I must admit that I was a bit surprised when I heard that this film was being released. Having enjoyed the first three books of the Hunger Games series (the main trilogy) and the four books that were made from them, the existence of The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes was something that had slipped by me (and probably many other people as well), so I made sure to read it before the movie came out so that I would not be completely blindsided by the plot. It is perhaps unsurprising that Suzanne Collins would make a prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy given their popularity nor is it a surprise that a movie was made out of it. The question that is worth asking, both for fans of the novel and the movies and for the general public at large is: is this movie any good?

The short answer is yes, this movie is good. Those who read the book will be aware of the general beats of the novel although there are definitely some ways that the book is shortened for the film. That said, at nearly three hours, this film is a long one and the things that are shortened–to give but one example, a large part of the peacekeeping training as well as most of the scenes with the Plinth family, and a few of the subplots relating to the other Academy students. Perhaps the most difficult part of the book for me to accept the reader is made a front and center problem of the movie, and that is the relationship between Coriolanus Snow and Sejanus Plinth. How could these two have ever been friends? Snow is a conflicted person (fitting of the novel’s title), and though he is loyal to the capital, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that his ambitions for success will lead him into evil at the start of this movie. Sejanus, though, both in the book and in the movie, is a total walking disaster, with no tact or discretion or street smarts at all. One wonders if Snow was only nice to him all along because of his family’s wealth, which proves to be a benefit to him, though there are few other motives that make sense.

The acting and casting range pretty widely. As mentioned before, Josh Andrès Rivera does not impress as Sejanus Plinth, though how much is due to the poor material he has to work with and how much is due to his own inability to make him a convincing idealist is unclear. His parents, despite their importance to the mechanics of the plot, are here more cameos than the larger role the novels have for them, which is to be regretted. Other than that, Hollywood needs to stop trying to make Rachel Zegler a thing. She gets prominent billing in the marketing of the film, which is a mistake. When one sees the amount of singing scenes that Lucy Grey is asked to perform, it makes sense that they would want a confident and competent singer with good stage presence, and Zegler fits that bill as someone who looks like she could survive busking in Branson or Nashville if she had to. When it comes to acting as well as general presence within the movie, Zegler doesn’t look fit to survive at all in the arena, and her accent is not particularly good either. The rest of the cast, though, is pretty solid. Tom Blyth owns his role as Coriolanus Snow, showing how the trauma of the games and of his experiences as a Peacekeeper have hardened him into the man who would rise to be the longtime president of Panem. He is charming, conflicted, and convincing as an actor, and this movie could be a star-making turn for him. Viola Davis chews the scenery as the mad Dr. Galt, mentor of sorts to Coriolanus in the cynical ways of the Hunger Games. Jason Schwartzman does a great job as Lucky Flickerman, first ever host of the Hunger Games and beginner of a dynasty of flamboyant presenters. Peter Dinklage similarly plays a compelling role as a decent man who is forever chained to the horror of being the man who came up with the idea of the Hunger Games, though the timeline of how this takes place does not entirely make sense. The first scene of the movie shows a young Snow and his cousin Tigris scrounging for food three years before the first Hunger Games only to be informed that Snow’s father has died in combat in District 12, which makes it unclear how it is that Snow’s father would have given Dr. Galt the idea of the Hunger Games before becoming a great general. That bit of continuity is never made entirely clear.

Even so, there are a lot of aspects of the book that this movie gets down pretty well. It has an analog feel when compared to the digital aspects of the Hunger Games from the original trilogy. The idea of mentors, of audience involvement in the games through making bets and donations, and the experimentations on lifeforms that become famous in the muttations are here in their infancy. Given the strength of the rebellion here, ten years after the Treaty of Treason, it appears that the capital and its people are far more vulnerable than one would expect, though the identity of the rebels and their ability to operate within the capital seemingly with impunity is not made clear. How it is that the nation of Panem managed to survive more than 65 years after this fragile period is a testament to Snow’s strength as a leader, though it must be admitted that other than District 12 and the Capital, we don’t really get a sense of what kept the districts cowed at the beginning of the period of capital dominance after the Civil War that begins the series. The book and the movie both give the viewers plenty to think about and connect to the contemporary world when it comes to the dangers of tampering with creation and the problems of cruelty as spectacle as well as the problems of governing oneself as well as nations.