Los juegos del hambre: Balada de pájaros cantores y serpientes

I had very high hopes for this film. The book was great, but the movie was horrible. Only Tom Blyth does a good job acting in this film, the rest of the cast... not so much. Rachel Ziegler just isn't a great actress, granted she is a very talented singer and has a great voice, which is put on display in this movie. However, she just isn't a great actress. The film has the worst cast I have ever seen for a spin off of such a successful original series. I put blame on the casting director for that. The movie also came in a bit longer than most of the other movies and kind of felt a little dragged out. Overall, I'm very disappointed.

No matter how faithful a movie is to the book, it can't save itself from the fact that it's unneeded. Backstory to snow is fine if it adds something new to the universe, however nothing new is added here, we get taught everything we knew about the world and get tiny little snips of backstory of the origins of the Hunger Games. For the movies insane long run time, the final act of this film seems like a race to get to the end of the story. The slow paced world building it creates in the first two acts is immediately thrown out for the purpose of reaching that finish line. Unlike the last Hunger Games movies being split into two, this is the Hunger Games movie that should have been split into two. We don't get to the motivations and reasonings behind characters other than a line or two then we arrive at them. Another hour and a half of story telling could have fleshed these characters out and made the ending more meaningful. However we're left with a film that doesn't seem to ever end, masked with good acting, set design and great cinematography. But a film that is messy, long and drawn out only to be shot into a moc 10 speed at the end. Leaving this movie feel completely unnecessary.

As someone who read the book days before seeing this film, I can tell you it should've been in two parts. I did thoroughly enjoy it! However, there are so many things that they left out that I felt were integral to the story. In order to properly see Snow for who he is-a spineless boy who only does things that look good to others-I think they needed to spend more time with the character. I'm not usually a fan of two parters, but this one really should've been. The characters fell flat to me because we didn't get great looks into them.

My boyfriend, who didn't read the book, really liked it and said he felt he understood the characters well enough though. So maybe it's just a me problem.

Because so much of the book is Snow's internal monologue, I know it would've been hard to capture that properly on film, but I think they could've. Also, it's SO much darker in the book, and I think that was necessary for the audience to see.

I will start by saying I don't think it's an 8, maybe a 7.5-7.7 so I rounded up.

However, I went in with low expectations, expecting a big budget movie with a poor storyline but otherwise reasonably watchable. Well, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself hooked! And I daresay it was one of the better Hunger Games movies.

The bad reviews I've read seem to miss the point. This is not a story about the origin of the games, it is not a story about 'Lucy Gray" (even though her name is said about 1000 times)... It is a story about Snow and why he became the psychopath we know from the original stories. I found the not-so-happy ending refreshing and if you enjoy and understand social economic/philosophical dilemmas in terms of human psychology then it adds a notch of appreciation.

Viola, Tom and Peter were excellent in their portrayals. Zegler was fine, a little theatrical but given her background I suppose understandable.

I don't understand the hate. Especially the 1-3* reviews. Like, what were you watching!?

I couldn't wait to see this. I read the book & loved it. But It was honestly the worst movie I've seen in a while. It was so choppy, didn't explain why anything was happening really (everyone with me who hadn't read the book, was so lost - esp towards the end). I was so frustrated. I knew what was going on because I read the book. But I still got confused watching this movie. There was NO chemistry between Snow & Lucy - they didn't spend enough time on developing their relationship. The ending was a rushed mess. Truly Very disappointing. The Only bright spot was Tom Blyth as Snow - he was excellent.