User Reviews

I watched this in the cinema with my younger sisters yesterday, all of us having reasonably enjoyed the Hunger Games books and bits of the movie series before this.

I think there were a lot of nice points about this movie - the setting felt pretty believable, the acting was generally good... but I think the story itself was a bit weak, and for some reason I was really turned off by all the singing bits.

In terms of the story, it was fascinating seeing the main character grapple with his concepts of what he knew was right and wrong, and what FELT right and wrong to him, but I think the female lead didn't really have any real development or much actual likeability - she felt like a pasted classic "good folk girl" kind of character, except for setting snakes on people?? I didn't really sense much chemistry with her and Snow's characters, because it didn't seem like they even any notable spent time together, and her disappearance at the end, leaving the snake to attack him, felt so strange. Why did she waste time setting up a nasty trick like that, if it wasn't going to kill him, and serve just to slow her escape down, and also make him hate her? Was she just trying to make some kind of risky point? I don't know, it just didn't really make sense to me.

And the singing... I can't say exactly what bothered me about it, but it just felt weird. I found the singing scenes long and kind of painful - I guess it didn't feel like someone in that setting sincerely singing, but someone from 2023 singing for a 2023 movie and pretending to add a folk kind of twang to it. She's a great singer, I'm not denying that, but it didn't feel like it fit with the setting somehow.

Overall, I guess the movie was somewhat interesting, though I wouldn't say "enjoyable". I wouldn't recommend it to friends, but maybe the book's pacing is better? I don't expect I'll be reading it though, unfortunately.

Funny people in the comments not expecting songs from a movie that starts with the name THE BALLAD OF.

The whole point of the movie was to show how Snow starting rising to power and also how the Capitol started being manipulated into start liking and watching the games.

It was a great adaptation, the most faithful one since Catching Fire. Rachel Zegler is a great singer and a great actress. The songs are very important to the story, every song contains an important part of the movie ESPECIALLY the one she sings laying down by the lake.

People need to actually pay attention to what they're watching.

Initially I didn't like the ending. I didn't like how they just made her 'disappear'. I was voicing my frustration to my sister the entire way home; No chase? No fighting? No crying, no betrayal, no epilogue, no letter? Nothing??? It was so anti-climactic! Like she never even existed!

But then Highbotton's words rang clear: mystery has a way of driving people mad. If we the audience were this frustrated, imagine just how delirious it must've made Snow. She could've outed him, betrayed him, stood up to him, maybe even messaged him- he must've searched for her if just to get rid of the last loose end (before he became too powerful to even bother with this anymore, of course), but he found absolutely nothing! Nothing to chase, nothing to hate, nothing to even confirm that it was real other than his fading memories, white roses and a ghost of her who with the same spirit sings that damn song under the hanging tree.

I can't help but think that what if she'd stayed? He'd lied, and he had violence, and all those other bad things in his being already, but the only thing that was keeping him from going through that door was Lucy gray. It doesn't excuse nor explain his action (not even by the slightest) but I can't help but wonder if she'd stayed, would he still turn out that way? Not necessarily the whole tyrannical dictator coming into power stuff- but fundamentally could he have become a better human being? Could he have changed? And was her departure his sign to finally cave in, or was he going to turn out like that anyway?

Also the hunger games were freaking crazy I loved every second of it, favorite part of the movie. Jason Schwartzman was perfect.

I had very few expectations going into this movie, in my opinion a Hunger Games prequel sounded like a great premise. But a few things were difficult to watch. Primarily that Lucy Gray was not the protagonist this series deserved. From a wavering southern bell accent (which vacillated wildly) to the near musical territory the movie wandered into, this HG prequel felt like a very long made for premium streaming exclusive. Redemption comes from Tom Blythe, who was phenomenal, but the third act dragged heavily and I found myself asking why he looked like Eminem in District 12. The odd love story between Snow and Gray wasn't helped by the sort of Gypsy bard rebel played by Rachel Zegler.

The movie had its moments but I was personally removed from the story every time Zegler had a different accent or used some southern turn of phrase. To me it just fell flat but made canonical sense in what really happened to Snow that sent him down his capital path.

No of course Katniss isn't in it. The singing is integral to the story, how can you complain about it? It seems many criticisms people are writing about this movie are simply due to individuals not understanding/processing the plot of the film and making judgments based on a lack of comprehension.

This movie is a worthy addition to the Hunger Games franchise, satisfying the one question I had coming into it: Why is Snow such a psychopath?

Additionally, we get to see another (old fashioned) Hunger Games which we've been waiting for, for nearly a decade!

Having not read the book before seeing this film, it really enlightened me to information surrounding the society of Panem that I was previously unaware of / ignorant to.

Not a perfect film, but a very good one nonetheless. 8.5/10 at least! I pray there's more to come from Suzanne Collins' mind.

Two hours and a half of absolutely nothing. This movie doesn't have beginning, middle and end. You can't understand half of the names(maybe because of the cinema sounding,idk). The singing, oh the singing.... The other movies were great, this didn't had any subject; even tho' it's made after a book, the possibilities were endless to create something better even than the first movies. I get it that the "Games" were fairly new, but anyways. The only thing I liked was the song from the first movie and the fact that they remind of the blue jay; and about catniss(didn't understood if the plant was already Ames like this or the girl named it like that that day). Waste of time.