Did You Notice This Big 'Mockingjay' Scene Change?

When it comes to translating the popular novel to the movie, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 stayed mostly true to the book. However, there were a few things that had to be altered in the last stages of filming due to the tragic death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who played Plutarch Heavensbee. Even if you read the books, the way they changed a few parts of the film to include Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks) was seamless — especially the one where she completely replaced Plutarch in a pivotal Mockingjay scene.

Director Francis Lawrence told Vulture that there were two substantial scenes with dialogue left for Hoffman to film before he passed, but they refused to re-create him digitally. Instead, they re-wrote them for other characters — Effie in Part 1 and Haymitch in Part 2. The one we've seen so far is when Effie talks about missing coffee and gives Katniss Cinna's notes and sketches for her rebellion outfit. This also explains why Katniss' prep team was replaced from the books, instead giving us some time with Effie, who otherwise would only briefly appear in Part 2.

"Anyone who knows the books knows that all that stuff is actually Plutarch's dialogue. The interesting thing about that scene is that it works with Effie. Effie could really give the [design] book [of the Mockingjay outfit] from Cinna, because she was connected to Cinna. And she's a fish out of water in 13, so the dialogue about how strict they are, and the jumpsuits, and the wigs — Elizabeth did some improvisation there — that all works for Effie. Effie wasn't even in 13, but Elizabeth Banks just made Effie such an iconic character, so it felt sort of unjust to Effie to keep her to a cameo appearance at the end of Part 2, so [producer] Nina [Jacobson] and I really worked on [author] Suzanne [Collins] to allow us to put Effie in 13."

We will have to wait and see which scene Haymitch re-creates in Part 2, and also how big Effie's role will be in the final film. Is it Nov, 20, 2015 yet?

Image: Lionsgate