The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 is a 2015 USA Sci-Fi adventure by Francis Lawrence. Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth.
The BBFC rated the cinema release as 12A uncut for moderate violence, threat.
The Daily Mail has a
rather half-hearted knock at this 12A certificate:
With a bombing of families, monsters eating people alive and a public execution, it hardly seems ideal viewing for children.
But film censors
appear to think otherwise, giving the latest instalment of The Hunger Games a 12A classification, meaning it can be seen by children of primary school age accompanied by an adult.
In one scene, the main characters are involved in
a gruesome fight with monsters with no eyes and razor-sharp teeth during which one man is eaten alive.
In another, young families are targeted by bombs, disguised as gifts, causing mass death and destruction. Such scenes have
fuelled the debate about whether 12A classifications give enough protection to young people.
The Daily Mail dragged up a few trivial sound bites from censorial campaigners, including a rare comment from Mediawatch-UK.
Claude
Knights, of the charity Kidscape, said of the latest film:
I wonder why it wasn't given a more robust rating. Many parents wouldn't take their children to something like this, but because it's a 12A they might not be
expecting it to be this way.
The danger is that these scenes become normal. They become desensitised and the level of gore and violence becomes normalised.
Vivienne Pattison, director of lobby group Mediawatch
UK, said:
The industry is terribly keen to get things through as a 12A, as suddenly you've doubled your market potentially.
There have been quite a few 12A films recently that I just don't think
you'd want to take an eight-year-old to see, although it's perfectly legal to do so.
