The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a great movie. The new movie shows the evolution of the games and how the technology has improved over the years with the games. The new movie also shows many parallels to the other movies which tie them all together.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was set 64 years before Katniss Everdeen volunteered for tribute and decades before Coriolanus Snow became the president of Panem. Young Snow mentors Lucy Gray (she is from District 12 and the first female winner of the games) and starts to get feelings for her after she saves him during an attack on Panem Arena. In the film, Snow finds ways to help Lucy Gray win the games so that he can get a scholarship to the academy and ultimately restore his family’s wealth.
In the movie, the makers of the games have a dilemma: there are not enough people watching the games. Snow, wanting his tribute to win the game, came up with the idea to have the people of Panem get to know the tributes by putting them in a cage for the people to watch their activities. This does not go the way he wants and one of the tributes ends up killing a watcher. Snow then comes up with another idea, to have the people for Panem sponsor the mentors. With the sponsor, the tribute can get water, food, and supplies to help them win the game. Knowing that so many people of Panem thought that Lucy Gray had no chance of winning, Snow came up with the idea to have her sing again so the people would like her. She is reluctant at first, but something changes her mind and she ends up deciding to do it, to help her in the end.
The arena is the same place where the attack on Panem took place, just like in The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and the Mockingjay Part One and Part Two, district 12 tributes are thought to be weakest. The other tributes wanted to kill Lucy and made her come out of her hiding spot. Snow, wanting to help, gave her an advantage by sending water. The game makers decided to let out snake-like creatures that would kill all the tributes except Lucy. This is because before the monsters were released, Snow put Lucy’s handkerchief into their cage so they would recognize her smell and not attack. Without knowing what was going on, Lucy started to sing to try to calm the snakes, and everyone else thought that the singing was working because they didn’t know what Snow did.
Later on in the film, Snow is punished by the game makers because he cheated, and they send him to District 12 to be a peacekeeper. Snow started acting differently and suspiciously, losing Lucy’s trust. So, when they were in the woods, Lucy Gray left him with a snake that tried to bite him. In an article from People.com, author Kesie Gibson stated that “On their journey, Snow lets it slip that he previously killed three people, making Lucy Gray suspicious, since she only knew about two.”
With the movie set up, I think it was an interesting film overall. I think that it would have been better if they had shown a bit more after Lucy Gray left Snow, but I still feel that it was great. With the movie being 2 hours and 38 minutes long, I wish they would have given more information on Coriolanus Snow becoming the president of Panem. During some parts, it was confusing if you didn’t watch the other movies before viewing this new one. With all of the parallels between the movies and Lucy Gray, she is my favorite character because she is an independent woman able to survive the games and diction of other characters. I would recommend this movie if you found interest in the Hunger Games trilogy.
https://people.com/the-ballad-of-songbirds-and-snakes-ending-explained-8403839#:~:text=On%20their%20journey%2C%20Snow%20lets,have%20done%20in%20different%20ways
