‘The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes’ Review: Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler Preach the Power of Prequels

Donald Sutherland's Coriolanus Snow hardly had the hold on pop culture that Darth Vader ever did, but he's now got a "how did the bad guy get so bad?" movie just like ol' wheezy does.

Timing is important with franchise films. Just ask the producers of The Marvels trying to cram another MCU movie into an oversaturated market. So you could be forgiven for thinking there's something off about getting a new Hunger Games movie right now. 

There’s been too much of a gap since the last one — eight years, in fact — for it to feel like a seamless continuation. But it hasn’t been long enough for the true yearning of nostalgia to set in. (Say what you will about the Star Wars prequels and sequels, but when they first hit the scene, boy were they ever wanted.) Unless you are a die-hard fanatic for the Suzanne Collins-created series, thinking back on these too-recent movies kinda has that awkward, forced quality of hanging out with your high school friends when you’ve moved on to college. There's a little whiff of "ew" here.

And yet! I am happy (and a little bit surprised) to report that The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes — a prequel for all things Panem — isn't all that bad. No, it's far from great and certainly not essential viewing, but when you make your next cross-country flight, this two-hour-and-thirty-seven-minute film is going to nicely chomp up a significant percentage of the flight time, and keep you mostly entertained.

Despite their popularity, it's hard to argue that the very high concept behind The Hunger Games makes much sense. The dystopian society founded on a program of annually televised child torture with wacky color commentators and a byzantine sponsorship program certainly lends itself nicely to grand metaphorical statements and broadly displayed teen emotions. But scrutinizing the particulars, I've found, only leads to more questions.

This prequel, set during the 10th Annual Hunger Games, doesn't shed any new light, but it does feature a number of people scratching their heads over this curious new custom that sprang up after Panem's civil war. So, at least we feel some relief watching characters similarly baffled that this grotesque carnival is meant to work toward some societal aim.

Tom Blyth, a terrific newcomer (check out Terence Davies's Benediction for more of him), is our sympathetic-until-he's-not lead character, Young Coriolanus — Coryo to his chums. Though the son of an important political leader, and still traveling in noble circles, he's grown up quite poor with his grandmother and cousin in post-war Panem's capital. Just as he is about to graduate high school (with a condescending Peter Dinklage's Casca Highbottom as his professor), he and his class are roped directly into this year's Games. For the first time, each Tribute will have a Mentor, whose job is to ... well ... it's very unclear, at first, what they are supposed to do. All we know is that if Coryo doesn't do it well, he won't get to attend college.

Coryo ends up joined to Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), a takes-no-crap gal with a ready-for-the-Ryman-Auditorium accent from District 12 who delights the nation by busting out into song when condemned to the Games. (She is the songbird of the title; who, do you think, is the snake?)

Pros:

Cons:

It does not take long for Coryo and Lucy Gray to become smitten with one another, which is unfortunate because the odds are not in her favor to survive the death match that is the Hunger Games. But Coryo comes up with the "sponsorship" scheme, in which home viewers can send in water or supplies to contestants if they do something that is endearing. (Man, this must sound like absolute nonsense to someone completely unfamiliar with this franchise.) In addition to this, Coryo starts making political allies, particularly with the cruel head game maker, Dr. Volumnia Gaul, played by Viola Davis, who gobbles up scenery as if she'd been starving in the desert for a decade.

Songbirds & Snakes is a lengthy and somewhat unfocused movie, and it rolls out in three distinct chapters. The first, which is pretty good, gets us acquainted with Coryo's world in the Capital and how his involvement with Lucy Gray changes him. The third chapter, the best, is set after the Games, in the Appalachian-esque District 12, where country singer Lucy Gray and Coryo end up due to circumstances I don't want to spoil too much. (It involves a haircut for Coryo.) The middle chapter is the Hunger Games competition itself, which is flat-out terrible.

Unlike in the primary trilogy, these early Games are set in one amphitheater, and it is quite dull. Also, with so much else happening in the movie, all the characters except Lucy Gray are poorly developed. They may have been clubbing one another to death, but I was checking my watch. Not even Jason Schwartzman as the smarmy commentator Lucretius "Lucky" Flickerman held my interest.

There is no possible way this new picture catches fire in the way the Jennifer Lawrence trilogy did, but director Francis Lawrence doesn't need to feel too guilty about drawing, once again, from this money well. Also, the look of the thing is terrific, smashing together various mid-century design schools into one another. (Dr. Gaul's mad scientist lab is a particular delight.)

Unfortunately, the three-movies-in-one does undercut a lot of the dramatic tension. It's possible, though, that younger audiences primed on streaming television series might be more accustomed to this kind of meandering storytelling, and won't find the sprawl to be a gamekiller. 6.5/10

In theaters: Nov. 17

Who is in it: Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Peter Dinklage, Viola Davis, Jason Schwartzman

Who is behind it: Francis Lawrence (director), Michael Arndt and Michael Lesslie (screenwriters), Suzanne Collins (book author)

For fans of: Never saying goodbye to a hit franchise

Avoid if: You do not care about how Coriolanus lost his groove