Movie Review: Was the Movie Better than the Book?

A movie review of A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

Movie: 4/5 stars

Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes… The movie: should you watch it?

Before you get all settled in, make sure to check out my book review of Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes before reading this blog, because remember! The book is always better than the movie. 

A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins was a highly anticipated movie for 2023. Since coming out, the movie has grossed over $98 million.

Now, this isn’t surprising because TBSS is the prequel to the bestselling series, The Hunger Games.

The Hunger Games has been a fan-favorite dystopian series for over a decade, and new content is exactly what any die-hard fan would want.

If you don’t know anything about The Hunger Games, check out my last blog! It’s filled with summaries, descriptions, and explanations of all things Hunger Games.

Without further adew, let’s get straight into it. 

Overall

Instead of breaking the movie down into plot, themes, and characters – I wanted to start with my general thoughts on the adaptation. 

I’m not a huge fan of book-to-movie adaptations. I think it’s almost impossible to do a book justice on the big screen. 

Even if the movie or TV show is fantastic, some bits and pieces will ultimately get left out. 

Books allow us to see things that movies don’t by putting us inside the characters’ heads. A movie changes without constant narration and thoughts. 

Check out my movie adaptation review for Red, White, and Royal Blue to hear what I thought about that adaptation. 

Overall, I loved this movie. Sitting in the theater in my Effie Trinket cosplay, I was reminded why I loved the Hunger Games so much when I was younger. 

As soon as the movie started, it was easy to see that changes were made and scenes were cut out. However, every change was done tastefully.

One con is that we lost a lot of the early introduction scenes. 

The beginning of the book heavily relies on Snow’s narration, so without it, the book felt like it was missing information. 

Adapting books to the big screen is hard, especially because dystopian books are dense and detail-oriented. 

Authors add so many small details and elements that sometimes won’t transfer into a movie because if the directors added every single detail, it would be days long. 

A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is over 400 pages. The movie was about 2 hours and 30 minutes. 

If the movie was any longer, I would’ve gotten bored. 

The change that I noticed was how sped up everything was. 

Speed

The book is split into three parts: before the games, during the games, and after.

The movie followed the same three-part structure, and each one moved fast. Very fast. 

As soon as the movie started, I noted what scenes and details were cut out of the movie, and I think it mostly worked. 

My biggest problem with the book was that it was a slow read. Collins paid so much attention to detail that I thought my eyes would dry up from reading. 

However, in the movie, from the start, we were moving quickly and steadily through the plot without the extra descriptions. 

For example, in the book, the first part lasts about a week, while in the movie it only takes place over a day or two. 

I did like that they shortened things, but it took out most of Snow’s early characterization. 

By speeding things up, we miss the transitional fluff scenes. 

While filler scenes are sometimes unnecessary, they help establish characters, relationships, and themes. 

We don’t see Snow struggle with poverty. We don’t see how afraid he is of Dr. Gaul. And we don’t see him fall in love with Lucy Gray.

Now, let’s get to my biggest problem with the movie: Lucy Gray and Snow’s relationship. 

Relationships

In the book, there are dozens of scenes where Lucy Gray and Snow quickly fall for each other. 

The book included multiple build-up scenes to The Games where Lucy Gray and Snow’s relationship grew. 

However, in the movie, we miss most of those scenes. Since the first part of the movie was shortened, we only get two or three of Lucy Gray and Snow interacting. 

Because of this, I found their relationship didn’t seem as intense or real. I felt like they didn’t really have feelings for each other, especially towards the end. 

The final part of the book is when Lucy Gray and Snow reunite. In the book, it’s an exciting reunion filled with kissing and love declarations. 

In the movie, it felt a lot less romantic. Movie Lucy Gray was more hesitant and restrained with Snow, which detracted from their romance. 

Her hesitance to trust him made it seem less likely that she was head-over-heels for him. 

I know that romance isn’t the main aspect of the book, but their relationship is extremely important to the plot. 

In the book, Snow is ready to throw everything away to be with Lucy Gray.

Snow’s love, or maybe his urge to control her, makes him so dedicated to help her win the games. 

In the movie, it doesn’t feel as big. 

I think that removing a lot of fluff and less high-stakes scenes prevented the viewer from seeing the relationship develop between the two. 

Narration

Narration and voice are hard to transfer over when making a book into a movie.

One of the main reasons that I like books over movies is voice. 

When reading a book, you get insight into the character’s mind.

In the book, Collins relies heavily on narration and Snow’s thoughts to push us through the book. Almost half of the book, if not more, is filled with Snow’s inner monologue. 

This is probably where the movie lacked the most, in my opinion. 

Snow’s narration in the book is important because we see how his thoughts contradict almost all his actions. Without it, the viewer wouldn’t know how calculated and self-motivated he is. 

This changes Snow’s character a little because he doesn’t come across as selfish or manipulative. 

I need to emphasize, that as hot and sexy as Tom Blyth is, Snow was clearly a bad character from the start of the book. But, without his narration and the distracting face of Blyth, movie Snow gained a lot of sympathy and appeal. 

Another overall

I didn’t want to get too deep into every difference because I really liked the movie. Despite the changes, I think this can be considered a good adaptation.

For adaptations, I’m mostly concerned if the changes affect or change the plot negatively. 

For example, in my post about Red, White, and Royal Blue, we see how the alterations to the characters and plots changed the overall movie for the worse. The plot and the characters were very different, so it didn’t feel like a representation of the book. 

However, in this movie, I thought each change was tasteful and done out of necessity. While watching, there were no moments where I was wondering ‘why did they do this.’ 

When turning a book into a movie, I think this is the most important thing to consider, because if you don’t, you lose the book’s integrity. 

A common discussion I’ve been hearing is that people think they should’ve added ten minutes to each part of the movie, making it three hours.

While I think the movie could’ve been longer, I was also satisfied with its original length. It’s hard to keep everything engaging and interesting when you start going towards three hours. 

So OVERALL again, I give this movie a 4/5 stars, and if you remember from my last post, I gave the book 3/5 stars.

So, does that mean I think the movie was better than the book? Well, I definitely cannot confirm or deny because that would ruin my cred. 

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