The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

Francis Lawrence’s 2015 closing film was shot as one production with its predecessor, both halves filmed between 23 September 2013 and 20 June 2014. That is why it opens like the second half of a cut film rather than a new one, and recaps nothing for anyone who skipped the earlier entries. The technical centre is the Capitol sequence. The trap scene was shot at Les Espaces d’Abraxas near Paris, and because the courtyard was real no blue screens could be rigged. The black wave is a fluid simulation and the light on the cast was changed afterwards in compositing, so the most physical-looking scene is also the most computed. The underground creatures work the same way: designed eyeless and bipedal, played by stunt performers in white tracking suits who were then erased and replaced digitally. The film runs to roughly twelve hundred effects shots. Philip Seymour Hoffman died on 2 February 2014 with most of his work done. Rather than build a digital double, the production reshot two remaining scenes with other actors and turned one into Haymitch reading a letter aloud, so that character’s farewell arrives as reported speech instead of a scene. Not for anyone expecting battle throughout. The last stretch is a reckoning rather than a fight.