Review: The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023)
Stories like this used to be all the rage.
Stories like this used to be all the rage. Remember that? A decade or so ago, at the height of wizards and muggles, Harry Potter’s unbelievable success led to an entire generation hungry for more fantastical worlds and where to find them. It was an epidemic that rivaled any pop culture takeover: the original runs of The Hunger Games (three books, four movies), Divergent (four books, three movies), The Mortal Instruments (six books, one movie), Percy Jackson (five books, two movies, an upcoming TV series), The Maze Runner (three books, three movies), and Chaos Walking (three books, one terribly-delayed movie), dominated nearly a decade of pre-teen zeitgeist.
Those pimply kids who begged their parents to drop them off to see these movies are now old enough to buy their own tickets — which must be at least some of the thought process behind The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, the prequel film based on the 2020 novel by original author Suzanne Collins.
I really loved “The Hunger Games” (originals) and was there for the hunger drive aspect of what motivates us as individuals (when we are stripped of everything) and how that translates to relationships. So it sounds like I may like this? I’m rewatching “The Queen’s Gambit” and while I’m so-so with chess, to me the game or sport is more metaphor for life and how you play it. This feels true in Hunger Games too.