The Doctor’s Diagnosis: C
If you aren’t like me at all, you have spent the eight years since the release of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 wondering when we would finally get a film explaining the origin of series villain Coriolanus Snow. Well, the day has finally arrived and the completely unnecessary The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is here to answer your questions in the most befuddling way possible. This movie is far too long and contains some of the most bizarre narrative and performance choices of the year, but I don’t hate it and I can see hardcore fans of the franchise finding some value here. After enduring a number of cinematic dumpster fires this year, I consider that to be a relative success.
The original Hunger Games is about the 74th annual iteration of the titular games, so that potentially leaves material for 73 prequels. Therefore, I went into The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes expecting the film to be the origin story of the games and tell of the first annual event. I was wrong, although I still expect to get that movie eventually, and this film focuses on the 10th annual games and the rise of Snow (played Tom Blyth). Snow is one of a group of high school students that is assigned to mentor a competitor in the 10th annual games, with the winning mentor being awarded a prestigious scholarship. Snow falls in love (or doesn’t, I’m not sure) with his assigned person, a girl named Lucy (played by Rachel Zegler). He then starts helping her win the games so that they can escape together. Or so that he could rise to power. Or something.
Either the film’s script is maddeningly inconsistent in its portrayal of Snow or there is a massive disconnect between the writer’s intention and Blyth’s performance, because I was never sure if this guy was supposed to be an evil genius, a schizophrenic or just a buffoon that falls ass-backwards into things. Considering what he turns into in the other movies, I guess I’m supposed to think that this dude is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers, but its more like he’s playing Shoots and Ladders because there is no rhyme or reason to any of this. In one scene, he will risk his life to save his friend. Ten minutes later, he’s setting up that same friend to be killed. Despite their complete lack of chemistry, sometimes he is risking his life to save Lucy (and using family heirlooms to do so, because that won’t get back to him). Then he will suddenly turn on her. There is never a masterplan to any of this and he often seems more confused than anybody else by the consequences of his actions, like if Mr. Bean accidentally pulled off Keyser Söze’s plan from The Usual Suspects and was suddenly a crime lord.
Rachel Zegler also makes some interesting choices here performance-wise. She speaks with a heavy southern accent (except for when she occasionally doesn’t) and pretty much sounds like what I would expect a Hispanic girl from New Jersey impersonating a white girl from Kentucky would sound like. Interestingly, she’s the only fucking person in the movie that sounds like that. Sure, she sings at a couple of hoedowns in her home district, but nobody else sounds like that. It is really, really distracting. Speaking of hoedowns, the film often stops for Zegler to break into song for no real reason. The movie isn’t a musical, she just occasionally breaks into song at such fitting moments as being sentenced to participate in a death sport or being overrun by poisonous snakes. You know, as you do.
The film also shoehorns in some truly groan-inducing fan service in the last act with completely unnecessary (and repetitive) references to the other films. I hope you enjoy Zegler’s version of the hanging tree song, because she sings it about 87 frigging times. If you don’t know what a mockingjay is, the film will tell you repeatedly. By the time that they came up with a ridiculous excuse to say “Katniss,” I was starting to think that the fan service in Ghostbusters: Afterlife was borderline graceful.
All of that being said, I didn’t have a terrible time with the film. I wasn’t bored and the film moves along fairly well despite its 2 hour and 38 minute running time. Many of the supporting characters are well-performed (especially Viola Davis, who seems to be having the time of her life) and the games themselves are entertaining despite the limitations of the PG-13 rating. Maybe I don’t care enough about this material to feel too strongly about it, but it’s a decent enough way to kill a couple of hours and watch the emergence of the world’s dumbest mastermind. Maybe I will understand things better after the other 72 prequels are released.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_Games:The_Ballad_of_Songbirds%26_Snakes#/media/File:The_Hunger_Games_-The_Ballad_of_Songbirds&_Snakes_official_poster.jpg
