It’s here, in Katniss’ initial refusal to aid the rebellion cause, that Mockingjay Part 1’s social and political allegory takes shape. The surface story isn’t interesting: it’s mostly characters sitting in dimly-lit and visually bland spaces being bummed out. Viewers may be startled most of all to learn there are only a handful of action scenes, so understanding the deeper ideas at play is more important than The Hunger Games or Catching Fire. Like I note in my review of Divergent, Joseph Cambell’s Hero’s Journey is a coda for the YA story, hitting all the typical story boxes to plug every button of every demographic. But, for better and worse, The Hunger Games is different. Katniss is not “the one” any more than she’s a great heroic character. She’s defeatist, stubborn, and sometimes stupid, traits that aren’t just undesirable, but also loathed. She takes no qualms in prioritizing what she really wants over what the rebellion—not to mention President Snow—want her to. So Coin and Plutarch make Katniss seem like, if not become, the hero we’ve come to expect in popular storytelling.

There’s a few levels to what Mockingjay Part 1 does here. Katniss is manipulated just as much as she helps manipulate the 12 districts, which is also just as much as the storytelling manipulates us. Suzanne Collins and the filmmakers seem to make a strong case for storytelling as propaganda, and when seeing Mockingjay Part 1 from that angle, it takes on a deeper meaning the thin surface story cannot. During these scenes, however, subtlety is as annoyingly absent to us as alcohol is to Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson). So many scenes are devoted to how to manipulate the masses, from President Snow to President Coin to Plutarch to Haymitch to rebellion propaganda “director” Cressida (a gorgeous Natalie Dormer), to Katniss, to Peeta, that it has the same quality of a hearing a never ending joke with an obvious punchline. The only difference is at a party you can change circles of conversation, but you’re trapped in your seat for Mockingjay.

Francis Lawrence reversed the many problems of Catching Fire with clearly mounted action scenes and world building, making a film as potent as it was impressive. For his second second Hunger Games he boldly changes it up, brazenly using war movie tropes to bring war-torn Panem to life. No war reference stone goes unturned. There’s elements of Schindler’s List and the famous holocaust documentary Shoah when we visit the war-torn District 12, where an entire town has been razed to rubble, adorned with burned skulls and rib cages. PG-13 has rarely been as grim, and parents of younger viewers should beware (although there’s a Katniss-Bond Q moment straight out of another movie that’s tonally jarring).