Movie Review The Hunger Games The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

The Hunger Games The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023) 

Directed by Francis Lawrence 

Written by Michael Lesslie, Michael Arndt 

Starring Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Peter Dinklage, Viola  Davis, Jason Schwartzman

Release Date November 17th, 2023 

Published November 17th, 2023 

Is there a need for another Hunger Games movie? The original foursome of Hunger Games films felt vibrant and alive, a commentary on the cultural moment as the 1% became villains, and the populace approached a consensus about too much wealth. That moment died a death and we've receded back to a place where the rich get richer and the poor suffer to support the ungodly wealth at the top. Into this fray comes a new Hunger Games movie that still feels reflective of the moment in which it is being released but not in the exciting and invigorating way that the original Hunger Games did. 

This new Hunger Games movie seems to support the 1% and have contempt for the poor. The film asks us to sympathize with the personification of the 1% in the original Hunger Games movies, Coriolanis Snow (Tom Blyth). As played by Donald Sutherland originally, Snow is pure malevolence, a scheming villain of the classic, mustache twirling variety. There is no gray area between the good of Katniss Everdeen and the evil of President Snow. The prequel on the other hand, while charting Snow's heel turn, seems to admire Snow as a man of conviction forced into a place of malevolent pragmatism. 

In this telling, Snow isn't evil, he was simply a good person who was betrayed. He's a good guy who happens to have adapted to the cutthroat world around him. He's a poor kid just trying to protect his formerly prominent family from poverty. He's a successful student whose successfully hiding his family secret, gasp, they are no longer rich. Can you believe it? The scandal. It's okay, the Snow family won't be poor for much longer. Corio, as his friends call him, is on the brink of winning a major prize that guarantees financial security and a full ride college education. 

The prize is all but in his grasp until a deceptive Professor, an enemy of Snow's father, schemes to keep Corio from his prize. The prize is centered around the annual Hunger Games. The students in Snow's hoity toity capitol school are being assigned as mentors to the poor district living souls who must fight to the death in The Hunger Games for the entertainment of the capitol. In its 10 year, residents of the capitol are no longer excited for The Hunger Games. The games need something to get people interested again and the mentors are being encouraged to help turn their fighters into spectacles, celebrities that the TV watching elite can root for or against. 

When Snow is assigned a girl from District 12 named Lucy Gray Baird, he's concerned that she will be killed quickly and cost him a chance at the prize. However, Lucy has spirit, she's attractive, and she sings, all of which could make her marketable, if she can survive longer than a few hours in the arena. At the behest of his beloved sister, Tigris Snow (Hunter Schafer), Corio decides to get close to his charge, meeting her train as she arrives and doing his best to endear himself to her so that he can give her tips to survive longer in the arena. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Shazam Fury of the Gods

Shazam Fury of the Gods (2023) 

Directed by David Sandberg

Written by Harry Gayden, Chris Morgan 

Starring Zachary Levi, Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu, Adan Brody, D.J Cotrona, Meagan Good, Rachel Zegler 

Release Date March 17th, 2023 

Published March 20th, 2023 

Just as James Gunn is about to explode the D.C Universe, Shazam Fury of the Gods arrives to recall the Snyder-verse heyday as seems to be coming to an end. Yes, we still have an Aquaman sequel and a Flash movie in our future, but the path being cut in the D.C film universe still appears to have reached an end. Whether that is a good or bad thing is entirely subjective to your feelings about D.C's scattershot personification of superheroes in the movies. Sometimes the D.C Universe is dour and bleak and sometimes the D.C Universe is broad and goofy and nothing D.C has done has married these disparate tones despite the a clear sharing of characters across movies definitively linking the movies together. 

Zach Snyder's vision of D.C's future as a wasteland ruled over by a bitter, out of control Superman still clashes violently with the vibrant, colorful and childlike wonder of Wonder Woman 84 and especially Shazam which leans further into the candy color of childhood with Shazam Fury of the Gods. Where Snyder eagerly drained the world of color, going as far as to make black and white versions of his films, Shazam and its sequel, clearly exist in a coloring book universe of childlike imagination and bright, bright colors. Fury of the Gods even has unicorns, albeit, scary snorting, warrior unicorns, they're still unicorns and that flies desperately in the face of Snyder's self-serious to the point of parody vision. 

Perhaps that is why Shazam was never glimpsed in any of Batman/The Flash's visions of the future. There is no place in that universe for an angst-riddled, slacker, dreamer like Billy Batson. Shazam is the guy who would get too confident and get himself absolutely killed by an angry Superman. That actually tracks with the bleakness of the Snyder-verse, now that I am thinking of it. Evil of the future would totally demolish the young heroes of Shazam Fury of the Gods, a group who still marvels over their own powers and obsess about their superhero names. Well, now that I have talked myself into how the D.C Film Universe actually makes sense, via the likely horrific future death of Billy Batson and his family, let's talk about Shazam Fury of the Gods. 

As we join the story, a pair of women dressed as ancient warriors have entered a museum to retrieve a staff. This staff had been used by the big bad of the last Shazam movie. In that film, spoiler alert, Billy Batson busted the staff on the assumption that breaking it would destroy its world destroying magic. What Billy could not know was that the magic in the staff was all that was keeping sisters and ex-Gods, Hespera (Helen Mirren) and Kalypso (Lucy Liu), from entering the human realm. With the staff broken, the sisters come to Earth, reassemble the staff and proceed to murder a museum full of people. These deaths are never referenced again. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media