Snow continued to land on top in the new dystopian prequel, Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Keeping the worldwide franchise alive, the new movie shares the main antagonist’s backstory to how he became Coriolanus Snow, eventually becoming future President of Panem during the time of Katniss Everdeen’s fight for life in the first Hunger Games novel. It’s a story of rage, betrayal, and most importantly love.  Desperate to save his once wealthy family from financial stress, Snow will go to the most drastic measures imagined. Coriolanus is chosen to mentor a tribute in the 10th annual Hunger Games in an effort to keep people drawn to the games. The Games are an annual competition live streamed throughout the nation as two tributes from each District, a boy and a girl, fight to the death. Coriolanus is assigned the free-spirited Lucy Gray Baird, a charming musician. Immediately upon their first encounter, you can tell something is going on between these two and a story is about to unfold. Coriolanus continually proves his trust to Lucy Gray, giving her food, advice when she goes into the stadium, and a connection they’ll both never forget. As this is a spoiler free review, I can’t go into as much detail as I would like but let me just say this romantic movie full of action and sorrow is worth the two and a half hour runtime. I truly enjoyed that this movie was created in an effort to keep the franchise alive, and this franchise is definitely still breathing. The cinematography was brilliant, the soundtrack was haunting (and it continues to still haunt me) with Lucy Gray’s voice, the cast was accurate to the novel, and the overall plot has left my heart full of sorrow. As I watched the movie, I refused to believe that the blonde-haired man who was so in love with a tribute could be the same man who 50 years later is the President of this heartless nation. This is an excellent “becoming the bad guy” story that tugged at my heartstrings when I first watched it. My only downside was, compared to the book, the movie didn’t go into as much detail as I would’ve hoped, but then again that happens to most movies adapted from novels. Overall, this movie brought life back to the theaters. Thank you Coriolanus Snow for always landing on top. 

Stars: 3/5