Review: The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023)

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023)

Rated PG-13 for strong violent content and disturbing material

Score: 3 out of 5

The Hunger Games was my jam in my college years. Even being just a bit older than its target demographic of teenagers, it was a series of books that I readily embraced as an antidote to the big young-adult literary sensation of my own high school years, Twilight. No sparkly vampires or Mormon abstinence messages here, no, these books were dark satires about teenagers forced to kill each other, like an American version of Battle Royale or a post-apocalyptic version of The Running Man, and what's more, they were actually shockingly well-written. Even if you were the kind of guy who'd never otherwise pick up a YA novel, there's no denying the appeal of that basic premise. And then came the film adaptations, which ranged from good to damn close to classic, even if splitting the last movie into two parts was kind of a dumb idea, and all the commercialism that got attached to the series was quite ironic given the messages in the books. It's those messages that are the big reason why I'm still nostalgic for the series today, long after the YA dystopia boom has passed us by. Suzanne Collins may not have been a subtle writer, but she was a smart one, and her books, for all their pulpy sci-fi flair, were fundamentally about how difficult it is to organize a revolution against even the most obviously unjust system, and how people you think of as allies may in fact have very different goals that stand opposed to your own -- a lesson that a lot of young people raised on the series and other teen-lit wastelands had to learn themselves as they organized against real-world injustices later in the decade.

Naturally, with the 15th anniversary of the original novel having recently passed us by, somebody decided that the time was right to revisit it. Three years ago, Collins, after having held off for years, wrote a prequel novel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (a title evocative of the trend of epic fantasy novels that took over YA literature after the sci-fi dystopia boom), about the main villain of the series that explored his youth, the early years of the titular Games, and how they intersected to turn him into the bastard he became. I haven't yet read the book, but if the movie is any indication, I want to. It's a big and bloated movie that I thought could've stood to be trimmed down in some places and padded out in others, but it's one that boasts a star-making performance from Rachel Zegler as its heroine, an interesting new twist on its series' setting, and the same thoughtfulness that elevated the original trilogy above its peers. It had my attention from start to finish despite its length, and I'm not at all disappointed by my return to the world of Panem after all these years.

Set about 64 years before the events of the first book/movie, this one is set around the time of the 10th annual Hunger Games -- which is to say, ten years after the "Dark Days", the brutal war between the Capitol and the Districts for control of Panem, the post-apocalyptic wasteland formerly known as North America. The Capitol won the war, but ten years on, the scars are still visible. The film's retro-period setting was designed to evoke the 1950s with the technology and aesthetics on display, and in practice, it specifically evokes '50s Europe on both sides of the Iron Curtain, a time when the British were still winding down their wartime rationing, the cars were tiny econoboxes, the soldiers carried G3 rifles and traveled in Unimog trucks, the new construction replacing the bombed-out ruins was mostly shit-ugly brutalist monoliths, the old elite sought to maintain an appearance of propriety by dusting off old prewar fashions, and the scars of the war were still fresh in the minds of the younger generations. It's how I imagine a post-apocalyptic world that hasn't completely forgotten 21st century science would actually look once it had the time to start rebuilding itself, retaining some elements of modern technology (color TVs, certain plot-relevant biological weapons) but lacking the means to rebuild past a mid-20th-century level of technology, infrastructure, and industry; that would have to wait for later.

It was a creative choice that highlighted not only that this film is a prequel, but also the continuity between Panem's history and what it had become in the original trilogy -- because if "modern" Panem is an exaggerated parody of 21st century Western society, then it stands to reason that "historical" Panem might resemble a similarly grotesque version of what that society looked like seventy years ago. The world of Panem has always been part of the appeal of The Hunger Games, and this film did a lot to flesh that world out, showing us not only what it once looked like but also, more importantly, how it came up with the sick idea of the Games in the first place and how it might have possibly thought it a good idea. Watching the prologue set during the war, it took no time to realize the deprivation that the citizens of the Capitol experienced, and how pissed off they probably were when they finally won their hard-earned victory and peace, the future consequences of such be damned. The Capitol looks down on the Districts the way that Europeans at the time looked down on their colonies, or the Soviets looked down on their "fellow workers' states" in the Warsaw Pact (above all else the German "Democratic" Republic).

