Terrific and over the top good and also more of the same

Rating: 7/10 (2 December 2013)

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)
Well, there is so much to be thrilled about here you can't just dis this movie as a rehash of the old stuff. It's epic and bizarre and tragic and inventive. It's funny and sad. It has some great serious and campy acting. And it carries on the plot and tradition of the first movie well. The repeat performance of Jennifer Lawrence is really good. She remains a convincing model and role model, a perfect mixture of humility, compassion, and strength when required.
But way down at the bottom of it all, it does rehash old stuff. Yes, it progresses, but I keep remembering my starry surprise at the whole idea when watching the first movie. It was all so crazy and almost possible. It drew from powerful archetypal sources, from Roman gladiator battles to Nazi rallies to Native Americans surviving in the wilderness. And it was new and fresh every time.
Not possible here, and I missed that a lot.
Such is the problem with sequels. And yet that's part of the appeal of a sequel— a world has been created where the viewer enters already informed and invested (and in love, perhaps). You want to go back. So how do you keep the new installments alive? It was done with the Bourne movies, and Nolan's Batman movies. But it is only partly done here.
Too much is familiar, and some is even a bit worn. The romances are merely continuations (the leading woman is a two-timer in a believable and touching way). The secondary characters are mostly familiar (Philip Seymour Hoffman is new but there is Sutherland and Harrelson, both terrific, and Tucci, who is a riot even the second time). The leads are of course the same, but they end up in the most familiar thing of all, the actual battle.
And the battle, which is the whole last third of the movie, is the biggest weakness. We know who we want to win of course, and we don't know how they're going to pull off saving more than one hero. But it's a familiar mix of speed and luck and ingenuity. It's pure action adventure stuff, running and shooting and fighting, very well done and exciting, for sure. But it is what it is. I'm talking familiarities.
What about the message here? The big theme is an autocratic militaristic government controlling so many lives, and an ordinary population where the people are wonderfully ordinary and sympathetic. The heroine feels she can do nothing to help and wants to leave with her local boyfriend into the wilderness. But she is called to action and she shows the power of not being selfish. A new Hunger Game scenario is set up and a visit to the big city with all the pizazz, and we see a sense of solidarity between Victors from previous games. The message is cooperation rules, and the games shows a little bit of the Avengers aspect, each fighter with their own power.
It wasn't enough, somehow, but this is compared to round one. As a movie it was stunning in so many ways it wins anyway.