The Hunger games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Hey everyone and welcome, today we will be talking about the film The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Fun Fact, Viola Davis came across director Francis Lawrence’s mind for the role of Dr. Gaul after he saw some fan art of her in a horror role. This film came out in 2023 and stars Tom Blyth, Rachel Ziegler, and Viola Davis and was directed by Francis Lawrence. So without further ado let’s get right into it.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes follows Coriolanus Snow and details how he started off as this poor student and follows him through some of the events that impacted his life and set him on a path to become the tyrannical leader of Panem.
The Ballad of Songbirds and snakes is a dystopian action film adapted from a novel. It has similar vibes to The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, or Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.
The Hunger Games was a phenomenon that took the world by storm and I was excited to see this story about a familiar character be adapted. Honestly I wanted a movie about why the hunger games were started in the first place and more explaining the war but this movie was still very interesting and had me more interested than I thought I would ever be in Coriolanus Snow’s life. Watching the movie I had to remind myself that this is not about the actual Hunger Games in the film but about snow so it’s a completely different perspective. There are plenty of callbacks to the Hunger Games series like Jabber Jays, the name Katniss which is a plant, mockingjay, the hanging tree song, Snows Roses and Lucys bow like Katniss did.
Coriolanus Snow aka Coryo is the main focus of this movie and if you know anything you will know he becomes president snow in The Hunger Games who is awful. Tom Blythe did a good job of showing the birth of this villain and he made him seem likable at first until we see hints of evil and come to find out his motives are just for the advancement of himself.I often found myself reminding myself that he is going to become an evil person. He helps Lucy get through her Hunger Games by cheating and eventually goes to district 12 to seek her out but behind him is a path of death and betrayal. He is the product of Panem propaganda and even though others could see through it, all he saw was a way for him to move up in the world. He is the reason why the games are like they are in the hunger games films, he made suggestions that made the games more cruel and more of a spectacle and got people more interested by feeling a connection to the tribute.
Sejanus played by Josh Andres Rivera was Coryo’s best friend if you would call it that and did nothing but support him and try to stop the barbaric hunger games and how did Coryo return the favor, by throwing him under a bus and getting him killed. Coryo was right though in terms of how he should go about stopping the games and I do think eventually he would have gotten caught but it was sad that it was by somebody he thought was his friend.
Lucy Gray Baird was not the person who I thought would win the 10th annual hunger games but with help from Coryo she was able to. I think it would be safe to say that Katniss was a fighter who had to become an entertainer and Lucy is an entertainer who had to become a fighter. Rachel Zegler did a great job portraying this character who was disgusted by the capitol and fell in love with Cory but saw that he was not the man that she thought he was. Lucy had a heart of gold and I must say her singing was amazing and I enjoyed all her songs. Her ending is very ambiguous and we don’t know what happens to her but we know that by the time Katniss comes around she is all but forgotten.
Lucky Flickerman who is hilariously played by Jason Schwartzman is like the comic relief in this film to loosen up the tension while people are watching game. Jason did a great job with mimicking the mannerisms of Flickerman to make them just like Stanley Tucci did to show they may be related .
Is there anything Viola Davis can’t do? She was great as the wicked Dr. Gaul who is the gamester of this hunger games. She was literally the definition of a mad scientist. The film did a good job of showing how twisted she was and with snows suggestions she made things even more deadly. She is very smart but also very influential in the capitol and is constantly looking at ways to make the games worse for the tributes. If there was one person who influenced Snow and made Snow a menace, it was probably her.
Cas was an interesting character and at first I thought gosh he’s mean but came to realize that he is the one that came up with the idea for the games and that eats away at him every single day. He takes his anger out on Coriolanus because his dad and cas were friends until Coryo’s dad got Cas drunk and asked them about an assignment which was to think about a punishment for there enemies where he thought of the hunger games but wasn’t really serious about it but Coryo’s dad turned in the assignment and now he has to live with all these people dying because of an idea that he had. IN the end he gets poisoned by Snow after a line from Snow about snow always ends up on top and this also foreshadows how Finnick mentions in the Hunger games films that snow rose to power by poisoning his enemies.
I mentioned earlier how I would’ve loved to see how the hunger games started and I think that not a complaint of this movie but that would have been an interesting prequel. I would love to learn why there are districts and why each of them are so different? Also when was district 13 destroyed or thought to be destroyed ?We do however get to see that a lot of this film is taking place inn the capital and it’s still in the process of being built. At first I was confused because I thought everyone in the capitol was rich but Coryo and his family struggled but mainly because both of his parents are dead and his cousin tigress doesn’t get paid a lot and his grandmother can’t work either. It was interesting to get more of a glimpse of the capitol and what life is like there.
My favorite part of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was when Lucy wins her Hunger Games. I was stressed watching her compete because she wasn’t a fighter and kind of was a pacifist and it was interesting to see her kill 2 people, one on accident but one intentionally. It was also interesting to see how before snow gave her the poison then made sure the snakes knew her scent and then saw how the water delivery system was aggressive and used that to save Lucy in a moment where she almost died. We also see what’s going on behind the scenes of the games and how the mentors are watching this go down and aren’t sad for the people that died but want to do whatever to get their tribute to win. It was interesting to see some of Coriolanus’s suggestions and how this game got people so invested to the point that they didn’t want everyone to loose, they wanted a winner, and doing this saved Lucy’s life and changed the course of the games forever.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a great prequel about a character that you will come to despise. The cast was great and it was cool to go back in time and see some events and people who played an important role in the person who would later become president snows life . I know this is a one off movie but there is so many other stories that can be told in this universe and I hope we get more.
