The final film in The Hunger Games franchise, Mockingjay: Part 2, opened November 20 to much fanfare, but perhaps the biggest note of the franchise is the final salute to actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman died of a drug overdose in February 2014 and midway through filming his scenes as Plutarch Heavensbee, leaving producers to wonder how they would work around the actor’s tragic death.
One of the biggest challenges was a scene in which Hoffman’s Heavensbee was to offer Katniss key advice, a scene which Hoffman had not yet filmed for the final film. However, director Francis Lawrence reworked the scene in which the advice is now offered through a letter from Haymitch Abernathy, who had once served as Katniss’ advisor in The Hunger Games. The decision turned into an emotional final salute to the actor behind Plutarch Heavensbee.
The final salute to the actor was also the final scene that was shot for Mockingjay: Part 2.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Francis Lawrence said, “To be shooting this scene that has this meaning, that’s important for the movie in terms of thematics and ideas, and was a scene that Philip was supposed to do… And also to end, after such a long time when we’ve been away from home for so long, with the lines, ‘What now?’ ‘We go home.’ It was really just strange and poignant.”
Compounding the issue, as the man playing the rebel leader, Hoffman was to have appeared more in the final installment of The Hunger Games franchise. The actor’s screen time in Mockingjay: Part 2 ends up being a few minutes, but the final salute to the actor was difficult on all cast and crew.
“It took a week when I wasn’t waking up and having to remember (Hoffman) was gone. We all suffered that together,” says Jennifer Lawrence.
Interestingly, Francis Lawrence did not want to travel the road others have walked before when an actor died unexpectedly while their film was still shooting. One such example would be the death of Paul Walker, who died midway through filming the Fast and Furious 7 . James Wan chose to use a combination of CGI and scenes where Walker’s brothers were standing in for him to wrap up the film as a final salute to the actor in that case.
Francis Lawrence said, according to Variety , that he did not want to use CGI to replace Hoffman in the scenes he had left to shoot because the actor was so iconic.
“He was one of the greatest actors, I think, of all time and I just think to try to fake a Philip Seymour Hoffman performance would have been catastrophic and I would never want to do that,” Lawrence said. “I just think this was the best way to be able to get around such a horrible thing.”
In addition, Variety reported that one of Hoffman’s scenes with dialogue in Mockingjay: Part 1 was left to shoot when the actor passed, so the decision was made to rework the scene rather than use CGI as a way to offer a final salute to the actor. Some scenes were filmed with Hoffman’s stunt double standing in for the late actor, and Jennifer Lawrence said she struggled to even look at him in the immediate days following Hoffman’s death.
“This was just a few days after (Hoffman) died,” she said, according to USA Today . “Nobody could look at (the stunt double). I kept thinking it was Phil, it was a constant reminder that Phil was gone. I went up to him at the end of the day and just apologized because I couldn’t imagine how awful that was.”
Mockingjay: Part 2 now stands as a final salute to one of this generation’s most memorable actors. The film netted an estimated $110 million in its opening weekend, according to Variety .
[Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty Images]
