The highly anticipated Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, was released to theaters November 17th. The original Hunger Games trilogy gained a huge fanbase back when it was released in 2008 which only skyrocketed when the movies came out following the success of the book series. In 2020, Suzanne Collins published a prequel focused on the origin story of President Snow, a pivotal character and antagonist throughout the series. Because of the previous popularity, many of the same fans rushed to buy the novel and eventually, after it was announced, tickets to the movie. The newest movie in The Hunger Games series features actors Tom Blythe and Rachel Zegler who both respectively embody the characters of the prequel very well, living up to the expectations fans had for the movie. 

As someone who enjoyed the original series when I was younger, I didn’t know what to expect out of the movie. I hadn’t ever considered myself a superfan, as many of my friends, but I was excited to see what everyone had been talking about on TikTok. The movie is 2 hours and 38 minutes long which in my opinion was just not enough. My attention was always drawn to the screen, never wanting to miss a second of the action. In addition, the actors put on a captivating show. The movie had me rooting for a character whom I always deemed evil in the previous series and even left me shocked at an ending I knew was coming. Overall, this movie went above and beyond my expectations and I highly recommend it to anyone interested.