I’ll admit: Before this month, I had not seen any of the “Hunger Games” movies. I know. Your jaw is probably on the floor; my girlfriend’s was when I told her. I thought I had watched the first one — half-asleep, on an ex-friend’s couch in the early hours of the morning — but halfway through “rewatching” it with my girlfriend, I realized I had barely made it to the second act.
I do not know how, but I completely missed out on them. However, I can remember reading the first book, either in late elementary school or early middle school. As I got older, I had always wanted to experience the phenomenon, even if it was years after the series’ end.
And although I knew little to nothing about the Games, Katniss Everdeen or Peeta Mellark, I was excited when a prequel, “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes,” was announced. I was eagerly anticipating the film, in part because it was going to be Hunter Schafer’s, one of my favorite up-and-coming actresses, first movie, but in part because it gave me an excuse to lean into my years-long interest in the franchise.
From the euphoric highs of “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” to the humbling lows of “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1,” the past couple of weeks have been an experience.
“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” follows Coriolanus Snow, the big bad of the series, as he mentors Lucy Gray Baird, who is from District 12 — the District which would come to know Everdeen decades later — during the 10th Games. Snow, played by Tom Blyth, and Baird, played by Rachel Zegler, navigate the bloodbath of the Games, the anger and passion of class division and the lust and potential love of will-they-will-they-not romance.
The film opens with Snow and his cousin Tigris, who lives with Snow and his mother, three years before the first Games. Despite living in the shadow of Crassus Snow, Snow’s late father and a famed military general, they are poor — dirt poor — and are forced to scavenge the streets of the Capitol for scraps. A time jump reveals Snows is a student at the Academy, a prestigious school for privileged children with dreams of becoming bureaucrats; she, played by Hunter Schafer, is an aspiring seamstress.
Soon thereafter, Dr. Volumnia Gaul, played by Viola Davis, and Casca Highbottom, played by Peter Dinklage, give Snow and his classmates an assignment which will ask more of them than their intelligence and studiousness. The Games are falling out of favor with the public. People are bored; viewership is down.
Each of the Capitol students is paired with one of the 24 tributes competing in the Games. To their surprise, their grades are based on more than if their partner survives and, by extension, wins the Games; the theatricality, or lack thereof, of their performance is equally important to the Gamemakers — and to the Games’ ratings.
And the 10th Games are cruel, more so than either of the competitions featured in the first two films. The reaping is no-holds-barred. People — and children — with disabilities are chosen as tributes. It is genuinely some of the most upsetting stuff I have seen all year. Additionally, because of the bare-bones technology and weaponry and airtight, constricting arena, the violence and bloodshed of the Games is harsher than ever before. The film is harder to watch, and easier to look away from, than any of the series’ previous installments.
There is not much more I can say about the film’s plot without spoiling anything. About halfway through, it takes a hard left turn from the barbarism and carnage of the Games to a full-fledged origin story for Snow.
Blyth is, by far, the standout among the film’s cast of up-and-coming stars. Zegler is great, but he is exceptional. It is hard to go toe to toe with Donald Sutherland, who plays Snow in the other films, but he is about to being as cold, menacing and calculated as any young, inexperienced actor could be. It is hard to judge Schafer’s performance, as she — unfortunately — does not get a lot of screen time.
However, my favorite performance in the film might be Jason Schwartzmann’s, who plays Lucretius “Lucky” Flickerman, an ancestor of Caesar Flickerman, the iconic Games host played by Stanley Tucci. He is downright hilarious and the perfect comedic relief.
“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” is all I could have asked for from my first in-theater experience with the franchise. I was fully invested from the opening shot to the closing credits. The set and costume designs are beautiful. The young and star-studded cast is wonderful. And, above all else, I felt like I was finally a part of something — some event, some moment — I had missed out on for years.
It is hard to beat the red-hot highs of “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” — especially Finnick Odair’s introduction in the series — but it is a close second. I cannot wait to read all the books and dive deeper into the world of Panem. Oh, and Olivia Rodrigo’s song for the film, “Can’t Catch Me Now,” is flawless and just as good as anything on “GUTS.”
