The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

I came into this movie with low expectations hoping to have my socks knocked off. But they are still very much on. Ziegler's acting and accent was bad no other way to put it just plain bad. The story was hard to buy into. The chapters almost felt like loosely connected but widely under developed stories that to do properly could have each been a movie on their own. It's a very basic see it once and say you have seen it. Several parts of the movie felt like they wanted to be rated R but were dumbed down to make a pg13 movie I'd also give a parent warning my daughter wanted to see it which is why we went and it was VERY dark for PG13.

I will start by saying I don't think it's an 8, maybe a 7.5-7.7 so I rounded up.

However, I went in with low expectations, expecting a big budget movie with a poor storyline but otherwise reasonably watchable. Well, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself hooked! And I daresay it was one of the better Hunger Games movies.

The bad reviews I've read seem to miss the point. This is not a story about the origin of the games, it is not a story about 'Lucy Gray" (even though her name is said about 1000 times)... It is a story about Snow and why he became the psychopath we know from the original stories. I found the not-so-happy ending refreshing and if you enjoy and understand social economic/philosophical dilemmas in terms of human psychology then it adds a notch of appreciation.

Viola, Tom and Peter were excellent in their portrayals. Zegler was fine, a little theatrical but given her background I suppose understandable.

I don't understand the hate. Especially the 1-3* reviews. Like, what were you watching!?

I understand that many people highlight how faithful they were to the books. That's brilliant but this is a movie made for the mass audiences now.

First of all, there's way too much of singing, it gets cheesy and annoying. Secondly, they've tried too hard to remind us our "Katniss Everdeen" it's does not feel natural. I don't like Rachel Ziegler's performance at all she is way too theatrical her accent is too comedic. They have tried to make her Katniss.

There must be a Part II for this movie as well I suppose because it left many questions unanswered. I don't want to include spoilers so I will skip those questions.

I've struggled before with finishing a movie or a TV show I've started because they were boring and lackluster, but I've been struggling with this one for 4 days to finish it and I don't think I have it in me to do it.

It's incredibly long and boring. The characters are bland and most of them annoying , especially Lucy Gray who starts singing out of the blue every step of the way.

I think the only likeable characters are Tigris who has little to almost no screen time and Sejanus who acts like a moral compass throughout the movie and who was done dirty. Otherwise I wasn't rooting for anyone .

I kinda regret starting the movie but I wanted to give it a try. Now I want to finish it on principle because I hate living movies and shows unfinished not because I like it in any shape of form.

It's a pity because its such a downgrade compared to the previous Hunger Games. The only good thing in this movie is Viola Davis who is spectacular as always ... other than that nope, nothing.

No matter how faithful a movie is to the book, it can't save itself from the fact that it's unneeded. Backstory to snow is fine if it adds something new to the universe, however nothing new is added here, we get taught everything we knew about the world and get tiny little snips of backstory of the origins of the Hunger Games. For the movies insane long run time, the final act of this film seems like a race to get to the end of the story. The slow paced world building it creates in the first two acts is immediately thrown out for the purpose of reaching that finish line. Unlike the last Hunger Games movies being split into two, this is the Hunger Games movie that should have been split into two. We don't get to the motivations and reasonings behind characters other than a line or two then we arrive at them. Another hour and a half of story telling could have fleshed these characters out and made the ending more meaningful. However we're left with a film that doesn't seem to ever end, masked with good acting, set design and great cinematography. But a film that is messy, long and drawn out only to be shot into a moc 10 speed at the end. Leaving this movie feel completely unnecessary.