I admittedly have not thought much about The Hunger Games ever since seeing those movies when they came to theaters…uh, let’s see…a decade ago…oh man, time is just passing me by. But anyways, looking back at them, it’s easy to see why they made such an impression, especially as it created a trend of teen dystopian films that were almost all dead in the water. I think the Maze Runner movies are the only ones that people look back with any sense of fondness, and it’s really only because the filmmaking from Wes Ball is genuinely thrilling and propulsive, the stories themselves were total nonsense.
But The Hunger Games? They were about something, and about things that clearly spoke to people at the time. About entertainment, about class, about oppression, about the cycles of war and they effects they have on not only the people who take part in them, but society as a whole. With the books coming out at a time when there was more widespread disillusionment with the war on terror, the election of Barack Obama, the beginnings of the great recession, not to mention the writers strike of 2007 that led to a spike in reality TV, they really tapped into the public consciousness at the perfect point. So, with Suzanne Collins writing this prequel book, The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes, and the eventual film adaptation now hitting theaters, I wonder what else there is to add in a post-Trump world.
Set 64 years before the events of the first Hunger Games film, The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes follows a young Coriolanus “Coryo” Snow (Tom Blyth), whose once prominent family has fallen on hard times. They’re barely able to pay rent, but he is ambitious, and he is hoping that winning his grades will award him a prize that he can use to continue his education prospects. However, there’s been a change in plans, and now his chance of winning that money is set on his ability to mentor one of the tributes for the next Hunger Games. That tribute is Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), a performer who makes an immediate impression.
That impression turns out to be the key for Coryo’s strategy, since as it turns out having an engaging personality helps with ratings. Who would have guessed? But as he gets more time with her, he becomes more invested not just for himself, but for her as well. She even opens up to him as well. This situationship proves troublesome for Coryo’s plans, and forces him to reckon with where his allegiances lie, and how much he can support a terrible system if he has feelings for someone who was a victim of that very system.
Director of the 3 Hunger Games sequels, Francis Lawrence, returns behind the camera with Michael Lesslie and Michael Arndt penning the script. Lawrence definitely feels at home here, and his direction reflects that. From the disgustingly lavish excess of the Capitol to the dirty industrial landscapes and forests of District 12, there is a strong sense of place here. Even if you can’t help but question how all this came together, there is a cohesiveness to the way these settings compliment and contrast each other, making the world building feel very tactile and lived in.
While I don’t think these films have been as insightful with their themes, I always admired the attempt, especially given that these are aimed at a young adult audience. The same applies here, which is probably the most mature one to date, exploring one man’s rise in power but fall in humanity. It is always fascinating to watch what makes a person do bad things, and what internal challenges they may have faced to get to that point. On paper, this is perfectly sound, and all the pieces are there, but I ultimately found it lacking for a couple reasons.
For one, I think having Snow come from a privileged background, even if his current situation makes him more of an underdog, slightly undercuts the notion of any person falling into evil under the right circumstances. Snow is basically pre-gamed to be a stooge for the system, it’s more that the little humanity within him is what’s fighting him, as opposed to the other way around in similar stories where it’s the evil boiling underneath, fighting the humanity. And the other reason, and it’s a big one, is that Tom Blyth is too dry in the role. I get that Donald Sutherland is a hard act to follow, but Blyth doesn’t quite capture the prickly, sly, confident, and charismatic qualities that made Sutherland so engaging. It’s understandable for the character to grow into those qualities since it is an origin, but there wasn’t anything to take their place. He feels too reserved and emotionally withdrawn, I can’t get a sense of the conflict within him unless it’s stated out loud.
The supporting cast on the other hand? Pretty uniformly terrific. Viola Davis is a scene stealer as game maker Dr. Volumnia Gaul, Jason Schwartzman is delightful as the TV host, Lucretius “Lucky” Flickerman. Hunter Schafer brings some warmth to the proceedings as Tigris Snow, Coryo’s older cousin. Peter Dinklage shines as Cas Highbottom, the head of the academy and brains behind the idea of the Hunger Games. Josh Andrés Rivera does commendable work as Sejanus Plinth, a passionate but strategically inelegant friend of Coryo’s with sympathies toward the rebels. But of course, the big standout is Rachel Zegler, who brings a spirited and lively energy that is effortlessly engaging. Helps that she has a stellar singing voice, which anyone who saw the recent West Side Story would know.
Ultimately, I found The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes to be a mostly middling affair, but not without plenty of things to admire and respect. It’s an ambitious story, covering a lot of Coryo’s journey, but the film can test your patience sometimes. It isn’t really until the last 3rd, which already felt like a really long epilogue given how the film is structured, where you get a real feeling for the inner turmoil in his journey. It’s where he is the most tested and challenged, and features some of the most tension filled sequences in the whole film. The willingness to dive into the messy morality of rebellions and the dynamic between the oppressed and the oppressor is compelling, and I think there is plenty of value in stories about how people regress into becoming monsters. We see it happen in real life all the time, people who seemed one way at a certain point, but you later find them to be almost unrecognizable, and that goes double when it comes to politics. I recall reading so many stories over the past several years about people helplessly watching their loved ones fall into alt-right rabbit holes and coming out the other side a completely different person. There is something existentially terrifying about that, the idea that there might be something within us that can totally transform our very being under the right environment and circumstances. I do wish this film put a face to that theme with a bit more screen presence, but I think fans of the book will find lots to like here. Even if I didn’t get much out of it.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes is now out in theaters.