Key issues to know earlier than watching the brand new Starvation Video games film

The Starvation Video games are again! After 2008’s blockbuster e-book trilogy and 2012’s blockbuster movie franchise, the dystopian younger grownup collection has returned for a brand new decade with The Starvation Video games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, hitting theaters this week.

Right here’s all the pieces you possibly can anticipate — or may be questioning about — from the brand new Starvation Video games film.

What’s The Starvation Video games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes about?

Songbirds & Snakes is a prequel centered on Coriolanus Snow, who seems within the unique Starvation Video games trilogy because the mysterious and terrifying President Snow, dictator of Panem and chief among the many collection’ antagonists. He’s performed by Donald Sutherland within the film variations of the primary three books.

The film follows an 18-year-old Snow as he tries to rise above his station in Capitol society by excelling at his closing faculty venture: mentoring one in every of 24 kids within the Starvation Video games. When he’s burdened with a tribute from the underfed District 12, his possibilities appear slim, till his mentee, the enigmatic Lucy Grey Baird, seems to have a expertise for charming a crowd.

When is Songbirds & Snakes set?

Songbirds & Snakes is about 64 years earlier than The Starvation Video games, in the course of the time of the tenth annual Starvation Video games, 10 years after the Districts’ rise up in opposition to the Capitol. So aside from Snow and his cousin Tigris, don’t anticipate to see many characters you acknowledge from the unique trilogy right here: No Katniss, Peeta, Haymitch, or Effie Trinket. Even the match’s announcer, Lucretius “Fortunate” Flickerman (Jason Schwartzman), is an older relative of the originals’ Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci).

Who’s in Songbirds & Snakes?

The film’s forged contains Tom Blyth (Billy the Child) as Coriolanus, Rachel Zegler (Steven Spielberg’s West Aspect Story) as Lucy Grey, and Josh Andrés Rivera (additionally from West Aspect Story) as Sejanus Plinth, Coriolanus’ closest classmate. Sport of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage performs Casca Highbottom, the college dean credited with creating the Starvation Video games.

“Blyth does an admirable job of strolling the road between sympathetic antihero and cold-hearted villain,” in response to our overview, “whereas Zegler performs the function of charismatic songstress nicely. […] The supporting forged additionally brings their A-game, significantly Viola Davis because the merciless Head Gamemaker Dr. Volumnia Gaul. Davis absolutely commits to the twisted mastermind who believes that humanity, at its core, is darkish and wicked.”

Does Songbirds & Snakes have a credit scene?

Nope! If you’ll want to rise up and out of the theater earlier than the ultimate credit roll, you gained’t miss something besides the names of the individuals who made the film for you.

Is Songbirds & Snakes based mostly on a Starvation Video games e-book?

Sure! Suzanne Collins returned to the collection to pen The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, revealed in Might 2020. In an interview for Scholastic, she mentioned the e-book gave her a possibility to inform the untold story of Lucy Grey.

“Within the first chapter of The Starvation Video games, I make reference to a fourth District 12 victor. Katniss doesn’t appear to know something concerning the individual value mentioning. Whereas her story isn’t well-known, Lucy Grey lives on in a major method by her music, serving to to convey down Snow within the trilogy. […] Past that, Lucy Grey’s legacy is that she launched leisure to the Starvation Video games.”

You’ll be able to seize a duplicate of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes beneath, or from the bookseller or library of your alternative.

Is the Songbirds & Snakes film devoted to the e-book?

It’s a reasonably shut adaptation when it comes to the characters, dialogue, and total arc of the e-book, but it surely does lower fairly a bit, significantly concerning the Tributes on the tenth Starvation Video games in addition to Lucy Grey, about her fellow Covey (a gaggle of touring minstrels who all have colours of their names, and have related accents and colourful clothes), and about Coriolanus’ classmates aside from Sejanus. Particularly, characters like Clemensia Dovecote (Ashley Liao) are diminished down to reveal necessities.

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes additionally adjustments varied items of the motion, probably so e-book readers gained’t already know all the pieces that occurs on the tenth Starvation Video games as they’re watching. Particularly, among the Tributes within the enviornment have completely different fates. Just a few small particulars have additionally been crammed in right here and there, like precisely how Coriolanus’ father died.

What track does Lucy Grey’s identify come from?

You may not suppose this is a crucial element stepping into, but it surely’s really fairly helpful to know so as to perceive some vital motion within the third act! William Wordsworth’s 1799 poem “Lucy Grey” is the supply of the character’s identify, and it will get a bit extra play within the e-book than within the film.

Within the movie model, Lucy Grey sings a really brief snippet of it to Coriolanus close to the tip of the film, however doesn’t establish it, and he asks a query about it that doesn’t make a lot sense except you already know the poem. Understanding particularly that it’s a few lady who disappeared into skinny air, leaving an interrupted monitor of footprints behind her, is vital to Songbirds & Snakes’ story — and it’s rather a lot clearer within the e-book, so studying the poem earlier than watching the film is unquestionably useful for following the motion.