The Big Picture

• The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes explores the gray areas between good and bad, delving into the characters that made the games what they are today.
• Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler give solid performances as Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Gray Baird, but the supporting cast steals the show, especially Viola Davis and Peter Dinklage.
• The film effectively handles the brutality and futility of the Hunger Games, and delves into the world before the events of the original series, making it the most engrossing film in the series so far.

“I think there’s a natural goodness built into human beings,” says Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), a contestant in the 10th annual Hunger Games competition. “You know when you’ve stepped across the line into evil, and it’s your life’s challenge to try and stay on the right side of that line.” In The Hunger Games franchise and its previous four movies, who was on each side of that line was fairly well-defined—naturally, with a few characters standing right in the middle. Despite four films, starting with 2012’s The Hunger Games, this series hasn’t really had the time to explore the gray between good and bad, as it was fairly clear that the people running the yearly event where two dozen kids fight to the death were bad, and the kids struggling to stay alive were on the good side. But with The Hunger Game: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes exploring The Hunger Games 64 years before Katniss Everdeen ever made her mark on Panem, this series can investigate those who made the games what they are now and inspect the moments that led to crossing over that line, in what might be the best film in The Hunger Games series so far.

What Is 'The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes' About?

In delving into this, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes centers around one of The Hunger Games’ franchise’s biggest villains: Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth). Snow is an eighteen-year-old trying to take care of his cousin Tigris (Hunter Schafer) and Grandma’am (Fionnula Flanagan) after the war in the Capitol left the Snow family a shell of what they once were. They’re now poor and starving as much as those in the Districts, but Coriolanus pretends to have money around his classmates at his school, the Academy. Coriolanus is hoping to earn a prize that the school gives to its best students, but this year, students are placed as mentors to different tributes in The Hunger Games, with the best mentor winning the prize.

After ten years, The Hunger Games hasn’t drawn the desired audience, and is trying new things out, including having a host for the show in Lucky Flickerman (Jason Schwartzman), and interviews that will let the audience get to know these tributes. Snow is assigned to District 12 tribute, Lucy Gray Baird, who gains attention after singing a song of resistance at the reaping ceremony. As Snow helps Lucy in the upcoming games, he starts to realize they have more in common than they thought. Yet he still tries to find favor from the Academy’s troubled dean, Cas Highbottom (Peter Dinklage), and the head game master of The Hunger Games, Dr. Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis), who has taken a liking to Snow’s ideas on how to improve the games.

While The Hunger Games series occasionally made time to explore the deeper personal impact of these games, those films also had the unfortunate burden of setting up this world. The Hunger Games needed to establish what had happened to Panem and explain the details of these games to the audience, while both Mockingjay films were busy with the climactic war, the questionable decisions that come with such a battle, and the aftermath of what it all leads to. Easily the best film in this series was The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, which found a nice mixture of the games and character building and dynamics since the setup had already taken place. The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes has the benefit of having all the heavy lifting done for its audience. We know this world, we know the games, and we know how they will both evolve over the next 64 years, which lets this film delve deeper into the characters that make this so impactful.

Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler Are Good, but the Supporting Characters Are Great

Blyth does a solid job as Snow, balancing his allegiances towards his family and his issues with The Hunger Games. Even though we know where Snow is going to end up, Blyth’s performance makes us feel like this path was a strenuous one that wasn’t taken lightly. We didn’t really need to understand what made Snow the future villain of this series, but Blyth’s performance does allow us to care about the journey of this troubled teenager at a crossroads in his life. Zegler is also quite good as Lucy Gray Baird, who understandably becomes a favorite of the games. Lucy has the rebellious spirit and frustrations that Katniss would eventually end up having, and Zegler does a decent job of showing what the predecessor to Katniss would’ve looked like—someone ready to fight the system, regardless of what it costs her.

