The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (yeah it’s long) follows the journey of 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) and District 12 tribute Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) in the 10th Hunger Games. I’ve always enjoyed the world-building behind books and films, and getting a chance to see more of The Hunger Games, a series I loved when I was younger, is something I’m quite looking forward to.
The trailer starts off with Peter Dinklage in an academy setting addressing a room full of incoming mentors - already a change from the victors-turned-mentors in the original trilogy. Dinklage’s character, Dean Casca Highbottom, urges Snow to “turn these children into spectacles”, in what seems to be a year where the entertainment factor starts to seep into the Games.
Panem of 60 years prior is gritty industrial mixed with retro opulence, and the range and detail of the scenes we see in the trailer are promising a lot. The arena, where the tributes scatter to a repeating announcement of “Enjoy the show”, is bleak, dusty, and somehow even more terrifying than the greenery-filled ones we saw in the trilogy. We then see gentle memories of Snow and Lucy Gray spending time together, interspersed with Snow’s tough time in the Academy and as a Peacekeeper. Each clip is more unsettling than the last, from Lucky Flickerman (Jason Schwartzman) commenting, “How wonderful that we all get to be here for someone’s final performance”, to Viola Davis’ character Dr Volumnia Gaul laughing with blood-red gloves on her clasped hands.
While I would have also enjoyed seeing the backstories of other characters like Haymitch - we do find out about his Games in the original series - Snow is undeniably a villain who readers have enjoyed unpicking. His initial appearance in the trailer seems genuine, and his change into the cold calculating President will hopefully be fully explored and explained. I’m also excited to watch Rachel Zegler and Hunter Schafer (Tigris Snow) on screen as well, after their successes in West Side Story and Euphoria.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is out on November 17th, and I will definitely be part of its audience.