You can hear Courtney and Kyle's full conversation on next Monday's edition of Ozarks At Large.
Prequels to beloved franchises often have the odds stacked against them. How do they tell a new chunk of such a well-known story while reminding audiences what they loved about the original? Well, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes manages to accomplish all that and more.
The film, based on another book by Suzanne Collins, is set 64 years before the first Hunger Games movie. It follows the rise of the boy who will become President Coriolanus Snow, the chief antagonist to heroine Katniss Everdeen.
In The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Snow (Tom Blyth) is a financially struggling student with top grades, aiming to win a massive prize that’ll pay off his family’s debts and allow him to attend university in the Capital.
Shortly before the prize winner is announced, the school is visited by Dr. Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis), head designer of the Hunger Games. For the 10th Hunger Games, it’s been decided that the top 24 students in Snow’s class will serve as mentors for the tributes chosen in the districts. The prize winner will be selected from among the mentors based on how their tributes perform before and during the Hunger Games.
Snow is put in charge of a girl from District 12 named Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler). Lucy Gray immediately captures the attention of those watching by proving herself an extraordinary singer and a charismatic individual.
Together, Snow and Lucy Gray have to figure out how to help each other survive the Hunger Games with whatever shreds of humanity they can escape with.
First and foremost, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is packed with powerful performances. Davis and Zegler steal every single frame they’re in, chewing up the scenery and delivering such amazing performances as to not be forgotten for some time.
Blyth doesn’t struggle one bit working through his character’s transition from a decent human being to the power-hungry man who will win at all costs, a vicious foe Katniss will face 64 years later. And when all that is combined with Peter Dinklage’s tortured conscience as Snow’s teacher, the film can’t help but succeed, fueled by all that amazing talent.
The music is another massive selling point for this film, as Zegler nails every song thrown her way. She’s charismatic, she’s heartbreaking, she’s haunting, but most of all, she’s a songbird. And it’s a massive credit to The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.
Snow is perfectly set up to become his future self (Donald Sutherland) throughout this entire movie. The narrative manages to fit together every puzzle piece laid out by the previous four movies, from his hatred of birds to his wariness of women from District 12. Blyth gives audiences a convincing portrait of a young man so close to losing everything and clinging tight to whatever dirty deed is required for him to land on top.
Unlike so many prequels that don’t trust the audience to understand callbacks, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes manages to intelligently lay its foundation and finesse its easter eggs so as not to beat viewers over the head with them. It’s the antithesis of films like Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Other critics noted the quick pace and just how much story this movie tries to cram into its two-hour and 38-minute runtime. But it doesn’t waste a second. And it’s a far better decision to stuff a movie than to cut a final film into two unnecessary pieces.
The only weakness of The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes comes in the form of Snow’s friendship with another classmate named Sejanus Plinth (Josh Andrés Rivera). Rivera and Blyth have no chemistry as best friends, and their scenes together all feel off-kilter. It’s the one part of this movie that doesn’t work.
Everything else, from the increased violence to the slam-dunk performances of Davis and Zegler, makes this the greatest Hunger Games film thus far.
