Giana Capialbi '24
As a huge Hunger Games nerd since elementary school, I was so excited for the prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, but also afraid of how it would turn out as a movie. The Hunger Games franchise has a good track record with its adaptations, but I was worried about how this one would measure up to its predecessors.
The book by Suzanne Collins is the villain origin story of Panem president Coriolanus Snow, and chronicles his involvement in the 10th Hunger Games as a mentor to District 12 tribute Lucy Gray Baird. It takes you through the preparation, the games, and the aftermath, with Snow landing in District 12 himself. Overall, I loved this movie. It brought back so many memories of seeing the original movies for the first time, and there were so many parallels and callbacks to the original series as well.
The book is over 500 pages long, and the movie was still about 2 hours and 30 minutes long, but I would’ve sat through it even longer just to see all the details from the book (apparently there’s an almost 4-hour director’s cut out there somewhere). There are mixed opinions about the pace of the movie, mostly saying that the third act was rushed. I think that especially when you’re taking from an original source material you obviously have to do the best you can to honor it, but I think the makers did well with their situation. Obviously not everything from the book is going to be in the movie, especially when the book is as long as it is.
But one thing that really makes the book special is that you can hear Snow’s thoughts and see very clearly his descent into insanity and loss of empathy. In the movie, there is one single moment that seems to change everything, and you are kind of left guessing as to why he changed so quickly. This could be taken as a piece of the “the book is always better” argument, but I think hearing his real thoughts really seals in how he became such a horrible person.
One thing I really loved about the movie was that especially during the opening scenes, there were lines taken right out of the book. There were also so many parallels to the originals which I loved, such as the mockingjays, the hanging tree song, the Katniss plant, and seeing the ancestors of so many characters from the original books. The director Francis Lawrence also directed The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and both The Hunger Games: Mockingjay movies.
Personally, they could keep this series going on forever and I would be tuned in to every single one. I thought it was a great adaptation (as all the Hunger Games movies are) and left really surprised with how well they did. The actors, sets, and costumes were great, and it truly holds up next to the originals. Let's just say the $100 million budget was worth it.
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