ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2023
3
MOVIE REVIEW
The new ‘Hunger Games’ movie broke my heart By Alicia Alvarez
true to the previous installments within The Hunger Games universe, Making a fictional with dark themes and a future dictator attractive thread weaving through and morally gray should the story that binds each be criminal. movie together. Lionsgate The movie adaptation broke the movie into of Suzanne Collins’ 2020 three parts, much like the novel “The Ballad of original novel by Collins, Songbirds and Snakes” which allows the audience is a beautifully curated to easily follow the work of art, even though development and demise it made a fictional soonof Lucy Gray Baird’s and to-be war criminal a little Coriolanus Snow’s horrific too handsome. story. The movie is focused While I adored the on the ever-hated dictator feature as a whole, it felt from the original series, rushed. President Coriolanus The movie has a Snow of Panem, in his runtime of 2 hours and younger years. It also 38 minutes, which is gives further introspection a fairly short movie in into the creation of The comparison to the three Hunger Games and plants hour behemoths I’m used the seeds of the revolution to from the series. that we see in Collins’ While I rarely enjoy other novels within the sitting in a theater for series. more than three hours, We follow as Snow I would have happily is assigned a tribute to booked out my entire mentor, a young woman afternoon for a longer from District 12 named version of “The Ballad of Lucy Gray Baird. Songbirds and Snakes.” The audience is All three segments presented with a grapple lacked a lot of detail and between the desire for important aspects that power and love as the two created character depth starting characters fight and development. for their lives in their own While I’m able to fill ways. in the holes with context I stomped my way into from the novel, many a movie theater on Nov. moviegoers don’t have 17, opening night, with the background needed my popcorn in hand to fully understand the and my heart prepared dynamics of Snow, Baird to break. I’m surprised and other supporting I didn’t end up with characters. mascara stains in my snacks by the time the “The Mentor” credits rolled. Lionsgate once again The first segment of released a bullseye-hitting the movie, “The Mentor,” movie for “The Hunger focused on Snow’s Games” franchise that involvement in The makes die-hard fans like Hunger me swoon. Games and his The feature kept experiences at the prestigious Capitol Academy, the equivalent movie of high school. review While a few characters from the book were cut “The Ballad of from the movie, the ones that made it into Songbirds and the feature were watered Snakes” down and lacked the Rating: depth that the book gave them. Directed by: There were Francis Lawrence complexities within the Starring: relationships between Tom Blyth, classmates and tributes Rachel Zegler that were nowhere to Genre: be found in the movie dystopian, science and made the overall fiction sentiment weaker. Collins illustrates a beautiful internal PRODUCTION EDITOR
dialogue that gave readers a glimpse into the twisted and menacing nature of young Coriolanus Snow. The relationships between the characters could have acted as an expression of the lack of internal dialogue we see in the book from Snow. While much of the detail from the novel I was hoping to see was cut, I still adored the first section of the movie. The sets were beautifully done, with imagery that reminded me of the 1930s and ‘50s along with gorgeous costumes. Snow slowly believing that his tribute, District 12’s Lucy Gray Baird, could win the 10th annual Hunger Games is heart wrenching. It was even worse as I watched him fall in love with her, knowing how the story ends. and more the Snow and Baird show. I’m not complaining though, the The second section of actor who portrayed Snow the movie focuses on The is enthralling in his own Hunger Games and Baird’s right. subsequent winning of Casting my new-found them. Hollywood heartthrob Watching Snow risk Tom Blynth as the young his entire reputation and Coriolanus Snow was future for a woman from a criminal act. The the districts that he claims character is already to despise had my heart compelling enough soaring. with his paranoia and I was rooting for Snow cruelty without slapping and Baird the entire a gorgeous face to the second segment as if I name. didn’t know their fates. Characters kept calling Again, I adored the Blynth’s Snow gorgeous costuming, the sets and throughout the movie, the music is absolutely and they weren’t wrong. intoxicating but the While this section felt second section is even rushed, what made it to more rushed than the the screen is incredibly first. entertaining and worth Every decision I watching. watched Snow make that led to his descent into “The Peacekeeper” madness felt rushed and unexplained. It seems After being caught as though the Lionsgate cheating to ensure Baird’s expected all of the win, Snow is exiled to be a audience to read the novel peacekeeper, the military before settling into the police of Panem. He is theater’s seats. able to bribe his way into I would have loved to District 12 to have the see Snow and Sejanus, chance to see Baird again, a very important side hoping she’s still alive character, develop after her victory. friendship. The lack In the third and last of attention to the segment of the movie, interactions between the audience watches as all other characters Snow becomes entranced beside Baird and Snow by Baird’s songs and is extremely prevalent personality even more. during this segment. This segment feels like It felt less like a movie the least rushed out of about the dystopian world the three, with a lot of the of The Hunger Games, character development “The Prize”
ILLUSTRATION BY TRACY ESCOBEDO
happening during Snow and Baird’s moral conflicts. My heart slowly broke while watching Snow betray the people who loved and trusted him most. I watched the final nail be driven into his morally corrupt coffin as he took the spot as heir to a family fortune after killing the family’s only son. I was held on the edge of my seat the entire time despite knowing exactly what was going to happen in each scene. While I was unsurprisingly upset by the ending of the movie, I think it gives incredible context as to why Snow has such a visceral reaction to Katniss Everdeen decades later. I will absolutely watch this film again and probably re-read the entire series soon after just to find all of the hidden meanings and connections that Collins so expertly curated. The soundtrack far exceeded my expectations. Each song emphasized the emotions of the scene and “Can’t Catch Me Now” by Olivia Rodrigo had me in tears. Baird’s songs, sung by Rachel Zegler as she portrayed the character, were enchanting. Her mildly midwestern accent for the role gave the music a beautiful twang that had
me thumping my feet like I was in the makeshift bar with everyone else on screen. While she was a controversial actress before this role with her outward dislike toward a new rendition of Disney’s Snow White, she portrayed Lucy Gray Baird perfectly. I can’t imagine anyone else bringing the tragic story of Baird to the big screen better than Zegler. I wish I could say I was one of the strong soldiers in the audience, not falling for both Snow and Baird, knowing how toxic they both were in their own way, but I wasn’t. I try to justify my attraction to the soonto-be-dictator Snow by saying he hadn’t committed war crimes yet. My “I can fix him” mentality apparently now extends to fictional men, which isn’t surprising. I think this makes the movie all the more compelling actually, making the audience feel for and even fall for characters they know turn out to be horrible. I just need to re-read the original series to restore my hatred for the man with hair as icy as his heart. Follow Alicia on X (formerly Twitter) @alicialvarez02