On May 19, 2020, Suzanne Collins released “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” which is the fourth book in “The Hunger Games” series, which after reading and watching has become a favorite of the series. This book is a prequel to the other books. It follows the rise of the main villain throughout the whole book series, President Coriolanus Snow. In “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” he is a struggling Capitol student who dreams of becoming the president of Panem. The Capitol students have the opportunity to mentor the district kids in the 10th Hunger Games. Snow gets stuck with the District 12 girl, which poses a challenge for him. At that point, it’s his job to try to make Lucy Gray Baird a victor.
Recently, on Nov. 17, the movie adaptation of this book was released. It stars Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler as Snow and Gray. The movie has changed a few things, with the biggest changes being from “Part II” of the book.
The first part of the book follows Snow mentoring Gray and preparing her for the games. This portion of the movie stays pretty well intact. The largest change seemed to be the lack of inner monologue. It’s hard to include that in a movie, but without it, it looks as if Snow is doing things out of pure kindness. In the book, it is obvious that he is doing everything for his benefit.
The second part takes place in the middle of the Hunger Games. This part changes things like how the tributes die. In the book, the character Reaper chases Gray through the arena until he dies of pure exhaustion. This scene shows a lot about Reaper. In the movie, the end of the games seemed slightly rushed. The last three people to die all died due to the same cause. It was a very good scene, but Reaper’s death was more valuable in the book.
Finally, the third part of the movie stayed very true to the book. I saw small changes like how Snow went about turning the birds into Dr. Gaul, the sort of antagonist of the story.
Overall, this was an incredible book-to-screen adaptation. Going forward, movie adaptations should look to the “Hunger Games” series for inspiration. They changed a few things, but for a book-to-screen adaption, it was all that could be expected. The book is still better, but the movie is most definitely worth a watch.
