The Verge

The Hunger Games franchise is unique because of how well it understands the power of images and pop culture, but it’s also incapable of breaking out of the larger narrative that pervades young adult literature and, ironically, Hollywood: that mass culture is inherently vapid and artificial, to be participated in only unwillingly or with a knowing roll of the eyes. In Mockingjay, it comes off as knee-jerk cynicism, poisoning the genuinely emotional scenes.

The most positive interpretation of Mockingjay is that it’s a daring postmodern step past simple satire of the reality TV-loving masses. Katniss was a hero of action in The Hunger Games, taking her sister’s place in the Games and manipulating the Capitol into changing the rules to save her. She was a hero of reaction in Catching Fire, unwittingly playing out her part in a larger scheme. Now, Mockingjay is creating its own version of David Foster Wallace’s hero of non-action in Infinite Jest: not a character “beyond calm, divorced from all stimulus” but one that genuinely has no existence or effect beyond her appearance on a screen within a screen. A character who, after years of manipulating her appearance, has actually started to become television.