I watched The Starvation Video games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes at a very nice theater. A Dolby Cinema. Good visuals. Nice sound. Semi-reclining scenes with giant armrests and comfortable cushions. About an hour into this Starvation Video games prequel, I believed: that is very nice. I’m actually comfy. Ought to I take a nap? I’m fairly satisfied I received’t miss something.

I didn’t take a nap. I closed my eyes, for perhaps a minute. I want I had napped.

This new Starvation Video games is a tediously lengthy drag of a movie that pretends it’s one thing new whereas primarily recycling the identical concepts, solely with less-thrilling motion and much-less-charming protagonists. 

The Starvation Video games franchise peaked with Catching Hearth, the primary being pedestrian and the final two fairly painful (the third ebook was fairly tough, don’t persuade your self in any other case). I’ve all the time loved the franchise’s central plot parts, however felt the underlying themes of politics, media, and sophistication had been compelled and never notably clever and even logical.

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes leans even additional into these themes and for some baffling motive writer Suzanne Collins felt it was worthwhile to discover the early days of the Video games by means of the eyes of her franchise’s villain Coriolanus Snow (performed by Donald Sutherland within the unique movies, and by Tom Blyth right here). A younger and maybe conflicted Snow is a probably fascinating character, however for a way more subtle movie than The Starvation Video games can provide. 

For what it’s price, there are some attention-grabbing parts at play. The film, directed by Francis Lawrence (who made the final three Starvation Video games motion pictures, together with Catching Hearth), is professionally made with a pleasant aesthetic. It briefly exhibits the Darkish Instances (i.e. civil conflict). Portraying the early Video games, that are far more rudimentary and function at a smaller scale, is impressed, and Viola Davis sizzles because the Video games’ maniacal overseer. Casting Peter Dinklage was a sensible transfer. The story, apparently, goes in unpredictable locations within the third act.

However total, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes appears like a large step again for the franchise. These feasting for extra Starvation Video games motion will uncover the fight-to-the-death battle right here appears like a observe spherical in comparison with what we noticed within the earlier motion pictures, although to his credit score Lawrence directs the sequence nicely. Whereas it has lots of nicely made items, the film itself is a little bit of a bore–overly lengthy and drawn out.

Blyth is definitely fairly good as Snow, and delivers a extremely sturdy efficiency within the film’s third act. However it’s laborious to sympathize along with his character when you recognize what he’ll develop into. In truth, there is no such thing as a actual character to rally round the way in which you may with Jennifer Lawrence’s within the earlier motion pictures. Rachel Zegler, because the annoyingly named Lucy Grey, does an excellent job with the fabric at hand, however she’s caught taking part in a half-character, somebody who exists to advance the plot and supply one thing fairly to have a look at. Lucy Grey is a wierd individual with no actual again story or character, but she is supposed to signify the embodiment of Snow’s inside battle.

The third act, which has nothing to do with the Starvation Video games themselves, is essentially the most compelling part of the film. However it comes too little, too late. It appears like a tacked-on bonus story to the middling two hours that preceded it–the 2 hours that almost all audiences probably paid to see.

The Starvation Video games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, dabbles with intelligent concepts and will enchantment to die laborious followers of the franchise, however it is a blockbuster film that lacks the spark, power, and goal of its predecessors. 

I ought to have taken that fucking nap.

Overview by Erik Samdahl until in any other case indicated.