The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

 So a new movie came out last year in the Hunger Games series, and to be honest I hoped it to be better then the finale's of that said franchise.

A prequel of the series, it follows a young President Snow, and one can see how he became the man he is in the latter movies: heartache.

Years after when his father died in the first Rebellion between the Capitol and the thirteen districts, Coriolanus Snow is one of the 24 mentors for the 10th anuual Hunger Games, hoping to win the Plinth scholarship that way and restore the Snow name.  Gamesmaster Highbottom states the mentors should look to entertain the viewers though, as ratings of the past years have been dropping.  He is assigned the female tribute of the 12th District, Lucy Gray Baird.

 

She has captured the viewers attention by sneaking a snake down the mayor's dress during the Reaping, as well as singing a protest song, and Snow befriends her by winning her thrust as a sponsor, awaiting her at the train and bringing her food when she is publically caged in the zoo with the other tribunals.  Snow proposes all sorts of new ideas to head gamemaker Gaul, who goes along with his ideas to get the viewing rates up.  

When inspecting the arena for the Hunger Games, a bomb goes off, killing some of the tribunals as well as causing some to escape.  Snow is injured, but Lucy returns to help him instead of running off with the others.  As the games begin, Lucy and her fellow District 12 tribute escape in a tunnel that has been opened by the bombing, hiding there from the slaughter.   When the current president's son dies in the arena as he wanted to mourn the tributes, Gaul unleashes genetically modified snakes into it.  But as Snow sneaked a handkerchief in the tank with her scent, she is the only one not attacked and is declared the winner... now remember in the original trilogy, Haymitch was the only previous tribute from District 12 to ever win the games?  Yeah, I remarked that as well, as now we have another D12 winner, but more on that later.

Snow is confronted by Highbottom with poison he gave to her for the battle, as well as the handkerchief, and as punishment he must serve time in the Peacekeeper force.  Bribing an officer, he is assigned to District 12 however.  He reunites with Lucy and they become romantically involved, even going as far as foiling a planned uprising.  When his excellent performance earns him the promotion to District 2 for officer training, he goes to see her once again.  But as he says something wrong, she loses her trust in him and tries to get away.  He shoots at her, but can`t find her as she seems to have disappeared after she laid a trap for him causing a snake to bite him.  Her fate is left unknown, but in the books it is hinted that she has been erased from the records, and in the original trilogy Katniss hints that there has been another victor bar Haymitch from District 12 in the past.

Snow is pardoned by doctor Gaul, and instead of a life in the military she will train him to become a gamemaster himself, while he is adopted by his late friend Sejanus, whom he actually killed unknown to others, as he visits Highbottom.  The gamemaster tells him the games where originally designed as a joke in a drunken night, but that Snow's father made it a reality, and the blood is on their hands, before succumbing to a poison Snake sneaked to him.

Okay, this was a decent movie, yet I still miss the, for lack of a better term, intensity of the very first movie in the series to be honest.  But never the less, it wasn`t a waste of time to watch, even though the end of the actual Hunger Games felt just to rushed.