The New Hunger Games Movie: Did It Eat?
By Riley Mitlehner and Cam Solis Mejias
So did the director cook? The short answer: it’s called The Hunger Games for a reason…
The long answer:
To kick it off with the title, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: Were there songbirds? Yes. Snakes? Yes. Ballads? Many. Were there scenes so generically YA dystopian that multiple people in the movie theater literally burst out laughing? Also yes.
(If you don’t want to shrivel with YA main character cringe, you might want to take your bathroom break right before the reaping — trust me, you’ll need a break during this movie. With a two hour and thirty eight minute runtime, this thing will have your bladder begging for mercy harder than the tributes).
And as for the plot… (assuming you’ve read or watched the original series — if not, all you need to know is “hot guy villain arc”). Future president of Panem, Draco Malfoy — ahem, I mean, Coriolanus Snow — takes the spotlight as a promising capitol student in early Panem. Except, whoops, he’s also poor (might have something to do with that pesky war), and if he doesn’t mentor a selected tribute to keep up viewership of the games, he’s going to stay that way — which he can’t be having.
Long story short he meet-cutes Lucy Gray, the tribute he must mentor in the games (and also a bit of a manic pixie dream girl on actually-interesting-character juice), at a zoo the capitol constructed to show off and dehumanize the tributes this year.
The hunger games happen, blah, blah, blah, two more hours, blah, blah, blah, spoilers. Oh, did I mention Coriolanus is also just kind of evil for no reason? The entire time? Of course, this movie covers a lot of ground, but the main purpose is to be a backstory for President Snow from the original trilogy.
The most unfortunate part of this backstory movie is that it’s not a great backstory. The character development is more of a character circle. (Woah, maybe there’s an inherent problem with trying to make people relate to a guy we all know becomes a child murderer!) Additionally, the movie is basically just “bad things happen” for three hours.
Also, don’t watch this if you’re sensitive to violence — or even just not desensitized to violence. It’s violent. And loud.
That said, this movie is gorgeous. The cinematography is terrific and the soundtrack is catchy. The main characters are, in Hollywood fashion, both way too attractive and way past their in-universe age, making for a truly entertaining watch. Some scenes had me with tears in my eyes, others had me on the edge of my seat.
The acting was quite good and some of the dialogue had me and my friends making awed eye contact in the movie theater, it was that well done. And if you’re a fan of the original books or movies, despite the references being a bit overdone, they’re still enjoyable.
So if you go, I would recommend going with friends who can share your excitement at the references, or at least bringing someone along who can point them out for you if it’s been too long for you to remember any. The movie also made great use of the theater-release format with surround sound and high-def visuals, so unless you’re super particular about story quality (or just broke), I would recommend watching in theaters over waiting for it to come out on streaming platforms.
In the end, if you go into The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes purely to watch an entertaining movie, or even just an interesting enough story with some good references to the original trilogy, you’ll walk out happy. Just don’t expect a cohesive masterpiece.
