Hunger Games: Ballad of the Bafflingly Villain Origin (2023)
Villain origin stories are great! Seeing some bastard turn from a meek and kind child to monsterous psychopath for more interesting people to battle is quite the journey to take an audience on. Fun fact, though, maybe have the character change some and not display traits of a lying nutcase while telling a story that looks like it has twists and turns but really just has half-baked characters in the middle of a half-baked epic.
It's ten years after the Hunger Games have had children battling to the death for the amusement and punishment of the citizens who rebelled and about sixty-four years before Jennifer Lawerence kills people and Peeta decorates cakes. No one is watching the games, however, so the command demands that the graduating class make people interested. Enter Corny Snow, the future villain, to mentor Lacy Gray, the most interesting of the tributes for the games. Will they shake up the games? Who will survive to the end? Who is a snake and who is a songbird? In the end, who will give a shit?
I'm gonna start with the acting because the effects are eh and the plot requires its own paragraph. Everyone here is doing a great job, from the quiet brooding of Snow guy to the singing charisma of Lacy Gray gal. The adults get the best of the lot, with Peter Dinklage and Viola Davis just acting crazy. "Villains, fuck your villains, we've got the most weird, dark, twisted, and cackling villains of them all," those two said and wiped their asses with Game of Thrones and Suicide Squad contracts. And that's without mentioning Jason Swartzman, the lone pure comedy who delivers a few lines as the host/magician/weatherman that had me laugh damn hard. Not many people could say the line "the little tuberculosis with legs" like he does.
And then there's the plot. In essence, it reminded me of Ex Machina but done worse. In that movie a rich robot inventor invites a company man to see if he can tell if his girl robot is acting human. As that movie and this movie goes on, you doubt the motives of everyone involved to the point where the final act is a quiet explosion of "oh damns" as everyone reveals themselves. Here, we have to slog through three acts: Snow prepping for the games, the arena battle, and then the aftermath. I hate to say it, but this structure would have worked better as two or three movies. The opening and arena bits echo the original movie and are quite good, but when the final "Part 3" title card rolled out I was done, writing in my notes "OMG it's still going. There's so much more." And even it is good, and chocolate cake might taste good, but I don't want it after a pizza and a lasagna.
And that's about the mood of the whole thing. There's too much happening but not enough growth. I don't feel by the end that our villain origin has peaked because he was doing duplicitous things for his own ends from the beginning. Snow as a character is a sociopath, turning against or using everyone with the lone exception being his sister/cousin/tiger lady. Even when turns happen, when there's scenes where it feels like he may be in doubt, all it takes is one thing being said or one catalyst to enter, and I knew he would do whatever it took to fulfill his own interests.
If you go see this, matinee all the way. Don't pay full price. Hell, even wait for streaming. It's not big or bombastic or interesting visually to see on the big screen and the bright spots of music can be enjoyed just as well with a good pair of headphones.
Thoughts:
Do you think they referenced the first movies enough? I counted all the references and stopped when I realized I didn't care.
They put a girl with Downs in the arena to get bricked in the head because what the hell?
The secret about his family at the end was really not revelatory at all and immediately is undercut. A death that made the whole thing not matter at all.
Lacy Gray sings, but that's the only thing that makes her the songbird. I still don't know who was what in the title and don't really care. It's not as interesting as they thought it would be.
Yes, I am aware that they put actual snakes and actual songbirds. Metaphor or lazy, you judge.
They brought back the floaty fight camera and I hate it.
For the first nine years, the arena was just a Roman style room where kids killed each other. Yeah, that's boring as shit.
Who do Dinklage and Davis report to that are keeping an eye on anything that might cancel these games? Were they in danger of retirement or what?
The subplot of rebellion and betrayal including a secondary character kinda made me angry that it was not a reference to the first movies, but if it was, I did not get it.