"Panem" without Jennifer Lawrence - is that possible?
Over ten years have passed since 'The Hunger Games' went through the roof in cinemas - and with it, leading actress Jennifer Lawrence. Now "The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" is coming to the big screen as a prequel. New era, new story, new cast. Will it work?
The year is 2012 and "Yolo" ("You only live once"), "FU" (for "Fuck You") and "Yalla!" have just been voted the three youth words of the year. And in the cinema, the "Twilight" film series that has been making kids go wild for years is coming to an end with "Breaking Dawn - Until the End of the Night, Part 2". But it didn't matter: with "The Hunger Games", the next teen kitsch was already waiting in the wings. Or so they thought.
However, the series about the brutal "Hunger Games" in a dystopian post-war landscape called Panem was soon to prove everyone wrong. The saga, based on the novels by US author Suzanne Collins, not only had the potential to make adolescents gasp with excitement. This was fantasy cinema à la bonne heure, which also managed to inspire viewers beyond the age of braces. In Germany alone, more than two million people bought a ticket for the start of the film series. For the finale "Mockingjay, Part 2", even more than four million visitors flocked to the cinemas.
Was the series so groundbreaking because Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen embodied the Amazon with the bow and arrow so convincingly? Or was it the success of the saga that suddenly propelled the actress so high that she won her first Oscar in 2013 at the age of just 22? Not for "Panem", of course, but for "Silver Linings". The fantasy spectacle was deliberately ignored by the Academy. Somehow, however, Lawrence could not be ignored.
In focus: Coriolanus Snow
Lawrence is not in the film "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes", which is now - eight years after "Mockingjay, Part 2" - being released in cinemas. After all, it is a prequel set a few decades before the events surrounding Katniss Everdeen. Nevertheless, the long shadow of Everybody's Darling in Hollywood lies over the film. It focuses on the young Coriolanus Snow - and thus the man who, as the dictator of Panem, will later make life hell for the character played by Lawrence.
While Donald Sutherland, a veteran actor with a long history of life on the road, slipped into the role of the aged Snow, in "The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" British newcomer Tom Blyth plays the young president-to-be. While Snow is still an aspiring elite student in the Capitol, there are already the "Hunger Games". What is new, however, is the idea of providing the tributes with a mentor in their fight for life and death. It is no coincidence that Snow has to take the wallflower Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) from District 12 under his wing - Dean Casca Highbottom (Peter Dinklage) has little love for him and his family.
However, as a career in the Capitol beckons for the mentor of the successful tribute, Snow goes to great lengths to prepare his protégés for the battle in the arena and ensure their survival there. To this end, he sometimes resorts to one trick or another, for example when he lets the Supreme Gamesmaker Dr. Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis) initiate him into the pitfalls she has devised for the tributes. This is not without consequences - neither for him nor for Lucy Gray, to whom he feels more and more attracted ...
Three chapters, one movie
The story is divided into three chapters - from the road to the 'Hunger Games' to the games themselves and the events afterwards. Director Frances Lawrence, who is not related to Jennifer Lawrence by blood or marriage, takes the reins for the fourth time in "Panem". After regretting having directed "Mockingjay" in two parts, he obviously didn't want to make the same mistake again. So he packed the entire plot of "The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" into just one film, which is around two and a half hours long - even though the German edition of the novel is around 200 pages thicker than the one on which the two "Mockingjay" parts were based.
Dramaturgically, the result is quite impressive. You won't get bored in your movie seat, the narrative is dense and stringent without being rushed. Nevertheless, "The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" struggles to keep up with its predecessors, even though or precisely because the prequel makes full use of some of the previous success criteria.
There really is a lot of singing in apocalyptic Panem this time. The song "The Hanging Tree" from "Mockingjay, Part 1", for example, which made it out of the cinemas and into the charts in 2014, is given its full due. And almost excessively so. There's no question that Peter Dinklage - like the late Philip Seymour Hoffman in previous films - is a great actor. But perhaps we've seen enough of his role as a dubious adolescent since "Game of Thrones".
Rachel Zegler's thankless task
However, the most thankless task of being measured against Jennifer Lawrence falls to Rachel Zegler. No matter how seductive the look of the self-made singer and actress made famous by Steven Spielberg's "West Side Story" may be, she is nowhere near the emotional depth of her predecessor in the heroine role. And it looks like she won't get another chance to do so for the time being. Although "The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" offers a number of starting points for a sequel - Suzanne Collins has not yet written one.
Conversely, however, this also means that even if Lucy Gray and "The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" can't quite hold a candle to the stories about Katniss Everdeen, the movie is still a must-see for "Panem" fans. Who knows if and when there will be another reunion.
Despite Jennifer Lawrence's absence, the 'Cinema' experience of 'The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes' still promises an exciting journey into the 'Fantasy' world of 'Panem'. The prequel focuses on the character of Coriolanus Snow, played by Tom Blyth, before he becomes the president-to-be who challenges Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen in future events. This new film chapter retains the dystopian setting and 'Hunger Games' concept, while introducing mentors to help tributes survive.
Source: www.ntv.de
