Let’s start here: of the YA adaptations starting with Twilight The Hunger Games are probably the most interesting ones. For a series aimed at teenagers, the messages are pretty dark and adult, diving deep into human nature, politics, and entertainment. Also like most, I was pretty confident we didn’t need to go back to Panem again. But dollar signs and hyper fans carry a lot of sway, so we’re back with The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, a movie that is the mockingjay to its Katnissy past.
Katniss Everdeen showed up was during the 74th hunger games. Songbirds & Snakes goes back in time and gives us the 10th Hunger Games. In Panem history, that’s a big one, because that’s when future president Snow (now played by Tom Blyth) really became a major player. At the movie’s present, Snow was simply known as Coriolanus, a descendant of a fallen aristocratic family struggling in the capital. Needing a scholarship to go into government work, Snow works hard and makes it to the top of his class, only to be undermined Dean Cas Highbottom’s (Peter Dinklage) subservience to monetary influence. The Hunger Games need some new wrinkles, and gamemaker Volumina Gaul (Viola Davis) decides each tribute gets a capital mentor with the winner getting a scholarship. While all his rich friends get really great tributes, Snow is stuck with a weird one: Lucy Gray (Rachel Zegler), who sang and snaked her way through her reaping. Let the teenage murder begin!
With future President Snow as our new main character, it’s clear from the get go we’re getting Making a Dictator: Panem Edition. The movie tries to cram that story into this two and a half hour epic. Even though we know where Snow’s character ends up, the first half is still exciting because of the big spectacle it builds towards, and the uncertainty of it. The movie does a good job showing the origins of the 2012 Hunger Games; the 10th games are where the spectacle became less of a punishment and more of a TV show. The movie splits time between what’s going on onscreen and off, seeing all the entertainment manipulation and shenanigans each mentor tries to do to win at all costs. There’s also Jason Schwartzman amusingly doing a Stanley Tucci impersonation great for a few chuckles. But the big reason the first half is so engaging is Lucy Gray, Rachel Zegler. The talented actress proves that West Side Story was not a fluke: she’s got the stuff. Zegler somehow lives up to the hype this story needs her to be: captivating, innocent, honest, but also capable of deception and truly awful things somehow all in one package. In a movie designed to be about President Snow, you leave the Hunger Games transfixed by Rachel Zegler who sends us out of the games on a high note.
But despite the generally hated decision to split the last 2 JLaw Hunger Games movies into two films, Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes actually works better if it stopped after the games end. There’s another hour of material Francis Lawrence has to get through to be faithful to the book. That hour is a big giant tonal and story shift to another story, basically making Coriolanus Snow Anakin Skywalker. As a book that might work ok, but as a latched on epilogue, this hour feels simultaneously too short and too long, to the point that I noticed my yawns were getting more frequent with each passing minute. Try as Tom Blyth does (he really is quite good in this section), he can’t save the last hour from feeling like a giant needless fan service exercise. Instead, the filmmakers should have done one of two movie adaptations: either add another half an hour of character information and make the last hour into a new standalone film exploring Coriolanus’s transformation into future President Snow. Or work in the dark beats into Snow’s character while the hunger games was going on to get the same message across in a shorter time frame.
By the end of Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Tom Blyth has completed his Darth Vader transformation. With the character basically formed, I hope future Hunger Games spinoffs completely go somewhere else, because any new film undoes the work done by this one. Or what the hell, just go full muppet babbies here, and explain every tie in these prequels have to 2012 film, that will infuriate the die hards and confuse everyone else. Who knows? As always Hunger Games fans, I hope the odds are ever in your favor.