The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
2023
***
Director: Francis Lawrence
Cast: Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Peter Dinklage, Jason Schwartzman, Hunter Schafer, Josh Andrés Rivera, Viola Davis, Fionnula Flanagan, Burn Gorman
18-year-old Coriolanus Snow, the future dictator of Panem, is one of the academy students selected to mentor the tributes of the 10th annual Hunger Games. To win the main prize, a prestigious scholarship, Snow must turn District 12 tribute Lucy Gray Baird into a winner. The original Hunger Games series (2012-2015), which featured a memorably strong female hero, told a gripping dystopian story about the fight for the future of Panem. This prequel is set 64 years earlier and its stakes are much lower. Although the movie is long and frankly unnecessary, it is quite entertaining, but it definitely includes too many musical interludes. Michael Lesslie and Michael Arndt adapted Suzanne Collins' 2020 novel to the screen, and their script suffers from some structural issues. The story appears to wrap up in the Capitol, but we then head to District 12 for the final third.
