The Hunger Games are again! After 2008’s blockbuster guide trilogy and 2012’s blockbuster movie franchise, the dystopian younger grownup collection has returned for a brand new decade with The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, hitting theaters this week.
Right here’s all the pieces you’ll be able to count on — or may be questioning about — from the new Hunger Games movie.
What’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes about?
Songbirds & Snakes is a prequel centered on Coriolanus Snow, who seems in the unique Hunger Games trilogy as the mysterious and terrifying President Snow, dictator of Panem and chief amongst the collection’ antagonists. He’s performed by Donald Sutherland in the movie variations of the first three books.
The movie follows an 18-year-old Snow as he tries to rise above his station in Capitol society by excelling at his closing faculty challenge: mentoring one of 24 youngsters in the Hunger Games. When he’s burdened with a tribute from the underfed District 12, his probabilities appear slim, till his mentee, the enigmatic Lucy Grey Baird, seems to have a expertise for charming a crowd.
When is Songbirds & Snakes set?
Songbirds & Snakes is ready 64 years before The Hunger Games, throughout the time of the tenth annual Hunger Games, 10 years after the Districts’ insurrection towards the Capitol. So apart from Snow and his cousin Tigris, don’t count on to see many characters you acknowledge from the unique trilogy right here: No Katniss, Peeta, Haymitch, or Effie Trinket. Even the match’s announcer, Lucretius “Lucky” Flickerman (Jason Schwartzman), is an older relative of the originals’ Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci).
Who’s in Songbirds & Snakes?
The movie’s forged consists of Tom Blyth (Billy the Child) as Coriolanus, Rachel Zegler (Steven Spielberg’s West Facet Story) as Lucy Grey, and Josh Andrés Rivera (additionally from West Facet Story) as Sejanus Plinth, Coriolanus’ closest classmate. Recreation of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage performs Casca Highbottom, the college dean credited with creating the Hunger Games.
“Blyth does an admirable job of walking the line between sympathetic antihero and cold-hearted villain,” in accordance to our overview, “while Zegler plays the role of charismatic songstress well. […] The supporting cast also brings their A-game, particularly Viola Davis as the cruel Head Gamemaker Dr. Volumnia Gaul. Davis fully commits to the twisted mastermind who believes that humanity, at its core, is dark and depraved.”
Does Songbirds & Snakes have a credit scene?
Nope! Should you want to stand up and out of the theater before the closing credit roll, you gained’t miss something besides the names of the individuals who made the movie for you.
Is Songbirds & Snakes based mostly on a Hunger Games guide?
Sure! Suzanne Collins returned to the collection to pen The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, revealed in Could 2020. In an interview for Scholastic, she mentioned the guide gave her a chance to inform the untold story of Lucy Grey.
“In the first chapter of The Hunger Games, I make reference to a fourth District 12 victor. Katniss doesn’t seem to know anything about the person worth mentioning. While her story isn’t well-known, Lucy Gray lives on in a significant way through her music, helping to bring down Snow in the trilogy. […] Beyond that, Lucy Gray’s legacy is that she introduced entertainment to the Hunger Games.”
You’ll be able to seize a duplicate of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes beneath, or from the bookseller or library of your selection.
Is the Songbirds & Snakes movie devoted to the guide?
It’s a fairly shut adaptation in phrases of the characters, dialogue, and total arc of the guide, but it surely does minimize fairly a bit, notably about the Tributes at the tenth Hunger Games moreover Lucy Grey, about her fellow Covey (a gaggle of touring minstrels who all have colours of their names, and have related accents and colourful clothes), and about Coriolanus’ classmates apart from Sejanus. Specifically, characters like Clemensia Dovecote (Ashley Liao) are decreased down to naked necessities.
The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes additionally adjustments varied items of the motion, probably so guide readers gained’t already know all the pieces that occurs at the tenth Hunger Games as they’re watching. Specifically, some of the Tributes in the enviornment have completely different fates. A couple of small particulars have additionally been stuffed in right here and there, like precisely how Coriolanus’ father died.
What tune does Lucy Grey’s title come from?
You won’t assume this is a crucial element getting in, but it surely’s truly fairly helpful to know so as to perceive some important motion in the third act! William Wordsworth’s 1799 poem “Lucy Gray” is the supply of the character’s title, and it will get just a little extra play in the guide than in the movie.
In the movie model, Lucy Grey sings a really brief snippet of it to Coriolanus close to the finish of the movie, however doesn’t establish it, and he asks a query about it that doesn’t make a lot sense except you know the poem. Understanding particularly that it’s a few woman who disappeared into skinny air, leaving an interrupted observe of footprints behind her, is necessary to Songbirds & Snakes’ story — and it’s lots clearer in the guide, so studying the poem before watching the movie is unquestionably useful for following the motion.
