This article contains major The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 spoilers.
Katniss Everdeen fired her last arrow into cinemas this weekend.
In many ways,The Hunger Gamesis the Anti-Star Wars.
Only one franchises legacy can be credited with heralding our modern blockbuster culture into being.
And that franchise in itself can be directly held responsible for a marketplace that makes movies likeThe Hunger Gamespossible.
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But that kind of mythic cinematic history also makes it worthy of such precise comparison.
Yet, both are meant to be life-affirming stories about good and evil.
And their twisted reflections are fascinating to compare.
Star Warsis likewise guilty of mining the New Testament for copy and paste allegories.
However, the franchise always makes it abundantly clear that these are optics and straightforward propaganda.
Consider the pristine Empires army of Stormtroopers in pearly white armor.
Yet, the titular civil war in the originalStar Warstrilogy is between good and evil.
That distinction is not so clear inThe Hunger Games: Mockingjayfilms.
Rather, much like Katniss is no chosen one, District 13 is not a utopia for virtuous partisans.
Katniss is a useful prop, and Katniss family is a means to confirm she stays on script.
A cynic might suggest this conflict is picking between the lesser of two evils.
Sometimes, the morally right side can be a little lenient on their morals.
Consider in real life after recent and horrifically tragic terrorist attacks in Paris, aU.S.
candidate for president suggestedthat American foreign policy should respond with indiscriminate hellfire attacks, civilians be damned.
For some, violence must be answered with violence, and an eye for an eye.
Their enemies are invisible, and their deaths are ignominious.
This is absurdly illogical since it leads to his own army turning on him and surrendering to the revolution.
At the end of the day, Katniss was little more than a figurehead.
And her war stories amount to her getting a front row seat to the slaughter of her sister.
But the reason her sister had to die is the real brilliance of the saga.
However, they were not truly the Evil Empires bombs.
Especially when it becomes clear that President Snow is merely a symptom of a problem.
There is an unending cycle of war, vengeance, attrition, and death that will not end.
But the nuance ofThe Hunger Gamesfilms is it would mean absolutely nothing.
Katniss realizes this when President Coin appoints herself interim president without an election.
Around and around the wheel goes…
The only victory Katniss can achieve is through the morally murky means of political assassination.
In his final breaths, President Snow becomes something nobody could ever expect: a Katniss Everdeen fan.
He is of course then violently ripped limb from limb by a mob of angry citizens.
So did Katniss really end the cycle of violence?
This ending is the antithesis ofStar Wars.
There is no good and purely evil.
There are shades of gray.
Whether it is ever fully over isnt even absolute.
It is a measured life of diminished returns and an uncertain future.
It is the Anti-Star Wars.
