The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes movie came out on November 17th of this year. The film is an adaptation of the book by Suzanne Collins. It is a prequel movie to the film series The Hunger Games. It starred Tom Blyth as Coriolanus Snow and Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a dystopian story about Lucy Gray Baird, a girl from District 12, the poorest of the 12 districts. Every year, two tributes from each district are chosen to fight to the death in the Hunger Games. This year, a Capitol mentor is given to each tribute to promote the games. Coriolanus Snow is assigned to Lucy Gray Baird, and he quickly grows to care about her. He decides he will do anything to help her survive in the games.
The movie was mostly book-accurate if that’s what you’re looking for, but the whole film also felt rushed. Things were happening so quickly that there wasn’t time for a lot of character development, and some parts were confusing at times.
The sets and costumes were beautiful and captured the exact imagery from the book. Lucy Gray’s iconic rainbow dress was perfect.
“I thought they were great, I really did. I read the book first. [You] have to do that. I feel like the woman who played Lucy Gray…I thought her costumes were great. Very fitting, and very much like what I imagined in the book,” said the chair of the English department and creator of the Art of Film class, Dr. Romick.
Overall, the movie was pretty good and even though it was around two and a half hours long, it kept me interested the whole time. The actors portrayed their characters well, and the plot was true to the book’s storyline. I would give this movie 4/5 stars, which Dr. Romick would also agree.
“Four. I would give it a four. It was really good, no movie is perfect, but I felt really good. I felt that the music was phenomenal; that woman can sing…The special effects were fabulous, I felt that the performances were good, actors were great.” said Dr. Romick.
I would definitely recommend this movie, especially if you are a fan of the original film series. If you haven’t seen those, I recommend watching them first, as this is just an origin story of the main villain in the series.
