The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes Review

The Hunger Games movie series has returned after an eight-year break with an adaptation of the prequel novel The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.

It has been 10 years since the failed rebellion against The Capitol. As punishment, the Districts of Panem must send two tributes aged between 12 to 18 to fight in the annual Hunger Games. For the 10^th Hunger Games, 24 seniors from The Academy are assigned to mentor the tributes. One of these students is Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) who gets assigned the female tribute from District 12, Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler). Snow sees winning the Hunger Games as his ticket to university, but he grows close to Lucy Gray during his mentorship.

The Hunger Games series was a huge publishing and cinematic success. It was a pop culture phenomenon, helped cement Jennifer Lawrence’s status as a star, and started a subgenre of Young Adult dystopias. However, after the release of Catching Fire, The Hunger Games films suffered from diminishing returns with Mockingjay Part One and Two not being so well received. Added to that the YA dystopia has fallen out of favour with films like The Divergent Series: Allegiant and The Darkest Minds performing poorly. Allegiant flopped so hard that the sequel was cancelled.

Two major creative figures from the original series came back for The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes: Francis Lawrence and Michael Arndt. Lawrence directed three of the original films, whilst Arndt performed rewrite duties for Catching Fire. Writing duties were shared with Michael Lesslie, who wrote the 2015 version of Macbeth and the BBC/AMC adaptation of The Little Drummer Girl.

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes was notably different to the previous Hunger Games films. It was structurally and stylistically different since the film was split into chapters as shown by the title cards. This was due to the film’s focus on Snow instead of a Hunger Games tribute and a rebellion story wasn’t possible. It wasn’t the same as the first two films where characters had to be prepared to compete in the Hunger Games and then fight to survive. The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes was a more character-driven film as it showed a man’s ruthless willingness to succeed.

Snow was from an old family that was pretty much a member of the aristocracy but had fallen on hard times. The family had suffered during the war, and that shaped Snow’s worldview. He wanted to regain his family’s prestige by gaining power and was willing to do anything to achieve this; even if that meant screwing over his classmates. Yet he developed feelings for Lucy Gray which complicated matters for him since they were star-crossed lovers. This was sowing the seeds of what Snow will become.

Snow got caught up in a moral conflict that had many philosophical ideas. Snow was fighting for his self-interest, while his classmate, Sejanus Plinith (Josh Andrés Rivera) was morally opposed to the Hunger Games, but forced to be a mentor because of his influential father. Dr. Gaul (Viola Davis) had a more nihilistic view of humanity because she believed that the idea was an illustration and violence was only a trigger away, so the Hunger Games were needed, and Lucy Gray was more optimistic since she believed that there was goodness in all people. Amazingly, she could hold that belief considering she was forced to fight in a fight to the death. Whilst The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes had characters and philosophy, it wasn’t as politically charged as the original films.

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes was also an origin story for The Hunger Games. Snow proposed many ideas that became staples of The Hunger Games, like an enhanced media role, allowing people to sponsor tributes and gamble on the event. The film shows how much Panem had evolved since it was not as scientifically advanced with the whole country recovering from the war. The Capitol had a more brutalist look to it, the people, buildings, and The Hunger Games weren’t as advanced. There was less grandeur in the clothing, make-up, and the buildings. The tributes were left in a poor state since they were starving, and some were sick or had disabilities. There was an extra sense of cruelty to the event.

Francis Lawrence has become the franchise director for The Hunger Games, similar to David Yates with The Wizarding World and the Russo Brothers being linked with Captain America and The Avengers films. Lawrence has more visual flair than the other two filmmakers and it showed with the grim war imagery at the beginning of the film, the art deco look of the train in District 12, and District 12 was crampier and more industrial than it was in the original series. Lawrence didn’t fall into the same as the first Hunger Games movie because it avoided the use of shaky cam. It made the death match between children more dynamic and comprehensible than The Hunger Games.

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes ensured there was a strong cast. Actors like Viola Davis, Peter Dinklage, and Jason Schwartzman added gravitas. Davis made Dr. Gaul into a menacing presence as the Gamemaker. I did imagine Dr. Gaul as a batty, scatterbrained character whose evil and brutal nature was slowly revealed, but it’s hard to argue against Davis. Schwartzman has been a Wes Anderson regular and normally appears in indie films, so it was a surprise to see him in a Hunger Games film and he did make an impression as Lucretius “Lucky” Flickerman. He felt like a real TV personality.

The big star of the film was Rachel Zegler. She had already proven herself as a star in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story and she was a presence, the colourfully dancing singer who was charming yet determined and didn’t take shit from anyone. Zegler has shown herself to be a great singer in West Side Story, and on her YouTube channel and in The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes she sang in a Country twang which was fitting considering the territory Lucy Gray was from.

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes was a solid entry in the Hunger Games series that fans of the franchise should be satisfied with. But it wasn’t as strong as the series high-point: Catching Fire.