The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes aka The Hunger Games BOSS
It's been quite a while since the YA craze and the last Hunger Games movie but here we are 2023 and a new movie, a prequel, the origin story of the main villain. The Hunger Games series were some of the better movies to come out of the YA craze, the quality was a bit un even especially at the end with Mockingjay being split into 2 part but overall solid movies.
Much like the prior movies The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a decent. The movie is divided into sections but for the most part the movie centers on the 10th Hunger Games and what happens after. We mainly follow Tom Blyth as Coriolanus "Coryo" Snow aka the President/Dictator in the main series, the actor does a good job but there is a bit of a weird factor that we are following a villain who did not have much in the way of redeeming qualities during the main series. Movies about bad people whether real of fictional happen all the time but there is a bit of a disconnect in him being presented as the protagonist, with adversity to overcome but we know he is eventually the bad guy and this movie is supposed to show that. By the end sure he is mostly the bad guy but the turn is a bit clunky.
The first part of the movie centering on the 10th Hunger Games is the stronger section of the movie, Coryo is more relatable/sympathetic, he is young, figuring things out navigating is situation. We also have the spectacle of the Hunger Games themselves and its pretty violent, pretty brutal, clearly a terrible thing happening but pretty interesting. We meet the love interest Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird who has a lot of mystique about. One of her things is that she sings and if you have seen West Side Story you know that she can do that very well and she does a pretty decent job here to an almost surreal effect. She sings a bit before the games which makes the in movie pre games coverage seem a bit like a singing show ie Idol or The Voice which is very surreal for what the Hunger Games are. I found her southern accent a bit distracting, though that might be due to seeing her in other roles.
We also meet the classmates, mentors, family etc who are fine for the most part. Of note is Viola Davis as game master "Dr. Volumnia Gaul" who seems to be having the time of her life as a sort of villain/mentor, bit of joker, bit of Waller, bit of Palpatine in there. When it comes to the games themselves the more brutal nature of the older version of the games and the clunkiness in general of that older time period we end up with a pretty interesting set piece for our characters. It also feels like there is a bit more confidence here since that YA audience should be grown up by now so no need to tip toe on the violence.
The aftermath of the 10th Hunger games I felt was not as good, it's in a district and I don’t think they do the best job with the "Fall" of Coryo, things happen and then all of a sudden he is just the bad guy. Eventually he starts dressing like his main series older self, some things happen in the background and there we go the future President of Panem. He does exhibit less desirable traits which get amplified as things go but the jump from protagonist to bad guy felt a bit clunky to me.
Overall it’s a decent movie, pretty good especially at the beginning but I don’t think it has the smoothest landing. Nothing wrong with a movie about the bad guy though that transformation from imperfect protagonist to series bad guy was bit clunky for me. I get that there is still 40-50 years till the main series and that’s a lot of time but im thinking maybe this should have been a prequel TV show.
7/10
7/1
Disclaimer I saw this via work