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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nI\u2019ve been referring to this movie as \u201cHunger Game of Thrones.\u201d It\u2019s a prequel to \u201cThe Hunger Games,\u201d but the influence of a certain HBO fantasy series is pretty apparent with the casting of Peter Dinklage and the \u201cSong of Ice and Fire\u201d-like subheading. I\u2019ve seen it as little more than an attempt to combine two franchises that were wildly popular in their 2010\u2019s heyday, but audiences have since left behind, frankly with a bad taste in their mouths after underwhelming finales. Watching the whole movie as opposed to gleaming the advertising does make it feel like less of an ill-advised cash grab, but still not great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We follow young Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), the son of a former President of Panem (formerly North America), as he struggles to restore his family\u2019s name in a government that has barely rebuilt itself after the rebellion that killed his father. The rebellion ultimately failed, and every year each of the twelve remaining \u201cDistricts\u201d have to send two child \u201cTributes\u201d to the \u201cHunger Games\u201d where they\u2019ll battle to the \u201cDeath.\u201d Sorry, I used quotes on that last one out of habit, they\u2019ll battle to the death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The good news is that Snow lives in the Capitol, which doesn\u2019t have the problems of the Districts, and he has the highest grades in his class, so he\u2019s looking at a promising career. The bad news is that he and his remaining family are on the verge of financial ruin, and the school\u2019s dean Casca Highbottom (Dinklage) has declared that lucrative grants are no longer given just for good grades. The only way to get a grant now is to mentor a Tribute into becoming the biggest spectacle of the Hunger Games \u2013 not necessarily the winner, but the biggest generator of public interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Snow is randomly (or perhaps not \u2013 Highbottom hates him) assigned Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) from District 12, the district with the lowest chance of winning. There\u2019s no way she\u2019ll last long in the Games, so Snow has to focus on making her popular in the media while she\u2019s still alive. Lucy Gray has a nice singing voice, maybe Snow can exploit that. The Hunger Games have been going on for ten years at this point, yet somehow Snow\u2019s idea of turning the Tributes into likeable characters is considered revolutionary, so much that it impresses Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis), the Games\u2019 sadistic overseer. She has a nasty surprise in store for the Tributes this year. It\u2019s there in the movie\u2019s title, and it\u2019s not a ballad. Snow strives to make Panem fall in love with Lucy Gray, and in the process he falls in love with her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The film is divided into three chapters: Snow preparing Lucy Gray for The Hunger Games, The Hunger Games themselves, and\u2026 the events following The Hunger Games. I won\u2019t get into spoilers, except to say that the third act is lengthy. I expected the movie to wrap up maybe ten minutes after the Hunger Games, which are its selling point, but it kept going. I suppose I should be grateful that this \u201cHunger Games\u201d movie even contains the actual Hunger Games \u2013 both the third and fourth movies went without them \u2013 but the movie plods along afterward for an unnecessarily long time, especially considering that we know certain things will and won\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The prequel aspect takes a lot of the suspense out of \u201cThe Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.\u201d We know Snow will be alive 64 years in the future, and he\u2019ll be President, so things will work out there. We can be less optimistic about the fates of his cousin Tigris (Hunter Schafer), his District-sympathizing friend Sejanus (Josh Andres Rivera), or Lucy Gray. Some of the action scenes work, some of the scenery-chewing from pros like Dinklage and Davis and Jason Schwartzman as the Games\u2019 host is enjoyable, but mostly this movie is the unwelcome slog that I expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes\u201d is rated PG-13 for strong violent content and disturbing material. Its running time is 157 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver I\u2019ve been referring to this movie as \u201cHunger Game of Thrones.\u201d It\u2019s a prequel to \u201cThe Hunger Games,\u201d but the influence of a certain HBO fantasy… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":58972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[2597],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58971"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58971"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58973,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58971\/revisions\/58973"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}