Book vs. Movie: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
From one of my favorite dystopian series in high school, I’m so excited to review The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the prequel to The Hunger Games. I’ll also do a short review of the movie and what I thought about the book vs. the movie.
Book Information
In this prequel to The Hunger Games trilogy, we follow Coriolanus Snow as he becomes one of the first mentors for the children forced to fight in the Capitol. Along the way, we meet characters like Lucy Gray, the girl from District 12. While her chances to win the Hunger Games are unlikely, Snow does everything he can to make sure that she stays alive.
Book Review | Heidi Dischler
I found it really interesting to see how many things in the world of The Hunger Games came to be. This is especially true for a lot of the songs that Katniss sings throughout the series. Reading this backstory was very entertaining to say the least, but not as enlightening as I would have hoped.
Spoilers ahead.
This book seemed unnecessarily long to me. After Lucy Gray wins the Hunger Games, I was so confused because I still had hours left on my audiobook. It’s not that it was boring or anything, it was just… long.
After the Hunger Games were over and Lucy Gray was able to return home, everything kind of dropped off from there. I was listening just to finish it to be honest. That’s not all, though.
The ending bothered the heck out of me. I mean, Snow spent all that time trying to save Lucy Gray, claiming to love her, risking his own life and future, and then just ends up trying to kill her? Excuse me? It felt so off in my opinion and it quite frankly made me mad. In my personal opinion, people are not born bad. They become bad. Snow was the type of character where you were kind of like, okay yeah, I get it, he lost his parents in the war, he’s poor. He seems like a decent guy, and hey he even fell in love with a District girl! Then poof, nope! Snow is actually horrible and tries to kill Lucy Gray. It felt so so so wrong as an ending. I know that he had to become bad because, I mean… The Hunger Games, but that just didn’t seem like the way to do it. I was expecting someone to kill Lucy Gray and pretend that she betrayed him therefore ruining his trust in anyone who is from the Districts.
Okay, rant over. I think.
Other than that, I really did enjoy this book. I just choose to not acknowledge its ending and make my own in my head.
Source: Personal Copy
“‘Nothing you can take from me was ever worth keeping.’”
– Suzanne Collins, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Movie Review | Heidi Dischler
So, I seriously enjoyed this movie. The actors and actresses were A M A Z I N G, and I literally want to learn all of the songs by heart now. Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray? Literal magic. She did the role so much justice and honestly was perfect for it. Tom Blyth as Coriolanus Snow? Also perfection (don’t get me started on when he got his head shaved 😍).
I do think they messed up a bit in trying to make Snow’s character evil. In my opinion, he just seemed nice and had a totally out of character move at the end of the movie. I don’t feel like there was enough set up to make him feel evil enough to do a complete 180 like he did. I did feel the same way about the book, though, so there’s that.
Overall, with the movie, the music takes the cake and Lucy Gray will now and forever be the best character in The Hunger Games. Movie rating? solid 4/5.
Where to Watch: In Theaters
Book vs. Movie
I’m gonna be honest here, I really didn’t see many differences between the book and the movie. Obviously, you lose a lot when you translate the story to screen. I mean, unless you want a four hour movie, you can’t exactly keep all the content from the book.
One of the major differences that I really noticed, though, is that you never saw Clemensia again after her snake bite. In the book, you at least get to see that she lived (even if she acquired some rainbow snake scales growing on her back). You also didn’t get to see a lot of the other Covey members once Snow went to District 12.
Really, though, other than those things lost in translation, I’d give this adaptation a solid 7/10. The only thing that really makes it lose points is the fact that it makes Snow too sympathetic. In the book you at least got to see his thoughts and his intentions. In the movie, he just came off as a really nice guy, which seriously made the ending come out of nowhere.
