But on the other hand, we’re left with something of a cliffhanger until Mockingjay Part 1 comes out. If you’ve read the book or seen the movie, you’ll know that Catching Fire ends with a daring escape from the 75th Hunger Games, in which Katniss Everdeen is rescued by the rebels who seek to bring down the evil regime of President Snow.

However, Katniss’ allies, Peeta Mallark and instant fan-favourite Johanna Mason, are left in the arena, to the devices of Snow’s Capitol. Oh, and District 12, the home of both Katniss and Peeta, is utterly eradicated by Snow to punish them, leading to the deaths of almost everyone they’ve ever known.

The film is 146 minutes long, and it carries quite a bit of weight around its middle in the process of being extremely faithful to the book, to the point where the cliffhanger almost feels like an anticlimax. Granted, it’s immediately rescued by a haunting final shot of Jennifer Lawrence’s face, (to paraphrase Rocky III, “She’s not getting beat, she’s getting mad!”) but it does leave us awaiting the next sequel.

On the subject of sequels, Joss Whedon recently opined to Entertainment Weekly: ‘A sequel has to be its own movie. You’ve got to look to Godfather II and to The Empire Strikes Back—even though Empire committed the cardinal sin of not actually ending. Which at the time I was appalled by, and I still think it was a terrible idea. ‘

Yep, if that rings a bell, it’s from the same interview in which Whedon incensed fanboys when other online outlets picked up on his quote about the ending of Empire: ‘Well, it’s not an ending. It’s a come-back-next-week, or in three years. That upsets me. I go to movies expecting to have a whole experience. If I want a movie that doesn’t end, I’ll go to a French movie. A movie has to be complete within itself; it can’t just build off the first one or play variations.’