A film review by Craig J. Koban November --, 2023

THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES ½

2023, PG-13, 157 mins.

Tom Blyth as Coriolanus Snow  /  Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird  /  Hunter Schafer as Tigris Snow  /  Jason Schwartzman as Lucretius 'Lucky' Flickerman  /  Peter Dinklage as Casca Highbottom  /  Viola Davis as Dr. Volumnia Gaul  /  Josh Andrés Rivera as Sejanus Plinth  /  Fionnula Flanagan as Grandma’am  /  Isobel Jesper Jones as Mayfair Lipp/  Ashley Liao as Clemensia Dovecote  /  Jerome Lance as Marcus  /  Knox Gibson as Bobbin  /  Burn Gorman as Commander Hoff

For the absolutely hypersensitive when it comes to spoiler culture...consider yourself warned...

I think it would be hard for anyone - myself included - to not go into THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES with a cynical mind.    

After all, the previous four HUNGER GAMES pictures - all based on the novels by Suzanne Collins - featured a self-contained storyline with a beginning, middle, and end (well, make that a two-part ending) that chronicled Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen and her grassroots attempts to overthrow a vile post-apocalyptic dictatorship.  Her story was told with mostly successful results. 

Now, with THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES, we don't get a continuation of her story, but rather a prequel narrative that serves as a primer for how the super villain and Panem leader Coriolanus Snow came from relative nothing and began to transform into the man he would nefariously become.  My cynicism, I guess, is mostly derived from the thought that (a) this is a Jennifer Lawrence-less HUNGER GAMES film (she was the glue that held the series together) and (b) this prequel seems more profit-motivated than story-driven.  I mean...the Katniss Everdeen saga is over and had a reasonable sense of closure.  Do we really need an origin tale of the tyrannical villain of the piece?  What could it add to the series as a whole?

The answers - to my surprise - are yes and quite a bit, actually. 

THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES is an unexpectedly compelling and suspenseful prequel film that's bolstered by some sensational production values and VFX, thankless performances, and well-crafted world building and political intrigue.  Like the STAR WARS prequels before it, this film attempts to chronicle the early life of the series' biggest baddie and show how a seemingly ordinary lad - plucked from obscurity - slowly evolved into a truly evil being.  Francis Lawrence, the director of the previous four and best HUNGER GAMES films, returns behind the camera and is given the thorny task of creating genuine dramatic interest in the material with audiences fully knowing exactly what will happen to its key character.  THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES not only tells an intriguing backstory behind Snow's mad ascent, but it also details the evolution of Panem and the very Hunger Games themselves in this dystopian nightmare world, one that's a far cry different than what we were given in the previous films.  

This just might be the best HUNGER GAMES film made yet...maybe falling a bit short of CATCHING FIRE (which, yes, I still concede is one of the best pure sequels ever).  

The prequel is set 60-plus years before Katniss became a Hunger Games winner and eventual freedom fighter that took down Snow and his rule over Panem (remember, Katniss participated in the 74th and 75th Hunger Games...and also remember that those were Panem sanctioned events that forced two kids from each of the twelve impoverished districts that they ruled over to fight to the death with one winner as punishment for their past warring transgressions).  THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES deals with a capital city of Panem that's a million miles removed from the disgusting levels of wealth and opulence of the early films set several decades later.  Its leaders had just ended a devastating rebellion, leaving the city in semi-ruins and on a rebuild.  Worse yet, the 10th annual Hunger Games has become a ratings flop.  No one is tuning in and no one seems to care about it, which leads to funding for it being slashed and its chief architects wondering what to do next.  Maybe no one is watching the telecasts because people don't want to see the most downtrodden of society - all poor, malnourished, and with many sick and as young as elementary school kids - beating each other to death for ratings gold?

It's at this point when we're introduced to the much younger and hunkier Snow (played before as an aging dictator by Donald Sutherland, now played by Tom Blyth as a young adult approaching his twenties) who's living a mostly impoverished existence with his family in the Capital, but who wants to climb to the upper echelon of Capital society and help reclaim the glory years of Panem.  He's part of a vast think tank of other aspiring students that will assist in the production of the 10th Hunger Games, partially overseen by its creator, Dean Casca Highbottom (a superbly cast Peter Dinklage).  The head gamemaster Dr. Volumnia Gual (a creepily campy Viola Davis) becomes very taken in with Snow's many ideas to improve viewership, like making people care about the tributes, thereby fostering more emotional buy-in (and, yes, ratings).  Snow becomes one of the ten mentor figures for the tributes and finds himself being assigned to Lucy Gray Baird (a wonderful Rachel Zegler), who's a tough-talking, no-nonsense, and gutsy folksinger from District 12.  Highbottom wishes the games to remain as they are, but Gaul is so impressed with Snow's creativity that she gives into his ideas.  She wants the games to be the kind of garish spectacle that was front and center in the previous HUNGER GAMES films.  As Snow attempts to make Lucy Gray a fan favorite in the public eye, both he and she begin to express romantic feelings for one another, which strains their business relationship and Snow's own sense of loyalty.   

