The Starvation Video games are again! After 2008’s blockbuster guide trilogy and 2012’s blockbuster movie franchise, the dystopian younger grownup collection has returned for a brand new decade with The Starvation Video games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, hitting theaters this week.
Right here’s all the things you may anticipate — or may be questioning about — from the brand new Starvation Video games film.
What’s The Starvation Video games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes about?
Songbirds & Snakes is a prequel centered on Coriolanus Snow, who seems within the unique Starvation Video games trilogy because the mysterious and terrifying President Snow, dictator of Panem and chief among the many collection’ antagonists. He’s performed by Donald Sutherland within the film variations of the primary three books.
The film follows an 18-year-old Snow as he tries to rise above his station in Capitol society by excelling at his closing faculty mission: mentoring one in all 24 kids within the Starvation Video games. When he’s burdened with a tribute from the underfed District 12, his possibilities appear slim, till his mentee, the enigmatic Lucy Grey Baird, seems to have a expertise for charming a crowd.
When is Songbirds & Snakes set?
Songbirds & Snakes is about 64 years earlier than The Starvation Video games, through the time of the tenth annual Starvation Video games, 10 years after the Districts’ insurrection in opposition to the Capitol. So apart from Snow and his cousin Tigris, don’t anticipate to see many characters you acknowledge from the unique trilogy right here: No Katniss, Peeta, Haymitch, or Effie Trinket. Even the match’s announcer, Lucretius “Fortunate” Flickerman (Jason Schwartzman), is an older relative of the originals’ Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci).
Who’s in Songbirds & Snakes?
The film’s forged contains Tom Blyth (Billy the Child) as Coriolanus, Rachel Zegler (Steven Spielberg’s West Aspect Story) as Lucy Grey, and Josh Andrés Rivera (additionally from West Aspect Story) as Sejanus Plinth, Coriolanus’ closest classmate. Sport of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage performs Casca Highbottom, the college dean credited with creating the Starvation Video games.
“Blyth does an admirable job of strolling the road between sympathetic antihero and cold-hearted villain,” in keeping with our evaluation, “whereas Zegler performs the function of charismatic songstress properly. […] The supporting forged additionally brings their A-game, significantly Viola Davis because the merciless Head Gamemaker Dr. Volumnia Gaul. Davis totally commits to the twisted mastermind who believes that humanity, at its core, is darkish and wicked.”
Does Songbirds & Snakes have a credit scene?
Nope! If you want to rise up and out of the theater earlier than the ultimate credit roll, you gained’t miss something besides the names of the individuals who made the film for you.
Is Songbirds & Snakes primarily based on a Starvation Video games guide?
Sure! Suzanne Collins returned to the collection to pen The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, printed in Might 2020. In an interview for Scholastic, she stated the guide gave her a possibility to inform the untold story of Lucy Grey.
“Within the first chapter of The Starvation Video games, I make reference to a fourth District 12 victor. Katniss doesn’t appear to know something concerning the particular person value mentioning. Whereas her story isn’t well-known, Lucy Grey lives on in a major approach via her music, serving to to deliver down Snow within the trilogy. […] Past that, Lucy Grey’s legacy is that she launched leisure to the Starvation Video games.”
You’ll be able to seize a replica of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes under, or from the bookseller or library of your alternative.
Is the Songbirds & Snakes film devoted to the guide?
It’s a fairly shut adaptation when it comes to the characters, dialogue, and general arc of the guide, but it surely does reduce fairly a bit, significantly concerning the Tributes on the tenth Starvation Video games in addition to Lucy Grey, about her fellow Covey (a bunch of touring minstrels who all have colours of their names, and have comparable accents and colourful clothes), and about Coriolanus’ classmates apart from Sejanus. Specifically, characters like Clemensia Dovecote (Ashley Liao) are lowered down to reveal necessities.
The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes additionally adjustments numerous items of the motion, presumably so guide readers gained’t already know all the things that occurs on the tenth Starvation Video games as they’re watching. Specifically, a number of the Tributes within the area have completely different fates. A couple of small particulars have additionally been crammed in right here and there, like precisely how Coriolanus’ father died.
What music does Lucy Grey’s identify come from?
You may not suppose this is a vital element getting into, but it surely’s really fairly helpful to know as a way to perceive some vital motion within the third act! William Wordsworth’s 1799 poem “Lucy Grey” is the supply of the character’s identify, and it will get slightly extra play within the guide than within the film.
Within the movie model, Lucy Grey sings a really brief snippet of it to Coriolanus close to the tip of the film, however doesn’t determine it, and he asks a query about it that doesn’t make a lot sense until you recognize the poem. Figuring out particularly that it’s a few woman who disappeared into skinny air, leaving an interrupted observe of footprints behind her, is vital to Songbirds & Snakes’ story — and it’s rather a lot clearer within the guide, so studying the poem earlier than watching the film is certainly useful for following the motion.