The beloved movie “Hunger Games” franchise is back and better than ever. For me, this movie has been a long time coming. 

In 2020, Suzanne Collins released “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” as a book prequel to the well known “The Hunger Games” series. I, of course, bought the book, being a big fan of the original trilogy, and was totally blown away by it. As I was watching the opening scene, it brought me back to the first time I ever watched “The Hunger Games” and getting to know even more of the history made my expectations even higher. If you were an original Hunger Games fan, you are totally going to love this movie. 

The plot follows young Corolainus Snow–aka The President Snow–as he is reluctantly assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Bard, a tribute from District 12 for the 10th Hunger Games. Instantly, I thought this idea of President Snow’s villain origin story was genius and after reading the book, I was even more excited for the movie. 

When the movies first came out everyone was wondering what turned President Snow into the monster he was portrayed as in the trilogy, or mostly why he became so cruel and tyrannical. This movie answers all of those questions. What really blew my mind away was the subtlety of this villain origin story. It made the plot much more unsettling and shocking in a way. 

Tom Blyth’s performance as he embodies the evolution of Corolainus Snow is actually so amazing to watch, the tone he uses is what makes his character so much more frightening and real. Snow goes from this ambitious money-boy that wants to achieve greatness to an unremorseful manipulator that intends on solidifying his fate. The performance reached beyond my expectations. 

Also the performance between Blyth and Rachel Zegler–the actress who plays Lucy Gray Bard–is perfect. The chemistry is unmatched. They perfected the amounts of attraction and mistrust shared between them and it just adds to the uneasiness of everything. You never know what they truly feel or if their intentions are true. Throughout the movie you can see how Snow’s intentions shift and the way it affects his relationship with Lucy and Tigris, his cousin. By the end you almost don’t recognize the character you thought he was.

Overall, I thought the movie captured the book perfectly and really followed the author’s vision. If you haven’t read the book you can definitely still watch the movie, the plot lines followed each other really well. “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” is filled with darkness and betrayal and we see Panem and President Snow in a new light that expands our vision of who he truly is.