“The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” Detracts From the Value of “The Hunger Games”

The new prequel is a cheap and unnecessary addition to the beloved series

The Hunger Games is a series that has remained unscathed by unnecessary refranchising in the near decade since its conclusion -- a respectable feat considering that some of its contemporary franchises have cannibalized themselves to draw out nostalgia. The original four films are thoughtful: employing an impactful use of violence and an ideal balance of the harrowing, the absurd, and the saccharine. The series also built unique and instantly recognizable stylistic tropes without driving them into the ground for the sake of merchandising, never denigrating itself for the sake of driving sales or fan service. As a childhood fan of the series, I had hoped these films could be an artifact of my nostalgia that remained untouched by desperate refranchising. 

Given this context, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was in a precarious position as a prequel to a series that felt complete and that did not require a lengthy backstory. The film, which turns back the clock 64 years to the 10th Hunger Games and follows a young President Snow (Tom Blyth) as he mentors a tribute (Rachel Zegler), provides nothing new thematically, merely recontextualizing old ideas into a new narrative. Examinations of evil, spectacle, and the performance and commodification of suffering are not fresh, but simply applied to a new iteration of the world we’ve already come to know.

While The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes repurposes themes from its predecessor, it makes absolutely no effort to reintegrate any of the stylistic and storytelling methods that made The Hunger Games appealing. The Hunger Games embellished a reality of public perception of atrocities, using harrowing violence paired with teen movie tropes to uncover a raw ugliness of the human spirit and question the inevitability of this ugliness within our collective psyche. There’s nothing pristine about the world in these original films, and even the most stunning tableaus are warped and sometimes grotesque, their beauty existing as a blissful refuge from or an apathetic ignorance toward the realities of Panem.

However, the technical and creative departments of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes have not taken any care to invigorate the original films’ stylistic themes. Terrible editing and cinematography seek to capture the visual appeal of the lead actors without any effort to create eye-catching aesthetics, and the poor direction assures that these stars do not command a single second of screen time. Beyond the sweeping crane shots, of which there are far too many, no confidence in creative decision seems apparent, leaving a movie that has no stylistic resemblance to its predecessors (beyond the cliches of fascist imagery present in any dystopia). 

Under this thin veneer of storytelling lies a half-baked narrative, buried under wearisome character drama that the audience must wade through. There is the inevitable moral crises that come from a story this upsetting, but any narrative examination of an inherent presence of evil or suffering is deprioritized to spend hours convincing an audience that this backstory, depicted by two leads without any chemistry, adds anything to the dystopian world we are all familiar with. 

All these lackluster components make for a puzzling viewing experience, and one that seems oddly antithetical to the thesis of the series. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes takes place at a time where the Hunger Games have yet to become a feature of public interest -- they boast low viewership and lack the spectacle of the Games of the original series. There’s nothing more to them than children killing each other in an arena, state terrorsim serving as a public reminder of the extent of its own power. New facets of the Games are introduced to boost the performance of suffering, but the humanity behind these performances is lost because the film utterly flatlines when it tries to dig deeper. It simply does not possess the narrative capacity to portray the sense of humanity that the original films did, leaving nothing engaging besides the Games themselves. Without the sense of humanity, nothing entertaining or thoughtful about The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes exists, except the killing, which ultimately undermines the purpose of the series itself.

OVERALL SCORE: 4/10

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was released on November 17 and is currently in US theaters.