he's sending us a message? Well, I have one for him. You can torture us and bomb us and burn our districts to the ground, but do you see that?

"Fire is catching. And if we burn... YOU BURN WITH US!!!"

Katniss is then taken back to District 13, and a new propaganda video is made, which is shown to District 13. Katniss is truly making a change.

And it shows when the view shifts to District 7, where lumberjacks are being taken to fill that day's quota. As the men are walking, the camera shifts behind a black man, and there is the symbol of the mockingjay carved into a tree.

As soon as the man sees it, he whistles the three note tune that Rue first introduced to Katniss in her very first games. The tune is heard by everyone, and all of a sudden, they all start making a run for the trees. Many are killed, but when most of the workers are in the trees, a loud shout is heard from a distance,

Haymitch Abernathy: Mentor to Katniss

"IF WE BURN, YOU BURN WITH US!" BOOM!!! BANG!!! Bombs begin going off, until the entire landscape has completely exploded, killing all the Peacekeepers. The camera looks to the trees, and the lumberjacks yell and shout in happiness and triumph. They've shown defiance.

The screen shifts back to District 13, where Katniss and Prim are in the lunch room, and another interview between Peeta and Caesar occurs live from the Capitol. Peeta again urges that Katniss call for a cease-fire.

"Don't be a fool, Katniss. Think for yourself. They've turned you into a weapon that could be instrumental in the destruction of humanity. If you've got any real influence, use it to put the brakes on this thing. Use it to stop the war before it's too late. Ask yourself, do you really trust the people you're working with?"
Katniss realizes that Peeta doesn't know what happened to District 12. She needs to make a reply message showing him what truly happened. The next day, Katniss and her team return to District 12, this time, Gale sharing the tale of how 915 of 10,000 survived the bombing.

WARNING: The images of dead bodies return just as in the first warning. When Gale and the team disembark from the Hovercraft is probably a good time to shield eyes.

After Gale tells his story, the team goes by the lake in the woods of what was District 12. Pollux, an Avox, gestures to Katniss, requesting that she sing for him. This is the song titled, "The Hanging Tree."

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where they strung up a man they say murdered three.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight in the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out for his love to flee.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight in the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where I told you run, so we'd both be free.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight in the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be

If we met at midnight in the hanging tree.

Peeta Mellark: Hijacked

This leads to another propaganda video. The video is televised to the districts, and it leads to another rebellion in District 5, the water plant district. The people sing "The Hanging Tree" as they march to blow the damn that provides hydro-electricity for all of Panem.

The electricity goes out while yet another interview between Peeta and Caesar is taking place. At this time, Katniss is hiding in the same place she hid in in the beginning of the movie. Haymitch comes and tells Katniss that Coin sent in an extraction team to go retrieve the captured tributes from the Capitol.
At the same time that the extraction team is on their mission, Finnick is giving a live broadcast about what he has to say about the Capitol and President Snow. He shares that tributes could be sold. That is, their bodies would be sold for the pleasure of the citizens of the Capitol.
The tributes could ask for payment. And Finnick found that secrets were a good form of payment. Most of the secrets he shares are about Snow himself. The extraction team is successful and brings Peeta, Joanna, and Annie back from the Capitol.
Katniss goes to see Peeta in a hospital room. Haymitch goes with her. Katniss moves in front of Peeta, who looks terrible. He is badly starved, very scrawny, and very beat up. When Katniss moves in to embrace him, he flips out and grabs Katniss's neck, choking her and chucking her all over the darn room. Haymitch finally slams Peeta in the head with a large metal plate, and the screen goes black.
Katniss wakes up in the hospital with a neck brace, and she cannot speak. Plutarch and Haymitch explain that Peeta's mind has been brainwashed through the usage of tracker-jacker venom. This is also known as "Hijacking."
Afterwards, Katniss goes to see Peeta again, and he is seen struggling in a bed that has him strapped down. The camera zooms in slowly to enhance the terrifying experience of Peeta's struggling. Then the screen goes black and again shows the title.