Directed by: Francis Lawrence
Distributed by: Lionsgate
Written by Anna Harrison
65/100
Before “Divergent,” “The Maze Runner,” “The Darkest Minds,” and all the other film adaptations of dystopian young adult novels, there was “The Hunger Games.” Based on Suzanne Collins’s trilogy of books, the series embedded itself into the minds of thousands of impressionable preteens and teenagers (read: me), and Gary Ross’s first film—and Francis Lawrence’s subsequent follow-ups—created a bonafide star out of Jennifer Lawrence. But when Lionsgate announced “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” in 2020, it seemed like just another cash grab in this era of lazy reboots, prequels, sequels, and spinoffs, even if it was, like its predecessors, based off Suzane Collins’s work (she published the novel “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” in 2020).
Well, while “Ballad” may not reach the highs of the first two films, it has more going for it than a cash grab, which is more than you can say about the boneheaded decision to split the final film of the original trilogy, “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay,” into two parts, thus undermining the spirit of rebellion in the story by cowing to the latest fads at the time (following the decision to split the final “Harry Potter” and “Twilight” movies into two)—and don’t even get me started on that horrific club remix of “Hanging Tree” that dominated the pop airwaves. “Ballad,” for the most part, doesn’t feel the need to make itself palatable for money’s sake; indeed, its very premise asks us to root for the mastermind behind the cruelties of the original trilogy, President Coriolanus Snow. “Ballad” takes us back 64 years to Snow’s youth, and Tom Blyth steps into Donald Sutherland’s shoes to remind us that even monsters were young and hot once.
64 years before the 74th Hunger Games, where Katniss and Peeta (#Peeniss4Ever) stoked the fires of rebellion, the country of Panem was vastly different from the overdone, glitzy metropolis it would become later. Ravaged by war, even the Capitol has its fair share of burnt-out buildings and grime, and Snow too is a far cry from the composed sociopath he will become: poor by Capitol standards, he dreams of getting a scholarship to college to support his cousin Tigris (Hunter Schaefer) and his grandmother (Fionnula Flanagan). Unfortunately for Snow, his plan is thwarted by Casca Highbottom (Peter Dinklage), who decides that the scholarship will not be awarded to the student with the highest grades, but rather the student who does the best job of mentoring the unlucky souls chosen to participate in the 10th Hunger Games.
At this stage, the Games are nothing more than a brutal reminder to Panem’s various districts that the Capitol rules with an iron fist; there’s none of the showmanship that will mark Katniss’s time in the arena. Snow, desperate to succeed and overcome the stigma of some vague patriarchal shame, begins to plot, and Blyth toes a fine line between sympathy and hatred as Snow drums up better ways to kill children in order to help his own family. Staring down dismal ratings, Snow hatches a plan to pump the Games’s viewership (and thus his own likelihood of success) up: give them a show. Lucky for him, Snow has been paired with District 12’s tribute, Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), a singer with a penchant for putting snakes down the shirts of romantic rivals, and she, like him, is quite the performer.
If the original “Hunger Games” films showed the Capitol as a mostly buffoonish evil, “Ballad” puts its audience in a much thornier situation. In showing how the sausage got made, so to speak, it asks its viewers to understand how one might justify killing children for entertainment—it’s only some small atrocities here and there to prevent a bigger one down the line, it will help a kid get a scholarship to go to college, we need it to keep the peace, on and on until you’ve contorted yourself so much that you can no longer recognize yourself. How much are you willing to excuse? For young Snow, it’s quite a lot; for someone like his friend Sejanus (Josh Andrés Rivera, just as standout here as he was in “West Side Story”), there comes a breaking point. Even when Snow begins falling for Lucy Gray, the lure of power draws him away—he loves her, but only so long as that love lines up with his plans to clear his family’s name and live in luxury in the Capitol. In Panem (and elsewhere), evil is a choice—one that Snow continually makes—and it’s thanks to Blyth’s performance that we still root for him to make a different decision even knowing what he eventually becomes. He knows the Games are barbaric, yet deludes himself into believing they’re necessary, even as the girl he loves gets thrown into them. It’s an impressive and willful cognitive dissonance.
Yet the film can never quite rise to these grandiose ideas about evil that populate it, no matter how striking the production design or how strong Blyth and Zegler (strange Southern accent choice notwithstanding) are—though it tries admirably. Loathe as I am to admit it, if ever there was a movie to benefit from getting split into two, “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” might be it. As it is, the third act, which has Snow and Lucy Gray in domestic bliss, feels like an unfulfilled promise: the romance, and Snow’s subsequent descent into full madness, do not have enough meat on them to justify the ending, and it feels like vital scenes were left on the cutting room floor, leaving the movie more impotent than it should have been. For all its talk of the nature of evil, Snow’s actual descent into hell comes too quickly and too late to be entirely believable (or perhaps I got distracted by Blyth’s blonde curls and dreamy blue eyes).
Still, “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” feels like a small miracle: it’s a prequel bold enough to break in both style and substance from its predecessor, and it doesn’t end with a tag promising the next entry. Should there ever be a four-hour director’s cut, I imagine that “Ballad” could be something truly special—for now, I will be content with what we have while mourning what might have been.
“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” Trailer
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