A few months into its run, the second installment, Catching Fire, became the first movie with a lone female lead to top the annual domestic box office in four decades. That’s astonishing because it reveals the historical depths of the industry’s inequities even while it speaks to the audience’s embrace of this series. There are all sorts of reasons that viewers have flocked to these movies, including the studio hard sell, but I like to think the numbers prove that, in rallying to Katniss’ side, they’re also backing the other liberation struggle she has come to represent.

The performances are the major connect for an audience tired out by repetitiveness. Despite truncated roles, the A list actors make it all look good. The darkness of war is well represented but the message of its futility doesn’t carry through. By the end of it all (including the neat epilogue) you are just relieved that the exhausting series has finally ended. ‘Catching Fire’ did take it to the pinnacle just as ‘Mockingjay Part 1’ toppled it back to the ground level. Part 2 manages to save the blushes. It doesn’t catch fire but does a fair impersonation of it.

What immediately makes this film more exciting than the previous installments in this series is that there’s a lot of action, a few scares too, and plenty of thrills to keep fans of this franchise well entertained. The only downside though, is an overly-protracted ending, which is reminiscent of how long the ending of the final Lord of the Rings movie was. In fact, Jo Willems’ camerawork – especially the scenes in the Capitol – is by itself a highlight of the film. A fitting cap to the series.

The Hunger Games has triumphed partly because it means so many different things to so many people. It’s a story of war and peace, love and bullets, pegged to a girl-woman who fights for her family, her friends and the future. It’s aspirational and inspirational, personal and communal, familiar and strange, and it speaks to the past as well as the present, sometimes unnervingly so.