Quick Review- The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

Quick Review- The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes 

Happy 2024! May the odds be ever in your favor

Watch The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes on Prime Video!

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is a 2023 film that serves as a prequel to the original movies made in the 2010s.  Like the previous 4 movies,  it is also directed by Francis Lawrence 

The movie is set during the 10th Hunger Games, long before Coriolanus Snow became president of Panem. But in this year's Hunger Games, each tribute has a mentor-  Snow is one of these mentors.  Snow develops feelings for the District 12 tribute he was assigned: Lucy Gray.

I didn't see the trailer for this movie before going into the theater, & I was worried it would just be a lazy cash grab remaking an old movie. But I was completely wrong.   As someone who always wondered what this world (Panam) used to look like many years ago, the idea of a prequel had me very intrigued right from the beginning. 

Somehow they managed to make the Hunger Games itself very unique and interesting once again. Snow is a genius mentor and Lucy’s fight for survival has you on the edge of your seat. The deaths feel even more brutal, shocking, and depressing than any other of the movies.

Overall, I cared about the character's relationships, motives, and outcomes from the beginning of the movie. This is one of the fastest 3-hour movies I've ever watched; I genuinely couldn't pick a time to go to the bathroom. I'm glad to see Hunger Games movies still being made 10 years later because it is one of my favorite series, and this movie brought back the feelings I felt from the first one I watched many years ago. 

Story By Jackson E. - Edited by Kit S.