The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Movie Review

Because I am forever a Hunger Games fan

Given my age and the fact that I read a lot, it is probably no surprise to anyone that I am a Hunger Games fan. I read the first book eight years ago, while in grade seven, and it was the first young adult book I ever read. My parents were not exactly thrilled to discover that their twelve-year-old child was reading a book about teenagers fighting to the death in a dystopian world controlled by an evil government, but surprisingly, they did not take the book away from me. Later, I read Catching Fire as well as Mockingjay, and the series quickly became one of my all-time favourites. Getting a prequel book was not something I thought would happen, but I was quite excited for its release in May of 2020 and ended up reading it in early June.

I also loved reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and thought that it was a very well-done villain backstory. However, it was not until the summer of 2022 that I watched the four original Hunger Games movies. They are some of the better film adaptations I have seen for books I read and I think they were overall really good. So, when I heard that The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was being made into a movie, I knew I had to see it. In fact, I even went to the movie theatre by myself for the first time. Anyway, here is my review!

Soundtrack

The instrumental songs were fantastic, as I knew they would be since they were composed by one of my favourite movie soundtrack writers (yes, I have a few!), James Newton Howard. If you are unaware, allow me to nerd out a bit by saying that not only did he write the soundtrack for the previous Hunger Games movies, but he also wrote for Fantastic Beasts, Raya and the Last Dragon, Jungle Cruise, some Batman thing (I don’t know anything about superhero movies, sorry), and many others.

There were also several songs with words that I loved as well, most of them sung by Rachel Zegler, who played Lucy Gray Baird in the movie. The only thing I knew about her before seeing this movie were her annoying and viral comments on Disney’s live-action Snow White remake (weird, weird 🤪), but she is an extremely talented singer and the songs she sang were really good. We also got a new recording of “The Hanging Tree,” which is playing through my head as I write this. Overall, the soundtrack is something I can see myself listening to for years to come.

Costumes & Set Design

From what little I know of these things, I quite liked the way they were done. Lucy Gray’s colourful dress that she wears for the majority of the film is certainly the most memorable outfit and it fits her character well. Tigris’s pink dress looked great as well and I think that all the costumes were good. As for the set, I liked the way that the classroom of mentors looked with those fancy white fence things. My favourite one was the head gamemaker’s room with those creepy-looking animals in jars.

Casting

The actors were overall well-suited for their role although some of them looked to be too old for the character they played. I do find it bothersome when teenage roles are given to adults in their twenties or thirties.

Plot

One thing I will never tire of is anti-hero-focused stories. Having a morally gray protagonist is always more interesting than one who hardly ever makes a wrong move. The story begins when eighteen-year-old Coriolanus (AKA the future president Snow) is assigned to be the mentor of the female tribute from District Twelve. It follows him through the preparations for the games, the games themselves, his time in exile, and ends when he returns to the capitol.

Since this is a lot to fit into one movie, I found myself wishing throughout that it was split into two movies to allow for more time for character development. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is the longest book in the series by a substantial amount, so I think it is strange that it was only given one movie while Mockingjay got two. That is my biggest critique of the movie.

Book Accuracy

It has obviously been a while since I read the book, so I do not remember a whole lot of the details. Much of what was shown in the movie was accurate to the book and the plot did not deviate lots. One thing I was expecting to see in the movie was cabbage soup because it was mentioned many times in the book to show the poverty of the Snow family. Cabbage deserves to be in the movie! There were a few other things cut out for the sake of time which was disappointing but understandable.

Overall Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Admittedly, I thought this movie was excellent despite the small amount of things I thought could be improved upon. If you have read the book and liked it, I would recommend seeing the movie.