The Hunger Games:

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, based on the novel of the same name, is a prequel to the massively successful Hunger Games franchise, directed by Frances Lawrence. It focused on a young Coriolanus Snow, the antagonistic president of Panem from the original trilogy of books, as well as the movies. It follows Coriolanus as he is assigned to mentor a tribute in the Hunger Games, Lucy Gray Baird, a girl from District 12 who has a beautiful voice and a magnetic personality. At first, Coriolanus works hard to help Lucy Gray win solely in order to win a coveted prize from his school, but as his feelings develop, his motives become more complex.

I would like to preface this review by saying that I am a massive fan of the book this movie is based on. It is a masterpiece in my opinion, and one of my favorite books that I’ve ever read. So, going into this movie I had high expectations and even higher standards, as I had already experienced a version of the story that was pitch perfect. My point is, it was very unlikely that a film adaptation of this novel would ever leave me completely satisfied.

Overall, this movie was good. The writing was pretty good, but has a lot of flaws. The movie was too fast paced overall, and I think in order to fully develop the story and characters, it should have been longer, even already with a runtime of two hours and thirty-seven minutes. The central relationship between Coriolanus and Lucy Gray felt rushed and underdeveloped. The strong feelings they felt towards each other did not feel all that believable to me, and the story hinges on their relationship and the intense emotions felt between the two. Many characters and aspects of the story required more development than they got. One of the main characters, Sejanus, a classmate of Coriolanus, was not explored enough to make me invested in his character, even though later they try to force a lot of emotional weight onto him, and clearly expect the audience to be attached to him, but himself and his relationship with Coriolanus was not fleshed out well enough at all for me to feel emotionally connected to him or his storyline. I would like to quickly mention that I absolutely loved Sejanus when reading the book, and when emotional moments with him occurred, I felt the intense emotion that this movie version wanted me to feel, but in this movie version, I felt nothing towards him throughout the entire runtime.

There still is some good characterization to be found in this film. Lucy Gray is almost as endearing as she is in the book, and Peter Dinklage’s character, Dean Highbottom, was also written nearly as well as he was in the novel version. However, the main character, Coriolanus, is a mediocre character in this movie. His motives make enough sense, but so much of his development and the audience’s understanding of his actions is lost in this movie’s fast pace. His character also is massively bogged down by the fact that unlike the book, we don’t hear his thoughts. This is something that many film adaptations of books are hurt by, as it provides much less development for the lead character. In the novel, Coriolanus is an incredibly written and believable character, but in this movie, what makes him so special is lost, because when you’re just observing his actions all the nuance from his internal monologue is missed.

The acting in this movie was great all around. Tom Blythe gave a solid lead performance, and Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray felt very genuine and had as much charm as the character required (A lot). Jason Schwartzman gave a very fun comedic performance and Hunter Schaefer did a great job with her small amount of screen time. The standout performances were definitely Viola Davis and Peter Dinklage, who brought such immense force to their roles.

There were several songs in this movie, as Lucy Gray is a musician. Rachel Zegler did a pretty good job singing overall and showed a lot of genuine feeling emotion through them. The songs were amazingly written as they were directly adapted from the book, and the song lyrics from the book were incredible. Zegler’s rendition of The Hanging Tree was significantly better than Jennifer Lawrence’s version from the original movies in my opinion.

The costume and production design was perfect. It captured the feel of both the capital and the districts, with the tribute’s attire, exceptionally well. This movie’s original score had no identity of its own, and just sounded like a generic blockbuster movie’s score. The cinematography was also nothing to write home about. The overall directing feels very generic and personality-less, but I feel like the movie would have greatly benefited from having a more unique vibe and feel, instead of the normal blockbuster movie aesthetic that it unfortunately has.

Overall, this movie was enjoyable, had mostly good writing that was muddied by parts feeling rushed and underdeveloped, had great acting, amazing costume and production design, and very generic direction, score, and cinematography. For those reasons, I am giving The Hunger Games:The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes 3.5 out of 5 Knightheads.

Also, shoutout to the girl who sat behind me in the theater, who bought tickets to see The Ballad of Songbirds and SNAKES, and said to her friend near the end of the movie “What’s with all the snakes?”