But it’s hard to not get wrapped up in the more grandiose performances given by the more seasoned actors within The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. Viola Davis is gleefully evil and over-the-top, as she tries to make The Hunger Games more successful. Honestly, if she wants those ratings to go up, she could just go ahead and put herself in front of the camera. Jason Schwartzman is a delight as Lucky, channeling Stanley Tucci’s performance as Caesar Flickerman in the series while making it his own strange character. But it's Peter Dinklage as Cas Highbottom that truly stands out, as we can see the toll that a decade of The Hunger Games has taken on his spirit. While it seems as though it’s warped the mind of a character like Davis’ Dr. Gaul, Highbottom always feels like he could also burst out in rage at the Capitol at any moment, full of fury and substances to numb the pain of where the world has gone to in his time. The Hunger Games series has always excelled at supporting characters from great actors, and The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes certainly continues that tradition.

'The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes' Is Fascinating in How It Handles The Hunger Games

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is also quite fascinating in how it approaches The Hunger Games themselves. As this takes place in the first decade of this annual event, things are still being figured out, and the people aren’t certain about how to feel about it. This leads to a certain level of unpredictability that the other films couldn’t match, whether it’s through the people rising up against the Capitol in any way they can, or the game makers clearly not knowing how to handle hiccups and surprises. This leads the actual games to feel grittier, more ruthless, and more difficult to watch than they even were before—a monstrous place where ripping down a flag is more scandalous than watching children die. This works on both ends, as we see the struggle from some in the Capitol—namely Josh Andrés Rivera as Sejanus Plinth—who see the nightmarish world that is coming. In doing so, we feel the impact and terrifying anguish that this event brings to the twelve districts forced to participate, and those in places of power who still can't stop this from happening.

Yet the main obstacle for The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is how to keep this story just as exciting after the games—which ends up taking place in the second act here. This isn’t necessarily the fault of writers Michael Lesslie (The Little Drummer Boy) and Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine), but just the structure of Suzanne Collins’ original novel. In its final act, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes more directly highlights the inevitable choice Snow will have to make, and it’s just not enough to keep this story as intriguing as it was in the first two acts. While this does lead to some of the film’s quieter, more character-focused moments, it also feels like the writing’s already on the wall by that point.

Having Francis Lawrence Return as Director Was a Wise Decision

Bringing back director Francis Lawrence for The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, however, turns out to be a smart choice. Having directed three of the four films in the original series, Lawrence shows he knows what works and what doesn’t in these stories. He never pulls back from the inherent darkness of this world, and embraces the horrors these characters are facing. Again, Lawrence knows just the right balance between world-building and character relationships, while also entertaining audiences who are also disgusted by what they’re seeing play out. It’s a delicate mixture, but Lawrence handles it like a seasoned pro.

Lawrence also knows this world well, and having him at the helm of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes makes this feel like an integral part of the larger story being told. Lawrence has the time to investigate the Districts, both in their relation to the games and outside of them, in a way that even strengthens the original four films. Inside The Capitol, we are shown the selfishness, the desperation, and the weaknesses of this system through the eyes of one of its own in a way we never got in the original series. Meanwhile, in District 12, with Lucy Gray Baird, we get to see both the calmer times within this segmented world and the horrors that are just beginning as the Hunger Games works out the kinks. The Hunger Games movies up until them have, as the name implies, largely been specifically around those games, and while that’s certainly a major part of Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes as well, we get downtime to explore in a way that fleshes out these communities. It’s hard to imagine someone pulling that off quite as well as Lawrence does here.

While Coriolanus Snow likely didn’t need his own origin story, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is far more about the world around him and how it has fallen and been reborn in the decades before The Hunger Games. The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is an effective look at this compelling world before the events of The Hunger Games, that never shies away from the bleakness and futility that Collins’ books captured so perfectly. By focusing on the gray between the good and the bad, and with a scale and scope that the other films never quite had, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes might just be the most engrossing film in this series—and almost makes one wish there were more stories here to be told.

Rating: B

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is now available to stream on VOD.

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