Movies The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes trailer

[Remarkableriots]

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Nah.

[SoberChef]

I didn't hate the trailer, it's a solid maybe.

[Nokra]

Will watch the trailer shortly, but.... Bloody hell, what a stupid name.

[Guest]

The first book is perfect for suited to be adapted into a movie and they didn’t really nail it. I don’t expect anything good out of this.

[Fizzzzle]

3 hours ago, sblfilms said:

The first book is perfect for suited to be adapted into a movie and they didn’t really nail it. I don’t expect anything good out of this.

I thought the first movie was fine, the rest were pretty trash.

 

I'm sure I'll watch this movie on a plane at some point in 2025, forget all about it, see it on streaming sometime after that, get 30 minutes in before realizing I've already seen it, then never think about it again.

[TwinIon]

I went to go see this last night and I was not a fan.

 

I'm actually a defender of the Hunger Games films. They're far from perfect, but there is a melancholy and brutality that they do well. Even when they stray into camp or love triangle drama, it doesn't take long for the films to come back to the horror of children being forced to murder each other for entertainment and how that affects them in and outside the arena.

 

Somehow, despite being an origin story for a villain, Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is much more upbeat, even casual, about its killings. There are some implied gruesome deaths and a few instant reactions to death, but everyone seems to more or less get over it. The Hunger Games films were about PTSD more than anything, and there's none of that here, despite the content being rather ripe with opportunities. I think there's a good chance that this film will play better to its YA audience because it isn't wallowing in grief and loathing, but I feel like that's the thing that made these films stand out. There are some brief moments where Songbirds and Snakes does try to reckon with the repercussions of the horrors endured, but by and large the effects are temporary.

 

I also think the film is too long and poorly paced. It's covering a lot of plot and juggling a lot of characters, and it suffers for it. While I think Rachel Zegler and Tom Blyth both put in individually compelling performances, their chemistry leaves a lot to be desired. Maybe we're not supposed to believe in them as a couple, but if that was the case, they didn't sell that very well either. The bigger problem, which is related to my primary issue, is that these aren't people that seem terribly changed by the events of the film. These are characters that go through a lot, and I don't think it's reflected well in the film.

[TheLeon]

This movie doesn’t make a convincing case for why we needed a President Snow origin story at all. The only compelling thing about that character in the earlier movies is that he’s played by Donald fucking Sutherland. I was never all that invested in his character and the entire third act really dragged. You already had a full movie, you don’t need another 40 minutes to wrap this up. 
 

I did think it was pretty fun as a look into the origins of the Games themselves. I laughed at how they basically had the same problem as Jurassic World: “We introduced this objectively insane thing to the world just a few years ago, and people are already bored! Now we’ve gotta do something to boost our ratings.” But then you see why people aren’t watching. They’re making bad TV! Just toss a bunch of anonymous kids into an arena the size of a basketball court with a few machetes and pitchforks, and that’s it. What were the game makers in charge of before this year? Deciding how rusty the blades should be? And Jason Schwartzman (probably the highlight for me) had a line that made it sound like this was the first year they even had a host. Terrible production all around.
 

As for the trauma/PTSD angle, I think I see what they’re going for here (even if it wasn’t all that successful). Lucy should be deeply traumatized by what she’s endured, and I think she is to some degree, but she’s different from Katniss and her crew. The District 12 of her time doesn’t seem that beaten down yet (they seem to be partying regularly), they don’t have the generational trauma of 70+ years of this regime. She mostly seems to have a viewpoint of “I’m this terrible situation, I’m going to do what I have to to make it through, and when I do I’ll mostly just be happy that I’m still alive”, which I think is a largely valid approach to being Hunger Games’d. As for Snow… like I said, really didn’t care enough about him to even pay attention to how he was reacting/not reacting through most of the movie, which I suppose is a pretty damning thing to say about a movie’s lead character. 
 

Whoops, didn’t mean to ramble quite this much. Pretty frustrating movie overall. I wanted more Rachel Zegler (minus that kinda rough accent), a lot less Snow, and more ridiculous world building like the final reveal that 

Spoiler

the Hunger Games were started by a drunken Peter Dinklage riffing ridiculous punishments, and it immediately spiraled out of his control.

 

[UpvoteShittyTakesOnly]

this movie was pretty decent until it suddenly had another third where snow looks like eminem in the early 2000s

 

im genuinely surprised they didnt decide to stretch this one out into multiple films since collins hasnt had anything really to say about more hunger games books any time soon

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

22 hours ago, UpvoteShittyTakesOnly said:

im genuinely surprised they didnt decide to stretch this one out into multiple films since collins hasnt had anything really to say about more hunger games books any time soon

 

'Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes' director considered splitting the movie into two parts

EW.COM

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'Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes' director Francis Lawrence says he considered splitting the upcoming 'Hunger Games' prequel starring Rachel Zegler and Tom Blyth into two parts: 'I decided, no, we're...

 

 

Quote

At nearly three hours, the film centered on a teenage Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth, taking over the role from franchise star Donald Sutherland) has the longest runtime of any Hunger Games movie. "There was, like, one second where I thought, Do we do two movies?" Lawrence says in EW's special Hunger Games collector's edition, on newsstands Nov. 3. "I decided, no, we're not going down that road again."

 

Quote

Lawrence recently revealed that he regretted splitting Mockingjay into two, much like the approach for the Harry Potter and Twilight franchises. "What I realized in retrospect — and after hearing all the reactions and feeling the kind of wrath of fans, critics, and people at the split — is that I realized it was frustrating," he told PEOPLE last month. "And I can understand it."

 

[TheLeon]

It is pretty funny that this movie is almost the exact same length as Napoleon’s theatrical cut.