10. Splitting The Last Book - The Hunger Games: Mockingjay
The days of succinct franchises is over. If you're not universe building then you're stretching narratives so far what would have once passed as the plot for one movie becomes enough for a trilogy. An increasingly prevalent subset of all this is splitting the final installment of a book series in two. Next up in this financially motivated trend is the Hunger Games, with finale Mockingjay ready to take two films released a year apart to tell. There's something ironic about all the films that have pulled this trick. Even though the film-makers always harp on about how there was just too much stuff to fit into one movie, there tends to be a lot of superfluous elements; Twilight: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 inserted a dream action sequence, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and 2 felt like incomplete meandering stories with padded action (that still missed out the most important plot beats) and The Hobbit has become a short-hand for excessive film-making. And with Mockingjay the argument of lots of content is even flimsier. Widely regarded as the weakest book in the young adult trilogy, splitting it in two suggests even more needless cutaways and relentless muddled revolutionary discussion. Catching Fire did so well to better everything set up in Gary Ross' franchise starter, but we're expecting all the progress to be reversed come the final part.
