What is your favorite movie? It’s a basic question, but if you haven’t seen the newest from the Hunger Games series, it’s about to be your favorite.
On May 19th, 2020, the book, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was released as a prequel to the wildly successful Hunger Games trilogy. Within the first year of release 500,000 print copies had been sold. Around three years later, on November 17th, 2023, the movie adaptation of the book was released, and it generated $44 million during its opening weekend.
The film is about Coriolanus Snow (future president of Panem) attempting to make the games more appealing to watch for the Capitol residents. Each student gets a tribute to take care of and do everything to make sure their tribute wins. Lucy Gray, the tribute assigned to Coriolanus Snow, is picked as the female tribute for District 12. Once the tributes are put in the arena they are forced to fight until there’s a winner.
Warning, spoilers in this paragraph for those who haven’t seen the movie yet. Many of the WRMS students have seen this film. An eighth grade student, Beatrice Weber, said, “My favorite part is the part where they’re in the area and the snakes come down from the helicopter, they explode, and everyone dies.”
The excitement for the movie is real! The fans of the book were ecstatic about the movie, like Grace Holland, an eighth grader on the HEAT team. “I feel like the movie really stuck to the plot of the book, but I feel like a few details were changed,” Holland said.
The Ballad of Songbird and Snakes was liked by many with an 89% for the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. There are many fans of the Hunger Games series in our school. One of those fans is Anna Fowler, an eighth grader on the HEAT team. “A solid nine out of ten. I haven’t read the books and watched all of the movies but I think that this was a pretty good prequel for people who haven’t read all the books or seen all the movies. I think that the cast and storyline was really good.”
Overall, we have decided to rate The Ballad of Songbird and Snakes 9.5/10 for the amazing casting and the excellent plot helps us to rate it such a good score.
