Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes–Singing in the Right Key

Based on the 2020 novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins, this  prequel to “The Hunger Games” (2012) and the fifth installment in “The Hunger Games” film series won the 2024 People’s Choice Action Movie of the Year. Set more than sixty years before The Hunger Games trilogy, the fictional Capital of Panem is an apocalyptic dystopian universe. This prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,  is  focused on the supervillain origin story of Coriolanus Snow.  

Teenager Snow (Tom Blyth), now lives in a humble apartment with his grandmother (Fionnula Glanagan), who is nostalgic for her family’s past glory, and his clear-eyed cousin Tigris (Hunter Schafer)  who adjusts heroically to their squalor and tenuous social position.  

Snow acts  as if he is as wealthy as his pretentious school friends, even though his grandmother can barely pay the rent. 

Snow is literally a “golden haired boy” who still feels entitled to greatness, beginning with a paid college education if his Tribute wins the Hunger Games. He is assigned Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler of “West Side Story”), the delicate-boned songbird who will have to suffer horrific bodily and psychological harm in order to win for both of them.   Snow’s clear-eyed determination to win at all costs is primarily out of a sense of responsibility to his grandmother, his cousin, and his dead father’s legacy. 

Lucy Gray is  beautiful  and courageous, with an almost super-power in her  magnetic singing voice.  Snow, now uncomfortable in his previous judgement of the rebels,  begins to question the methods that the Capitol uses to discipline the rebel Tributes and their families.  Most importantly, Lucy Gray has formed a deeper, unexpected connection with Snow,  unlike the relationship that most Tributes have with  their mentors.  An exquisite tension is created between Snow and Lucy, as he begins to see  Panem from Lucy’s perspective.   He had  loved the unfamiliar sense of safety that defeating Tributes in Hunger Games had brought. The security that could only come with power over the weak and defenseless. The ability to control things. Yes, that was what he’d loved best of all. But now both Coriolanus and Lucy  dare to trust each other.

Can they outmaneuver Dr. Volumnia Gaul  (the multiple award-winning Viola Davis), the demonic Gamemaker  who produces genetically modified animals to be used as weapons for paramilitary purposes and for the fun of it.  Animal torture is Gauling entertainment!

Gaul’s foundational philosophy for the Hunger Games:

“Power is a game, and only the clever survive.”  “Fear is a tool; use it wisely”, she advises Snow as she lectures him on human nature’s essentially violent behavior in a fight for survival.

So, throughout Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, we see the truth about human beings.  As Snow rises to power eventually evolving into the evil mastermind of Panem, we see him struggle with the discovery of truth:  Are humans more like songbirds or snakes? Initially Snow believes he’s doing the wrong things for the right reasons but; eventually, his actions become reflexive, adrenaline driven.

And Highbottom (Peter Dinklage of “Game of Thrones”), dean of the Academy in Panem and co-creator of the Hunger Games, is the voice of both sides: the intention of eliminating rebellion and the voice of reason and morality. 

And Snow is the counterfoil to both Lucy Gray and Highbottom who sow seeds of disillusionment But fans of “The Hunger Games” know that Snow is the future ruthless authoritarian whose persona cares only about the next power grab.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is, first and foremost,  a treatise on power and control through fear, not brute strength alone, but through simple, calculated decisions, partly based on Dr. Gaul’s assessment of human nature in its most desperate state.

But the question is:  What would have happened to Snow in different circumstances?  Could he have been more like the songbird Lucy?  The backstory created here is enriched by songs that underscore the theme, especially “Hanging Tree”.  

There are  star-making performances as well as star-studded casting. Both Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler shine in their chemistry and in their cat-and-mouse maneuvering.  Viola Davis, Peter Dinklage, and Jason Schwarzman together make viewing  Ballad of Songbirds well spent.

A faithful adaptation of Collins’s novel, with YA and adult themes: what constitutes acceptable ethical compromises in pursuit of power and survival and what does not. 

A surprisingly suspenseful prequel! An overall entertaining viewing experience for any teenage and adult  audience.

Availability:  HBOmax

Note: The next novel in the prequel series, Sunrise on the Reaping, will be released as a movie this November.  It is the backstory of Haymitch Abernathy.