One moment, I was sitting there with chills, emotional from a speech Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) was giving. The next moment, I was wondering if I could take a nap in the theater without anyone around me noticing.

This is “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay- Part 1” or what I would call a long trailer for “Mockingjay- Part 2.”  The movie is a build up to the second “Mockingjay” movie which is the final part of “The Hunger Games” movie series. If you haven’t seen the previous two movies of the franchise, you’ll be confused and probably should just go see something else.

The plot takes the audience away from the games, arena, and fighting of the first two movies to show a deeper side of the Capitol’s government. Rebels start to react against the Capitol and look to Katniss Everdeen to be their leader, or, in other words, their mockingjay. Several districts and the Capitol fight a game of their own with propaganda and deceit.

I was interested in the action, but for the majority of the movie I was just waiting for it all to be over. The worst part was that it didn’t have a clear ending. In the middle of nowhere, the credits started to roll.

Let’s face it, the only reason the third part of the series was split up into two different movies was because Lions Gate Entertainment wants to be able to squeeze all of the money they can out of the franchise. There was no need to stretch it out, and the plot could have done so much better without.

I’ll give “The Hungers Games: Mockingjay- Part 1” five stars out of 10 for the half of a movie that it was. I can only hope that the next movie will make the time wasted on its prequel worth it.

Erica Kelble is a Multimedia Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.