The cast of the film, ‘Hunger Games: Ballard of Songbirds and Snakes’ Photo Credit I Paramount
Everyone hungers for something.
The Hunger Games film series, based on the bestselling book series, took the world by storm in the early 2010s. When the last film, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part – 2, came out in 2015, many fans thought the series had reached a satisfying conclusion. But in 2020, the author of the books, Suzanne Collins, released a prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, once again bringing folks back into The Hunger Games world. Three years later, another film has been added to The Hunger Games franchise. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes tells the story of the villainous Hunger Games character, President Coriolanus Snow, and how he slowly rose from a poor orphan boy struggling to keep up the pretense of a wealthy, high-class individual to eventually becoming the cruel president ruling over Panem, the fictional country within the Hunger Game series.
In an attempt to win a prize that will ensure the success of his future, academy student Coriolanus Snow (played by Tom Blyth) becomes a mentor in the 10th annual Hunger Games, a televised competition in which two tributes are chosen from each of the districts of Panem to be put in an arena where they will fight to the death with only one victor left standing. Coriolanus gets paired with the District 12 girl, Lucy Gray Baird (played by Rachel Zegler), a musical girl who draws Snow’s interest and, with his help, quickly charms and wins over many in the Capital. Throughout the film, we see Snow desperately try everything within his power to ensure Lucy Gray survives the Games but also balance his struggle between securing a potentially successful life and giving it all up.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes offers a deeper dive into the world introduced in 2012 when the first Hunger Games film was released. It shows a world still being built from the ruins of rebellion war and a competition that hasn’t yet become the glamorized, brilliantly thought-out, nightmare-death match that we see in The Hunger Games and its 2013 sequel, The Hungers Games: Catching Fire.
The film is an incredible add-on to a successful film series. From the bleak opening to the shocking and stunning ending, the audience is captivated by every second of it. Star Rachel
Zegler brings the character of performer Lucy Gray Baird alive in a memorable way, her voice
being one of the more incredible aspects of the film. Lead Tom Blyth brings new insight to
Coriolanus Snow, a villainous character many have come to hate the more they watch the original trilogy. Additional actors Josh Andres Rivera, Viola Davis, Peter Dinklage, Jason Schwartzman, and Hunter Schafer offer up captivating if not memorable performances as their characters (Sejanis Plinth, Dr. Voluminia Gaul, Dean Casca Highbottom, Lucretius “Lucky” Flickerman, and Tigris Snow respectively).
Two other standouts are Davis’s performance of the character Dr. Gaul, the sadistic head gamemaker of the Hunger Games who takes pleasure in making others suffer and inventing creations to both punish the districts and add a horrifying flare to the Hunger Games and Schwartzman’s performance of the character of Lucky Flickerman, the Capitals weatherman and first televised host of the Hunger Games (the character is an assumed ancestor to the character of Caesar Flickerman from the original trilogy played by Stanley Tucci) who with each scene he is in leaves the audience laughing. The line “Ill-Dill, tuberculosis on legs” has stuck with me since I saw the film. The film offers up many easter eggs that many die-hard Hunger Games fans will automatically pick up, from the lone bow and arrow lying untouched in the arena, the songs that Lucy Gray sings (particularly one that had many in my theater gasping out loud the second she sung just the first four words), to even the use of the iconic Mockingjay, an animal created solely for the book/film series.
The film has left many again falling down the rabbit hole that was The Hunger Games craze, something many were more than excited to welcome back after years of no content created for the film series since 2015. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes brings back the nostalgia created by the original trilogy while allowing new memories and feelings to be made from a whole new addition. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes stands out as one of the more memorable and enjoyable movies in the franchise, coming in strong with an audience score of 89% after the success of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire audience score of 60%.
The film is sure to be a continuing success, making The Hunger Games series once again a worldwide phenomenon that everyone can enjoy. The movie sits at a PG-13 rating with a runtime of 2 hours and 38 minutes. It’s an epic tale that will grab you from the get-go, take you on a crazy, indescribable ride, and leave you wanting not just more time, but possibly another film.
Grade: B
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is currently playing in theaters.
