Today, Nov. 17 the new “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” movie will be fully released to theaters and available to rent for $20 on the streaming service Vudu. This prequel is set 64 years before the original “Hunger Games” movie and revolves around the 10th Annual Hunger Games, showing how the young Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) becomes the cruel and dictatorial leader of Panem. A question that a lot of fans have for the new movie is if it will show up to the expectations set by the previous movies. 

The movie has young Snow being trained as a mentor for the female District 12 tribute Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) when he unexpectedly falls in love with her while preparing her for the games. She changes his perspective on everything that he was raised to believe, because he has never met anyone quite like her in his life.

“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” is based on the novel “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” published in 2020 by Susan Collins, and this prequel is the fifth film to be created based on the novels surrounding Panem and its famous Hunger Game events. 

In the novel, Baird (Zegler) becomes the winner of the 10th Annual Hunger Games. However, she received little publicity after winning the games, opposed to the publicity surrounding the future District 12 winners Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) and Katnis Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) from the previous four films.

“In the central role, it’s [Blyth’s] task to make sense of Coriolanus Snow’s journey, and he does,” said critic Mick Lasalle on the rottentomatoes site.

The current reviews by movie critics are very mixed, with half saying that it was bland and the other half saying that it was amazing and that they loved the tension between the two main characters, Snow (Blyth) and Baird (Zegler). 

“It has a few laughs and some stylish outfits, but is unfortunately a shallow prequel, which fails to breathe new life into the Hunger Games franchise,” said critic Hanna Flint on the rottentomatoes site.