“The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” was released in theaters on Friday, Nov 17. This book-to-movie adaptation is a prequel to “The Hunger Games,” a series by Suzanne Collins. The prequel was published a full decade after the final Hunger Games book. Three years later, Coriolanus Snow’s backstory was adapted to the big screen.
The story provides insight into Snow’s character before “The Hunger Games” and acts as a villain origin story. Both the book and the movie follow Snow as he mentors his tribute, Lucy Gray Baird, in the Hunger Games. Throughout the course of the story, Snow and Lucy Gray fall in love and become stereotypical star-crossed lovers. Snow cheats in the Games so that Lucy Gray can win and he is sent to District 12 as punishment. Lucy Gray and Snow live out their lives together until Snow is driven to madness.
“The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” was rather lengthy, as the book was one and a half times longer than “The Hunger Games” and covered more content. The movie was over two hours long and some people shared the sentiment that it could have been split into two films, while others made the argument that the book didn’t get enough publicity for two separate films and fewer people would attend if it had been split.
It was intriguing to discover the development of the later Games and to see how Snow created weapons based on personal experience. For example, Snow despised mockingjays and their ability to verbatim parrot sounds so 65 years later he used them to torture Katniss by having the birds mimic her sister’s scream. “I liked getting to see how the games were at the beginning and how far they had come in the original series,” Grace Hutka, a sophomore at North Forsyth commented after seeing the film in theaters on Friday.
Additionally, the original Hunger Games were more mentor-focused with interviews and publicity, while the tributes were more of an afterthought. However, in the later Hunger Games—at least in the 74th and 75th Games—the tributes are the stars. They’re dressed up, interviewed, and filmed, as well as fed extravagantly before being thrown into the arena.
The movie itself was an incredibly accurate depiction of the book, even bringing dialogue directly from the book into the movie. It brought on a strange sense of déjà vu because the two were so similar. The casting was accurate, if not for minor details like eye color, and the actors did an outstanding job portraying the characters. The original adaptations were so well-executed that they’re hard to top but the intrigue of Coriolanus Snow’s rise to power—and inevitable downfall—draws more attention to the prequel.
The end of the movie was vague and left the viewer with plenty of questions. What happened to Lucy Gray? Why did Snow try to kill her? This leaves the question of whether or not there will be another book and movie to further Snow’s backstory. At the end of “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” Snow had yet to rise to power and become president. After all, Snow lands on top.
