Are You More of A Katniss Everdeen Or Jennifer Lawrence?

There are a variety of reasons why “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2” did not perform as well as previous instalments at the box office in the United States. The fourth and final film’s box office numbers dropped from a high of $158 million for the series’ second film two years ago to a relatively low $101 million this weekend, and you can spend a long time pondering what went wrong and what this means for the longevity of young-adult franchises if you’re so inclined. (For starters, stop dividing final books into two movies.)

One factor that may not have helped was Jennifer Lawrence, who was once regarded as one of the franchise’s greatest assets.

Lawrence is, without a doubt, a powerful actress and a well-known figure, two commodities that are desirable when launching a mega-franchise (especially if other aspects of the work can be a little wobbly). But, as in the previous two films, and especially in this one, she comes with baggage: she appears to be significantly older and larger than the part, in a way that is distracting at best and, at times, directly contradicts the films’ goals of portraying a hardened youth. In other words, she appears to have outgrown the role.

Of course, these feelings are subjective. But she seemed off from the moment she first appeared onscreen in this film until her final act with a bow near the end. Lawrence has been Katniss Everdeen since the first book was adapted for the screen in 2012, so it’s not like I didn’t believe in her portrayal of the character. I couldn’t believe what she was doing on their behalf.

I believe that part of it is due to age. In the first book, Katniss is 16, which didn’t seem like much of a stretch when Lawrence started filming the role in the spring of 2011 at the age of 20. However, in the book that inspired the “Mockingjay” films, she only aged one year, to 17, and she is now 25 in real life. That’s a much larger difference.

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