Post apocalypse has great dental. Who knew? If it could just get its act together on other health issues, well, it might not be a bad place to live. What’s that? We’re still doing the thing where children are forced into mortal combat in an arena on television? Oh. Well, maybe I’m ok with bad teeth.
It’s prequel time in the Hunger Games world. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes takes place ages before Katniss and Peeta show up to re-define hungry lovin’. In fact, the emcee of these Games, “Lucky” Flickerman (Jason Schwartzman), is obviously the father of the emcee during the Katniss era. Does that matter? Not really. Bottom line is sending children to death is barbaric, televising it is monstrous, and although the TV innovation looks straight out of the 1950s, the Hunger Games world is still exactly as advanced as we need it to be.
This particular edition decided to play with our natural sympathies a little … and I’m not sure why. First, we get li’l Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth). This is the guy who will grow up to be the beast who sends children to die year after year in the Games. Oh, but right now this Draco Malfoy-lookin’ punk is a good guy? Are you sure about that? Yeah, I’m familiar with the Anakin Skywalker story arc, but people don’t generally evolve from “This is barbaric!” to “Let’s massacre children better!” do they? Young Coriolanus is a prissy scholar, privileged to be part of the Capital U Fighting Peetas. Instead of getting the erudite “Plinth Prize” he deserves, Li’l Cori is subject to the pain of Peter Dinklage, who, in turn, has tied the reward to tribute mentorship in the Hunger Games. This seems another way you get the best and brightest to buy into the barbarism of this particular dystopia; Coriolanus is clearly a tad squeamish even if he does value the prize.
Then there’s 2023’s Katniss, Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler). We meet Lucy getting called to be District 12’s female tribute and her first move is to put a live snake down a rival’s dress. This is not the action of a hero. I don’t care how you justify it. This is not the action of a hero. Naturally, Snow is tied to Baird and has to prepare her for the Games, which will not be shy on snakes, lucky us. After her reptilian trespass, Lucy immediately uses her newfound celebrity to play Panemian Idol, even ending her little song with a mic drop.
OK, that’s weird. So … we accept the snake thing because she’s a songbird? Yeah, this just got more confusing.
This year’s child combat is set in some sort of newly built Thunderdome. As the tributes are introduced to it for the first time, the place blows up – the work of rebels. And again, I have to take issue. The rebels find the Games a horror? Sure, we all do. So why set the place to blow up the second innocent tributes are touring? That makes zero sense. The rebels kill five kids prematurely and yet succeed in doing little more than making the battlefield look cool. Suzanne Collins, I loved your initial trilogy; have you really thought this one through?
The film shines when Coriolanus and Lucy interact, whether face-to-face or through cryptic message. Seeing no ability to stop the carnage to follow, Snow decides to help Lucy all he can and the two develop a limited bond through the bars of the zoo where the tributes are enclosed. A go-getter, Snow also lobbies for gameplay additions that make fighting conditions slightly more bearable for those destined to die. To do this, young master 
Snow has to lobby insane gamemaster Viola Davis. I’m not quite sure the point of these scenes; I think they just wanted to highlight an insane game master.
All that silliness aside; the first two-thirds of this film more-or-less work. We do care about Lucy. We do care about Snow. We want them to succeed; we want to see the outcome of these Hunger Games. Children are going to die at the hands of other children? That’s among the worst things I can imagine; you’re damn right I’m gonna watch.
Act III essentially suffers from the same plot problems we saw in BOTH follow-up Star Wars trilogies: The ended needed to get to a certain place, so it got there. Period. It didn’t matter that it needed to, say, metaphorically cross the Mediterranean with a skateboard; it was going to get there. We’re going to make Snow into the monster who presides over the barbarism. That’s what’s going to happen even if it defies all logic. It doesn’t work. And I can’t honestly tell you what becomes of Lucy Gray Baird, because -quite frankly- I’m not entirely sure the movie knows, either. Maybe she becomes an ent; Lucy Gray Baird sounds like a good ent name.
Hence, I’m good with this film ending at Act II. No, there won’t be resolution in the odd Snow-Baird romance, but it will satisfy most of your movie needs for length and plot resolution. If they could have figured out how to end the film at Act II, this thing might sorta be the blockbuster it thinks it is.
There once was a girl called Lucy
Resigned to a fate oh-so-juicy
A battle until dead
With only child blood shed
But the important thing is she can sing, you see?
Rated PG-13, 157 Minutes
Director: Francis Lawrence
Writer: Michael Lesslie. Michael Arndt, Suzanne Collins
Genre: Our screwed future-past?
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Draco Malfoy?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: This is long … even for Hunger Games
