After 9 years, the Hunger Games and the world of Panem has finally returned to our screens. I remember when I first read the Hunger Games; I got them for my birthday and devoured them at an unfathomable rate. The world author Suzanne Collins built around me had me entranced. After I picked up the first book, my whole life revolved around finishing it, and then when I found out there were Hunger Games films as well, my heart filled with joy. So you can imagine the excitement of me and all Hunger Games fans when The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the prequel to the original Hunger Games, graced cinemas across the globe.
It was released in the UK on November 17th with massive popularity. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes tells the story of the main antagonist in the original Hunger Games series, Coriolanus Snow, when he was a teenager attending school, 10 years after the Hunger Games had begun in Panem. It describes the struggles and hardships he went through, and the relationship he had with Lucy Gray Baird, a girl who was heading into the Hunger Games arena to fight for her life.
Suzanne Collins has the incredible ability to leave no loose ends, everything she writes has a purpose, and she writes the perfect amount to make the biggest impact. The film managed to capture this incredibly, keeping almost all major plot points while still making the film an acceptable length. The actors were all cast incredibly and embodied the image I had pictured of their character perfectly. They were also able to keep the film rated 12A and included some light-hearted comedy through to lighten the mood. If I were to have one complaint, it would be that it wasn’t long enough; I would have happily sat watching a film 4 hours long with every scene possible.
One viewer says,
“I feel that the adaptation of [the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes] was perfect from the books and the way that it has been adapted was perfect for audiences who haven't read the books. The conclusion of the film was perfect, and you leave the cinema with your eyes coming out of your head and your jaw on the floor”
But even though some important scenes were changed or left out, it still managed to capture the essence of the book, and was able to show the horror of humanity, and what we are capable of. We see the Hunger Games and the arena as something that could never happen in our world, and something that if we were there should not be watched and something to revolt against. When in reality, the world is changing every day, horrific things are happening all across the world and continue to happen; we are getting closer and closer to a dystopian world. So, are we better than this dystopian wasteland? Can we honestly say that society would never reach the lows Collins paints in her books?
