The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

Starring: Rachel Zegler, Tom Blyth, Viola Davis, Peter Dinklage, Hunter Schafer, Jason Schwartzman

Director: Francis Lawrence

Based on the novel "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" by Suzanne Collins

Coriolanus Snow (Blythe), whose family's prosperity has slipped after the passing of his father, hopes to restore his family's name after being selected as a mentor in the 10th Hunger Games. His tribute is Lucy Gray Baird (Zegler), a traveling musician from District 12 who was unwillingly thrust into the games after being selected as part of a petty revenge plot. Due to low viewership, he has been instructed by Casca Highbottom (Dinklage) to keep things entertaining rather than ensuring his tribute survives. Under the watchful eye of head Gamesmaker Volumina Gaul (Davis) as well as the rest of Panem, Snow begins to maneuver all the pawns in his favor to not only bring glory to his family name but set himself on a path to power.

I went into this one worried, as the Fantastic Beasts prequels have done little to keep people invested in the magical wizarding world. Luckily, this has better source material and was ushered to the big screen under the guide of franchise veteran Francis Lawrence. Featuring some Easter eggs for fans of the original trilogy, this is a mostly thrilling re-entry into the world of Panem.

I say mostly because this prequel series is 2/3 of an intense character study. Everything focusing on Snow prior and through the games is action-packed and features some PG-13 boundary pushing violence. The earlier games were much simpler than their later iterations, so it was fun to see how they evolved from this. Once the games are over, there is still a good 45 minutes of movie left. Unfortunately, this ends up being the least involving portion of the movie. Unfortunate because this contains the character transformation that fans are looking for. It's just not interesting compared to what came before and gives the film an uneven tone.

Blythe and Zegler are both fantastic. Blythe in particular pops on screen because I hadn't seen anything with the actor prior to this. He effortlessly carries the movie and I look forward to seeing what roles he gets down the line. Zegler is a firecracker and brings a lot of personality to Lucy. Their mentorship that ultimately blooms into romance feels very believable. She also gets a chance to show off her impressive singing voice. And let's be honest, any movie that gets Viola Davis, Peter Dinklage and Jason Schwartzman to play supporting roles automatically gets a huge boost. Davis relishes playing a villain, Dinklage can make any dialogue sound like poetry and Schwartzman has a charismatic personality that helps sell dialogue like "Smile, that's why we have teeth." It's also uncanny how much he channels what Tucci did with Flickerman in the original trilogy while still making his Relative character feel standalone.

It will be interesting to see how much people still care about this franchise. I really didn't and I still ended up liking it.

Grade: B