The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Directed by Francis Lawrence

Starring Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, and Viola Davis
Distributed by Lionsgate Films
Running time: 158 minutes
Rated PG-13 for strong violent content and disturbing material.

Author’s note: This review contains spoilers.

Villain origin stories have been popular in recent years. From Maleficent (2014) to The Joker (2019) to Cruella (2021), many films have shown the tragic beginnings of evil characters, exploring why they chose the paths they did. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes somewhat falls in this category but splits its focus between Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), the dictatorial president of The Hunger Games series, and a new character: Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler).

The movie is an adaptation of the eponymous book by Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins in which the main characters represent different political philosophies. The conclusion the book draws about those philosophies grounds and supports the anti-authoritarianism of Collins’s original trilogy. Unfortunately, much of that message is lost in the film adaptation.

The franchise is set in Panem, a fictional nation dealing with the aftermath of a civil war between the districts (where most of the industry takes place) and the Capitol, which is populated by the country’s rich and powerful. The conflict, which took place ten years before Songbirds and Snakes, shook the sense of safety, stability, and abundance that Capitol citizens such as the young Coriolanus took for granted. His father was killed, and many went hungry; some even resorted to cannibalism. But the Capitol won the war, and its leaders devised a twisted plan to ensure that the districts would never rebel again: Every year, twenty-four “tributes” (one boy and one girl from each district) are forced to fight to the death in the Hunger Games until only one survives. The “Games” are televised to intimidate potential rebels and entertain Capitol citizens.

But the plan isn’t working. Most people aren’t watching; of those who do, many are uncomfortable with, or outright disgusted by, what they see. By the time Coriolanus is finishing high school, the Capitol officials are desperately strategizing to get people to tune in for the tenth Hunger Games. As part of these efforts, a mentorship program is devised: Senior students will coach the tributes, present them to the Capitol, and try to invest people in them. Coriolanus is assigned to mentor tribute Lucy Gray Baird, a singer from a band of traveling musicians called the Covey, who were confined to District 12 after the war. Lucy Gray’s folksy, wistful singing—brought to life by Zegler’s powerful, haunting voice—along with her grace, courage, and innocent beauty endear her to Capitol audiences.¹ The movie plays up these positive aspects, creating a character approaching a heroine—and distracting from the purpose of Collins’s story.

Though the book aims to show the Games as a bleak tragedy, the movie attempts to make them fun, with some tributes even being willing participants. For example, in the books, the tributes run away, trying to avoid killing each other until absolutely necessary, whereas in the film, a fight breaks out as soon as the Games begin. Further, Lucy Gray does not become as brutal a killer as she does in the book.² Instead of portraying her as a hardened survivor of a horrific event, the filmmakers essentially turned her into a likable character who escapes the Games largely unscathed. In truth, though, “Nobody ever wins the games. Period. There are survivors. There’s no winners,” as one character said in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.³ Those who win the games are not heroes. They’ve been turned into killers, most of them against their will, by a brutal, rights-trampling government. The filmmakers, however, virtually adopt the motive of the story’s villains: Make the Games a mere spectacle and portray Lucy Gray not as a conniving, violent victim but as someone to be admired.

This is not Lucy Gray’s origin story—it’s Coriolanus’s, and the film makes for a weak villain origin story in part because it gives her so much time and attention.

Coriolanus finds himself trapped between two worlds. He’s lived his whole life in the ostentatiously wealthy Capitol, and he prides himself on his social status. However, he begins to fall for Lucy Gray; as he does, he glimpses another world, one in which people are poorer but find contentment anyway, working hard to get by but also enjoying such simple pleasures as a good song, a beautiful lake, and amicable company.

The book stresses another, more fundamental difference between the people in the Capitol and those in the districts. Those in the Capitol prize control, with strict rules, carefully maintained appearances, and harsh punishments for those who step out of line. But many in the districts—including Lucy Gray’s clan, the Coveys—value freedom, which explains why they rebelled against the Capitol to begin with. Coriolanus and Lucy Gray discuss this difference in Collins’s book:

“Unless there’s law, and someone enforcing it, I think we might as well be animals,” he said with more assurance. “Like it or not, the Capitol is the only thing keeping anyone safe.”

“Hm. So they keep me safe. And what do I give up for that?” she asked.

Coriolanus poked at the fire with a stick. “Give up? Why, nothing.”

“The Covey did,” she said. “Can’t travel. Can’t perform without their say-so. Can only sing certain types of songs. Fight getting round up, and you get shot dead like my daddy. Try to keep your family together, and you get your head broken like my mama. What if I think that price is too high to pay? Maybe my freedom’s worth the risk.”⁴

Coriolanus expresses, at least in part, Thomas Hobbes’s view that human beings are naturally violent and would destroy each other if allowed to; so, they need a powerful ruler (a Leviathan) to keep them in check. Without an authoritarian government, Hobbes claimed, life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”⁵ In the movie, a mere hint of this idea comes through, when the Head Gamemaker, Dr. Gaul (Viola Davis), says that the desperate brutality in the arena is “humanity undressed.” But Coriolanus never expresses this view in the movie, leaving his later actions as an iron-fisted dictator largely unexplained.

The movie also waters down Coriolanus’s character by turning him from a cunning schemer—he admits that “What he desired had little to do with nobility and everything to do with being in control”—into a confused, lost boy buffeted around by his circumstances.⁶ Instead of striving for power, as he does in the book, he simply accepts, for instance, the opportunity to attend officer training. In the book, power lust is his main motivation, underpinning everything—even his helping Lucy Gray shine in the Games, which is really his attempt to win favor in the Capitol. But in the film, the few times he initiates change to anything around him, his affection for Lucy Gray is his main motive. In other words, the filmmakers have pawned off a power luster as a man in love, a sympathetic character whose later choice to lead a brutal regime is—to the movie audience, at least—a complete mystery.

The movie is faithful to the book in one respect that it would have done well to improve upon. Lucy Gray muddles a profound moral issue by asserting that people are naturally good, but “it’s what the world does to us” that makes us act immorally. Although this implies that we aren’t responsible for our actions or moral character, she nonetheless goes on to say that there’s a line between good and evil, and “it’s our life’s work” to stay on the right side of that line. So, which is it? Do we have moral responsibility for our lives or not? (Of course, we do.)

Although it’s entertaining and somewhat thought-provoking, the movie fails its source material in two major ways: It barely touches on the control-versus-freedom conflict central to the book, and it fails to establish Coriolanus as the Hobbesian power luster he appears as in the later films. Snow may land on top (as their family motto declares), but this Snow has blood on his hands, and minimizing that is to whitewash his evil.

About Angelica Walker-Werth

Angelica is a fellow at Objective Standard Institute, an assistant editor and writer for The Objective Standard. Her roles at OSI include managing the internship and scholarship programs, course administration and development, and editing On Solid Ground. She writes nonfiction articles and speaks about Objectivism and fiction; you can see her work at walker-werth.com. She is also voracious reader of fiction in her spare time, and writes about the ideas in fictional works at fictionosophy.substack.com.

View all articles by Angelica Walker-Werth →