Not every prequel is redundant! ‘Hunger Games’ is proof

Not another prequel! In a blockbuster landscape in which the same stories are expanded and renewed for years, told from the beginning and exploited to the maximum from start to finish, is there a need for a new prequel to what is already known?

Marvel’s universe of superheroes, which is difficult to follow if you haven’t at least seen the series’ associated spinoffs, currently serves as a cautionary example of oversaturation. The new film “The Marvels” received mixed reviews and achieved the worst box office performance for a Marvel film to date. A turning point?

Bombastic entertainment consisting of colorful computer images and with a diverse cast as a progressive figurehead may no longer be enough for the audience. Perhaps the story needs to be told again in a more compelling way, in a smarter, more contemporary way. Just like in ‘The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’, a big positive surprise of this cinema year.

The awkwardly titled film is set some 60 years before the events of the first four parts (three of which were also directed by director Francis Lawrence). The world of Panem is slowly recovering from the civil war between the wealthy capital, where the first skyscrapers are growing, the Capitol, and the suburbs, which become poorer as their numbers increase.

The annual “Hunger Games,” which the Capitol imposed on the losers of the war, is actually still in its infancy. The fights to the death between the tributes from the districts are not yet a perfectly staged media spectacle, but rather a slow revenge ritual. The cruel game master Dr. Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis) in a blood-lined dress goes over the top for her ratings; The gladiatorial spectacle is moderated by cheap sleight-of-hand Lucretius Flickerman (Jason Schwartzman), who also announces the weather.

The film’s retro-futuristic set design is particularly successful. Instead of sleek, gray bunkers and generic airships, there’s an asynchronous but coherent mess of 1940s technology and facial recognition drones. It is clearly a world under construction and a young, ambitious man, the son of a fallen general, wants to succeed and restore the lost family fortune: Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), the future president of Panem.

Before they are admitted to university, an unpleasant surprise awaits him and his fellow students: they have to work as mentors for the tributes. Of all people, the upstart Snow (family motto: “Snow lands on top”) receives the supposedly worst fate from the embittered Dean Highbottom (Peter Dinklage) – a young woman from the poorest District 12. But Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) does not sing only wonderfully the well-known song “The Hanging Tree”, but also knows how to hold its own with (and against) snakes.

Jennifer Lawrence became a Hollywood superstar with her role as Katniss Everdeen. Now the next generation takes the stage with flying colors. Newcomers Blyth and Zegler (Maria in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story”) embody with fresh freshness the couple who must first survive and in the process learn to love each other. But the focus is clearly on Coriolanus and his formative years in which he closed his heart.

Fortunately, “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” is more “Batman Begins” than “Star Wars: Episode I.” The prequel is divided into three acts, only one of which deals with the action-packed “Hunger Games.” The rest of the ultimately overlong 157 minutes is a character study about the rise of a man who wants good, but creates evil – and becomes a dictator.

Some things seem a bit contrived, like when Coriolanus has to enter the ring himself to get his best friend out. But these are forgivable, almost theatrical moments in a film that takes its characters and subject matter even more seriously. The perspective of the later antagonist is narratively appealing. And currently. Of course we know that this fairy tale will not end well, it is not the time for revolutions from below. This makes the film more disillusioning, more mature, a dystopia for adults.

The game director wonders why the ‘Hunger Games’ even exist. Only at the end does Coriolanus know the answer: Because the whole world is an arena that shows us who we really are.

“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”: in theaters November 16.