SPOILERS ahead! For those who haven’t watched it, the new Hunger Games movie is out and it is definitely a fan favorite.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a prequel to the original Hunger Games series but more specifically, it’s the story of how President Snow got the position of the Game Maker.
This movie takes place 64 years before the original Hunger Games series, making it the 10th annual Hunger Games. Coriolanus Snow becomes a mentor to District 12 Lucy Gray in hopes that if she wins, he would get a scholarship to a school he wanted to attend. Since Snow was Lucy Gray’s mentor, it was their job to make the most publicity to try to prevent the games from ending.
Going into this movie, I had not read the book like other fans. The only thing I knew going into the movie was that it focuses more on Snow’s internal dialogue in the book, whereas in the movie they don’t really hone in on that feature.
Related: Everything You Need To Know Before Watching ‘The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes’
There have been multiple theories once this movie came out but the one that people have been focusing on the most is the Hanging Tree song written by Lucy Gray. The song is about Snow getting away with murder.
The song, composed by James Newton Howard, goes:
“Are you, are you comin’ to the tree
Where they strung up a man, they say, who murdered three
Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree…”
This song talks about how Lucy Gray and Coriolanus met up at the hanging tree before leaving into the forest. Because we don’t know if Lucy Gray dies at the end of the movie, her survival remains a mystery but her songs are known long in District 12 after she leaves. When Katniss sings the iconic song in the second movie, The Mockingjay, Snow gets mad at the reminder of Lucy Gray and how she is still remembered in District 12. Snow’s hatred grows for Katniss because of the constant reminder of the woman he “loved” and therefore he has the constant urge to kill Katniss.
This brings me to my biggest question: do you think Lucy Gray and Coriolanus Snow were in love or do you think it was all for show?
In my opinion, I think that both of them played their roles to take advantage of one another, but then after the games ended they realized they had feelings for each other. I think Lucy Gray was trying to decide if she could trust Snow, and in the end, they both realized they couldn’t trust each other.
After Snow got the position of Game Maker, he made it his mission to erase all of the footage of the 10th Hunger Games so that there would be no memory of her. That is why when they picked the tributes for District 12 in Catching Fire for the 65th annual Hunger Games, they said that the other woman winner was dead.
Overall, I think the movie did a great job of portraying Coriolanus Snow’s story. It explains why he is evil and why he had always hated Katniss so much in the original Hunger Games series.
Check it out if you haven’t yet!