The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a movie adaptation of the fourth Hunger Games book by author Suzanne Collins. The story takes place from the perspective of Coriolanus Snow, the future president of the fictional country of Panem, and his experience in becoming a mentor for the 10th Annual Hunger Games.

The movie introduces characters such as Lucy Gray Baird, Sejanus Plinth, and Tigris Snow, the cousin of Coriolanus. The point of the story is to provide the opinion and perspective of Coriolanus Snow during the 10th Hunger Games and how he started his road to corruption. The story also focuses on the early stages of the Hunger Games and the first televised games. 

When producing movie adaptations based on books, it can be difficult to provide all the necessary information and plot lines, however, the main thing that the movie failed in was showing how Snow really felt. In the book, Collins does a great job at letting us read Snow’s internal thoughts and gives us a better idea as to what kind of person Snow is. The movie, however, does not provide the viewers with enough insight to show Snow’s slow drive to insanity. Though the movie does point this out towards the end, it should have been obvious towards the beginning. In contrast, one of the best things the movie does is show the audience the story from a bigger perspective. An issue with showing everything from Snow’s perspective is that the story can seem biased but having such a broad scope it allows the viewers to build their perspectives without the forced view from Snow. 

As a book nerd, the movie also left out key moments that I felt could have helped develop the story since they seemed so important to the plot in the book. However, the choices the movie made were understandable but it is a bit disappointing to not be able to see every single detail.

One of my favorite parts of the movie was towards the end when Lucy Gray is finally free and Snow’s deteriorated mental health completely crashes down as he looks for her. There is no explicit answer to what happened to her or what Snow thinks happened to her, which is a strength I believe the movie has over the book. The audience can make their predictions of how Snow was feeling in that moment but the book voices his opinions and his thoughts I believe it is more interesting for audiences to be able to make their own opinions.

Overall The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is an interesting movie to understand the history of the beginning of the Hunger Games and how the ruthless Coriolanus Snow started as a shy and poor schoolboy and gradually turned to madness.