If the film's aesthetics look backwards, however, then its themes look forward, specifically to the life experiences that a lot of the books' readers in the years after their publication. Coriolanus Snow was, in his youth, a student at an elite academy competing with 23 of his classmates for a university scholarship, with the recipient of the scholarship decided by having the students each mentor a tribute in the Hunger Games, the winner being the one who puts on the best show for the citizens of the Capitol. Again, Collins wasn't subtle, and neither is this movie. The students' struggles may not be as life-or-death as those of the tributes, but direct and obvious parallels are drawn from the start, highlighting how the Capitol's system grinds down even the children of its own elites and turns them into the worst possible versions of themselves as they compete for favor and stab each other in the back. We see Snow, initially motivated by a desire to provide for a family that lost everything in the war, slowly but surely shed his morals as he comes up with a number of what would become the Games' signature concepts (particularly making the tributes into celebrities) and develop a star-crossed romance with his mediagenic, hot-headed tribute, District 12's Lucy Gray Baird. I liked Tom Blyth as Snow, watching him transform from a naive but well-intentioned rich kid into somebody who's willing to throw everybody and everything around him under the bus to advance his own interests, such that, by the time he finally, triumphantly returns to the Capitol at the end (not really a spoiler in a prequel telling the villain's origin story), even his own dear cousin Tigris barely recognizes what he's become.

The real MVP in the cast, though, was Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray. Implied to have been thrust into the Games thanks to a corrupt mayor in District 12 and her getting on the wrong side of a love triangle involving said mayor's daughter, from the moment she made her grand "screw you" entrance I was immediately rooting for her. Zegler gave the kind of "star in the making" performance that Jennifer Lawrence had for Katniss Everdeen, albeit playing a very different sort of character who has to learn the opposite things that Katniss later would. If Katniss was an outdoorsy survivalist who the Capitol turned into a glamorous romantic figure, then Lucy Gray is a theater kid (specifically, part of a group of traveling musicians known as the Covey) who has to learn how to fight, but one whose charisma and presence become an asset, especially once Snow realizes their potential to sway the audience to her side. Zegler carried a lot of this movie on her shoulders, from her multiple musical performances (putting her background in musical theater to great use) to her being the one who initially forces Snow to confront the ethics of the Games, with the breakdown of their relationship marking the last straw in his descent into villainy. Mark my words, Zegler is going places.

The supporting cast, too, was filled with standouts. Viola Davis devoured the scenery as the loopy scientist Dr. Volumnia Gaul who helps design some of the Capitol's bioweapons, Hunter Schafer had a small but memorable presence as Snow's cousin Tigris who watches his transformation, Jason Schwartzman played the Games' host Lucky Heavensbee like a snappy yet flippant '50s game show host, Ashley Liao made Snow's rival Clemencia such an obnoxious and cocky jackass, and Peter Dinklage playing Snow's dean at the academy as basically Tyrion Lannister as a bitter prep school headmaster, but I'll forgive it because there aren't a lot of people who play "I drink and I know things" better than him. Josh Andrés Rivera in particular got a lot to do as Snow's friend Sejanus, somebody with roots in District 2 who, even after his family got rich enough to become citizens, never forgot where he came from and voices the loudest objections to the morality of the Games. When it came to the tributes in the arena, the film sadly didn't take a lot of time to flesh out the ones not named Lucy Gray, but there were still highlights like the butch District 4 combatant Coral, Lucy Gray's District 12 partner Jessup, and the District 11 guy Reaper whose scary name turns out to be not at all indicative of his personality. The action was up to par with some of the best scenes from Catching Fire, director Francis Lawrence having lost none of his touch since the last time he worked on these films, with the bloodbath that opens the Games in particular being a hell of a one-take action scene shot largely from Lucy Gray's perspective.

Where this film ultimately let me down was its structure. It is a big movie, and there eventually comes a point where it rapidly shifts gears into something completely different, pulling Snow out of the confines of the Capitol and out into District 12. And if I'm being honest, it felt like a completely different movie from the one I'd been watching until then. It was still a good movie and an interesting story, but it felt like a whole new chapter of Snow's life where the problems he'd encountered in the first two acts, while still there, got pushed into the background as new characters and problems were introduced and Snow got sucked into the personal drama of District 12's inhabitants. I would've liked to see another scene of him interacting with his friends and family back home and keeping tabs on what's going on in the Capitol, as well as, more importantly, a scene or two in the first half of the film establishing some more of the people in Lucy Gray's life before she's chosen as tribute instead of throwing all of them at us in act three, especially given how it's all but stated that some of this drama was why she wound up in the arena in the first place. It would've been a minor change that likely would've added only a few minutes to the admittedly long runtime, but it would've alleviated a big problem I had with the third act of this movie, suddenly being asked to care about people I'd only just met knowing that there isn't a whole lot of movie left and there isn't much time to flesh them out.

The Bottom Line

This movie has a lot of, well, movie to cram in, and I'm not sure it entirely stuck the landing, but overall, it's a welcome return for a series I love, elevated by an outstanding lead performance by Rachel Zegler. Whether you're a diehard Hunger Games fan who was one of the first to snatch up the book this was based on the day it came out or a total newbie to the series who only knows it from memes, I recommend this movie.