When the announcement of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes movie adaptation was announced it was immediately a social media success. All anyone would hear about when they opened X, TikTok or Instagram was people talking about the movie. With all the excitement surrounding this movie, the most common question asked was,”Is it going to be as good as the previous Hunger Games films?”

When comparing the movie to the book, there were some essential parts in the book that were left out from the film. For instance, in the movie, we never see what happens to student Clemensia Dovecote after she gets bitten by game maker Dr. Gaul’s poisonous snakes. 

In the book, Coriolanus Snow recognizes the evil of the capital when he sees how Clemensia was affected by the snake bite. This was an important event because it makes Snow’s following actions so surprising. The reader may assume that Snow would decide to run away with love interest, Lucy Gray Baird, but he ends up deciding to return to the Capitol.

Despite the exclusion of the previously mentioned plot line, actor Tom Blyth had the ability to portray Snow’s path to insanity in other ways. Blyth successfully used facial expressions and body language to portray what Snow was thinking and feeling without directly stating it. Meaning that the inclusion of the scene wasn’t as necessary as it was in the book because we can see how Snow becomes more and more apathetic and cruel through his physical reactions.

Not to mention that the actress Rachel Zegler was able to sing and act in a way that was unique to her character, Lucy Gray Baird. While reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, some may find it difficult to imagine how Lucy Gray’s family and band, The Covey, played and sang their songs, but Zegler was able to add feeling and emotion into the songs that wasn’t felt in the books. 

Overall, I think that the movie adaptation of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes does a great job of conveying the sentiments and thoughts of the characters even though some plot lines were removed from the final cut of the film. I would rate this movie a 10/10, and would recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys dystopian fiction.