The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Review

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is the prequel to the famous book and movie franchise, The Hunger Games, written by Suzanne Collins. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes takes place six and a half decades before the Hunger Games trilogy and focuses on the future president of Panem, Coriolanus Snow. Throughout the novel and its movie counterpart, Snow, along with his classmates, is given the task of mentoring the competitors in the Tenth annual Hunger Games. The mentor of the last standing tribute is rewarded handsomely. Snow is given Lucy Gray Baird, the singing girl from District 12, as his tribute. To ensure he wins the money his family desperately needs, Snow will go to any lengths to promise Lucy Gray’s survival; however, he finds himself infatuated with her. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes movie beautifully captures the complexity of all characters and their relationships while maintaining the continuation of the plot. The movie also did a good job capturing the relationship Snow had with Baird and others, however, without the knowledge of his inner monologue that the book provides he is portrayed as a much kinder man. Understandably, the ability to portray inner thoughts is much much more difficult to do in a film than in a book, but in this case, it made the Snow portrayed in the prequel hard to connect with the wicked man he is in the original trilogy. The director, Francis Lawrence, did a wonderful job portraying the characters in such a human way that the audience was besotted with them, and felt deeply when something happened to them. Overall, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was a beautifully done movie and one of the best modern book-to-movie adaptations.