The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023)

It had been a while since the two-part finale to the original Hunger Games series and, though Suzanne Collins's prequel had sold well, it was no guarantee that a movie version would still attract an audience.  After all both the books and the movies were aimed at a young adult audience and, after this long of a gap, none of the original fans were young adults anymore.  Still, Francis Lawrence was back directing once again and, for those of us who got into the series as actual adults, the idea of getting some history and background of Panem, the games and Corialanus Snow was at least enticing. 

My expectations were tempered due to the last two movies in the series.  The usual money grab of dividing the last book into two movies was done but it still managed to feel rushed.  While The Hunger Games: Catching Fire felt like a true adaptation of the novel the Mockingjay movies felt rushed despite the unnecessary two-part stretch, and emotionally they didn't hit the same way as the first two films.  It felt like an attempt to just get them out of the way before interest in the series waned, and that didn't do any future films any favors.  I'm happy to say that The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes once again fulfills on the story telling end, even if that story may go on a lot longer than necessary.

Corialanus Snow (Tom Blyth) is a top student of the Academy in the Capitol and a hopeful winner of the Plinth Prize, which will ensure his future as well as provide his once affluent family with the money they need to survive.  However, the prize is withheld pending a new assignment imposed by Gamesmaster Dr. Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis), who demands that each of the candidates serve as mentors to the incoming participants in the 10th Annual Hunger Games.  They are informed by Dean Highbottom (Peter Dinklage) that their goal is to make the games more interesting and get people to watch, as indifference to the event by viewers in the Capitol may result in the cancellation of the annual event.

Snow, for his part, comes up with a number of proposals that Gaul accepts and implements.  He also becomes mentor to Lucy Gray (Rachel Zegler), the female participant from District 12.  He decides not just to make her a spectacle but to make sure she wins.  Meanwhile Snow's best friend Sejanus Plinth (Josh Rivera), son of one of the richest men in the Capitol and with roots in District 2, plots to find a way to end the games and help those in the districts.  He gets his chance when he volunteers for the Peacekeepers after Snow is exiled into forced military service after the conclusion of the games.  As Snow and Plinth serve their time the events begin to shape who Snow will become and where his loyalties lie. 

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes has been criticized for being an overlong musical.  Overlong, yes, but most of the music doesn't happen until the last part of the film, and it is hardly a musical.  This points up where certain things work on paper rather than on screen.  The main plot is Snow evolving into the person we know, not specifically any actions that happen along the way.  Therefore, an entire third part involving him serving in the military and mixing with Lucy Gray's kin makes sense story-wise but, after the events of the Hunger Games themselves, seems like a bit of a dragged-out coda.

Still, everything that comes before gives us some idea of how Panem came to be and why the hatred for the districts is so strong.  We start with a young Corialanus (Dexter Sol Ansell) and his cousin Tigris (Rosa Gotzler) during the Dark Days when the war was waging, and it shows a Capitol not of self-indulgence and decadence but of people resorting to cannibalism to live.  The Snow family, despite their patriarch Crassus being influential before the war, is destitute a decade later, and what the Capitol and young Corialanus personally suffered is still much on his mind.  At the time this movie takes place the scars are barely healed, and while the Capitol we see 64 years later is a scene of decadence it at least makes sense why Snow has sought to maintain the status quo after all those years.

Tom Blyth doesn't try to imitate Donald Sutherland's performance.  Instead, he brings his own interpretation to the character, although Viola Davis has a number of mannerisms and a moral flexibility that seems to have influenced Snow later in life.  Peter Dinklage plays his main foe in Dean Highbottom, having an apparent grudge against the Snow family and a desire to keep them down.  Rachel Zegler is decent her role, but fails at some of the emotional cues, such as when Snow realizes more about who she is rather than his fantasy about her.

It's an interesting film that further fleshes out the world of Panem while also making Corialanus Snow more than a one-note villain.  The movie never makes the mistake of making him sympathetic.  Instead, we see where he could have gone in different directions and made different choices, but ultimately made the ones he did not through being forced but to further his own ambitions, heavily influenced by the idealization of his dead father.  The movie may be too much like a novel for its own good but at least it has a good story to tell.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023)

Time: 157 minutes

Starring: Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Viola Davis, Josh Rivera, Peter Dinklage

Director: Francis Lawrence