The Ballad of the Serpent and the Songbird: A Hunger Games Throwback
After eight years of absence, the saga Hunger Games is finally back in theaters. Not to tell the sequel to the adventures of Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), who spends peaceful days with Peeta, but for a prequel, set 64 years before her rebellion. Baptized The Rime of the Serpent and the Songbirdthis new film is based on the latest novel by the author of the saga, Suzanne Collins, published in 2020.
The plot takes place during the tenth Hunger Games organized by the Capitol to remind the Districts of their defeat during their first insurrection, a period of civil war known as the “Dark Days”. Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), the tyrannical future president of Panem, then eighteen years old, is chosen as a mentor to look after Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), the young girl chosen to represent District 12 in the games. If she is the winner of this tenth edition of the Hunger Games, Snow will get a scholarship to university, a unique opportunity to restore his family’s image.
The film directed by Francis Lawrence (already at the helm of the last three films of the original saga) therefore follows the beginnings of Coriolanus Snow, before he becomes the tyrant we know, and highlights the mechanisms that made him this ruthless and Freddo. , showing on the screen what games were like, long before they became popular.
This was an error that Francis Lawrence did not want to reproduce
This fifth film Hunger Games it has the particularity of containing several very different chapters, including a last one with a much slower pace, which denotes the frenzy of the arena. However, this last part is of particular importance as it highlights the swing in Coriolanus Snow’s head. In fact, we witness the birth of the great antagonist of the saga, discovering which mechanisms precipitated his thirst for revenge and power.
While today adaptations of novels, aimed at a young audience, are very often divided into several films (and this has already happened with the latest Hunger Games novel), this is not the case for The Rime of the Serpent and the Songbirdwhich contains several plots, within the plot (which justifies its record length of almost 160 minutes).
Francis Lawrence declared into our microphone that it was important for him not to divide this novel into two filmsand that he regretted having made this mistake for the third volume of the original saga, The revolt :
We received so many complaints about dividing The Rebellion into two films that I didn’t want to make the same mistake again. I also thought what I liked about this story was that it had the whole third chapter. We’ve been conditioned to think these stories end at the end of the games. But what makes this narrative so interesting to me is that it continues well beyond the games. It’s not just about games, it’s so much more.
Source: Cine Serie
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