While the overall performance of the Hunter Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, has yet to fully play out, two things seem to be pretty clear. Critics are not overly enamored with it, while audiences seem to really love it.
Right now, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is the lowest critic scored movie out of five in the still-growing Hunger Games franchise, while it has the highest audience scores. Here’s how it stacks up to the other films:
- The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes – 60% critic score, 90% audience score
- The Hunger Games – 84% critic score, 81% audience score
- The Hunger Games: Catching Fire – 90% critic score, 89% audience score
- The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 – 70% critic score, 71% audience score
- The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 – 70% critic score, 66% audience score
Ah, I remember the days when every franchise was trying to split their final movies in half in order to double the box office, but it often backfired. At least Hunger Games got to make both movies, where YA rival Divergent did not, which is kind of insane.
I also didn’t realize that critics love the first two Hunger Games movies that much. I’m not sure why scores dropped so dramatically for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. The negative critics say it’s dull, overlong, the love story doesn’t work and the movie doesn’t justify its existence, but that does not seem to be what fans think.
Why do they like it? I think many of them just have missed the Hunger Games universe, as the worldbuilding for it is really excellent, and I understand why both fans and the studio want to return to it. I also think this may have something to do with its star Rachel Zegler, who has amassed quite a young fanbase (and a bunch of weirdo YouTuber haters). It feels like she’s on a Jenna Ortega trajectory at this point.
It’s possible the audience score dips under Catching Fire over time. These sort of things do tend to skew higher as those who really want to see the film attend and rate it first, but the overall takeaway is that it appears to be a solid entry on the fan side, even if critics weren’t quite as convinced. But hey, a 60% is still 1% over the line for it to be a “fresh” film.
We’ll keep an eye on the box office, where it seems like it may be underperforming a bit, though it was never going to put up OG Hunger Games numbers and I don’t think anyone should have expected that.
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