Like a great prequel should do, THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES doesn't just slavishly and lazily regurgitate what audiences have seen before in the past franchise installments.  Instead, there's a genuine interest on Lawrence's part in showing us decidedly different sides to characters and places that we grew familiar with and re-contexualize them.  Panem is in the early stages of its dystopian wasteland beginnings, and the vast metropolitan Capital is less a mega-city of the super rich and powerful and more of a segregated society of haves and have-nots that's still trying to navigate how they evolve from the ashes of the rebellions and enforce law and order.  This film is set in THE HUNGER GAMES past, but still at an unspecified time in our future, which leaves the makers here in a challenging spot in terms of how to make this world feel new and old at the same time.  They achieve this mostly through a wonderful retro-futuristic aesthetic in terms of production design.  It's like a collision course between  mid-20th Century conveniences (the cars and TVs have a 1950s vibe) and new age computer tech.  Imagine if GATTACA and the video game series FALLOUT had a baby and you get the idea.

The games themselves and the power dynamics embroiled within them are intriguingly realized too.  Gaul is a venomous overseer (she has a thing for breeding thousands of snakes, which you just know will figure in heavily later) and is definitely a power broker not to screw with, whereas second in command Highbottom is caught between his trust of Snow and allowing his ideas into the games because Gaul likes them.  As for the Hunger Games contest itself?  It's pretty stripped down and arguably more primal than ever.  The whole core concept with them is for Panem's leaders to punish the districts for their revolts against the Capital, and the games here absolutely look like a hellish gladiatorial ordeal (with virtually no funding, the combatants duke it out with extremely crude and archaic weapons, not to mention that the location they fight in looks like an abandoned and bombed out arena).  Hell, the tributes themselves are thrown in literal zoo cages for the local press and fans to gawk at.  The ultra smarmy magician/weatherman/host, Lucky Flickerman (Jason Schwatzmann), shows up to pathetically cheerlead the games to the masses in a role that's obviously related to Stanley Tucci's memorable turn as games host Caesar Flickerman in the last four HUNGER GAMES films.  What's most abundantly clear about this game is that it's savage, cruel, and has none of the glitzy pomp and circumstance that the games of the future would entail.  As always, there's no happy ending or winner here.    

Honestly, I've barely covered just half of this already long 157 minute film.  And what of Lucy Gray and Snow?   Their arc is not too dissimilar from what we got in two of the STAR WARS prequel films in terms of forbidden love and romance that has to be kept from the public eye while one party gradually begins to demonstrate a true heart of darkness and fascist tendencies.  Snow starts off as a duty-bound mentor to Lucy Gray, but later her protector and eventual lover.  First and foremost, though, he knows how to promote her to the masses, especially through her angelic singing voice and guitar skills (this prequel is very song heavy, which is oddly refreshing), but he also knows that she's as good as dead in the arena.  Both stars exhibit solid chemistry together, with Zegler in particular given the nearly insurmountable task of following in the footsteps of what Lawrence did in the past and somehow making her character and journey work well on her own terms.  Lucy Gray is a different kind of heroine to Katniss, and Zegler is wonderfully cast here, bringing a teeth-clenched feistiness, fiery intensity, and scared vulnerability all the same (plus, her beautiful vocal chords that she demonstrated in WEST SIDE STORY are on confident display here, making this prequel feel like a twisted, melancholic musical at times).  Blyth is equally empowered in his challenging role as Snow.  He has to play the character at his most humble beginnings (at least as far as his stature in this story), but one with a ferocious drive that has his sense of honor taken to the test by Lucy Gray.  He's not even close to being the despicable elitist Hitler of this series, but - like space Hitler Anakin Skywalker before him - he has ambition and a yearning to elevate himself to places of high power.  The path towards it will unavoidably be steeped in tragedy.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES tries to find misplaced sympathy for this character, but he's not a thoughtless madman here in his origin tale.  The screenplay by Michael Arndt and Michael Lesslie is careful in showing him as a subtle and calculated strategist that thinks what he's doing is just, but later gets schooled on just what a loathsome spectacle the Hunger Games really are (this comes to the forefront by getting too close and cozy with Lucy Gray).  He sees his sense of allegiance awkwardly blurred at just the wrong time with the appearance of his tribute.  More enthralling is seeing Snow (and his family) as a desperate part of the weakest elements of Capital society (he so poor that he steals cafeteria food from his Academy to bring home to his sick kin, not to mention that he puts on a false facade of wealth to his fellow classmates).  He's driven to impress Gaul and Highbottom, but his growing attraction and sympathy for Lucy Gray starts to cloud everything he does.  Everything builds to a spectacularly well oiled and tension-filled third act that occurs post-games and far away from the Capital and shows Snows developing a deeper bond with Lucy Gray while still trying to manipulate his way to the top.  It's equal parts sad and sinister seeing Snow descend into moral darkness while trying to maintain this deep connection with this tribute.  Again, this film doesn't exonerate Snow, but the scripting  works staggeringly well as a portrait of misplaced love and the lengths people will go to for it while trying to attain power (for all the wrong reasons) the long and hard way.  

Yeah, this is a long film, broken up into three distinct title carded chapters, and if there was one criticism that I have of this prequel, then it would be that some chapters flow a bit better than others (with the aforementioned third being the best of the lot...and it's rare for a long film to really pick up steam and momentum in the final stretches).  THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES mostly earns its length because of its unanticipated story and thematic complexities, but even I must concede that it could have been edited down by 10-15 minutes for a tighter final product.  Still, I was really taken in by the generosity of this film in so many small and large ways, most notably in how series vet Lawrence makes this sequel feel larger-scaled and visually rich despite a relatively stripped down $100 million budget (it's also stunningly shot and has a strong painstaking eye for environmental detail).  He also garners superlative work from his supporting cast to round off the great turns by his two young leads.  Dinklage gives a layered portrait of his initially twisted-minded and plain spoken dean of the Academy and the great Davis is so riveting and joyously chilling as her vamped up and sadistic head of games.