The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

I know nothing about the books but watched this today and came out with mixed feelings. Rachel Zegler was very good. She had a amazing voice. Maybe her choice as Snow white isn't so bad lol

The first and second act was interesting but kinda lost its way in the third act. I didn't really follow the rationale of some of the characters decisions which imo made it really clunky in the closing act.. The movie was entertaining enough with sparks of the original but no where near as impactful nor effective. I guess this being a prequel does make it a little unfair as a comparison. 6/10 imo.
 
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Very mixed reviews coming through and its the franchise's lowest "preview" earnings so far with its near $60m being just 50% of the previous lowest earner. Zegler's vocal talents get good reviews but not much else about her acting abilities, likely due to story or direction rather than a lack of talent I'd suggest -

Time - "This is a movie stuffed with too many characters and, sadly, none of them are played by Jennifer Lawrence who was the best feature of the earlier entries....................... Zegler is charming, but no single performer can carry a movie this unwieldy."

Rolling Stone - "The Ballad of Songbooks & Snakes is really about the slow, methodical making of a monster. This is another origin story of a villain, given the same treatment that Darth Vader, Hannibal Lecter, and many, many other recognizable big bads of past pop-culture touchstones."

Vanity Fair - "Songbirds is a gloomy sit, but it is also confident entertainment, a studio cash-in that justifies its making through thoughtful applications of tone and texture."

New York Times - "Compared to Jennifer Lawrence’s stoic Katniss, Zegler’s Lucy Gray looks and acts like a meringue — she’ll drizzle sugar all over Snow to save her life."

The Guardian - 1/5 :eek: - "This movie finally ties itself into various knots to prefigure the later world of Katniss, but the time to end the Games came long ago"

Variety - "[Zegler's] songs are the highlight of a dark thriller that’s half an hour too long and frustratingly unclear in the final stretch. Then again, Hollywood has long since decided that audiences like their blockbusters bloated, and “Ballad” is but the latest to over deliver."

Empire - 2/5 - "Best described as an adaptive exercise in cinematic skim-reading, returning director Francis Lawrence delivers a disappointingly edge-free and largely superficial villain origin story."

The Independent - 2/5 - "[Zegler] is pure theatre kid, dressed in a dainty, fairy gown with a freshly moisturised face; the rest of the tributes all look like baristas who’ve just been slammed face-first into a cow pat. It drains the games themselves of any intrigue."

Most of the reviews seem to lament the same thing - The idea is good (the rise of Snow) but the implementation is poor - where it takes the "down and dirty" world of later films and applies a "Yassify" filter to them (I had to look that up, its a beauty filter), which strips the film of any sense of reality that the originals had.
 
Worst is the strike interview. People there living day to day on crumbs and she made it all about her lol.
Well it's pretty weird to watch interviews of an actress whose movies you don't watch

I found this short video which seemed fine:

Warning, contains mild swearing:

I assume that's not it as that seems like a video she made, not an interview
 
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@VincentHanna - I believe it's comments such as.............


Which come across as very Me, ME, MEEE! during a strike which effected people far worse off financially than her etc. She later released a video walking back that attitude once her PR team got involved, which I think is the one you posted.

Outside of that Strike video there are many more surrounding her Snow White casting which rankled lots of OG Snow White fans, where Zegler came across as someone who hated the original (Prince was a stalker etc) and wanted to the original changed to match her world-view (its not about finding True Love, it's about her being a leader etc). Now, in reality she had absolutely nothing to do with writing the script/story for the remake, so again that narcissism of "I wanted......I changed.......We wrote.........." etc over something she has no control over puts her across very badly to fans on top of her disliking the original.

I very much doubt the reaction from most would have been so negative about her specifically, if she'd been full of praise for the original but said that Disney had updated this version for modern times and the writers had come up with a really good story which should make the OG fans happy and bring in new fans too - but that isn't what happened.

Sadly, she's a talented actress and great singer whose very publically abrassive and narcisstic attitude is starting to rub too many of the "General Public" up the wrong way and its already effecting her "stardom" with low Box office everywhere she goes, and that places her future career at serious risk unless she decides to stop antagonising the people that pay her wage - or she sticks to her guns and disappears in a few years when no studio will risk a potential flop by hiring her.
 
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Nice to a movie starring the insufferable Rachel Zegler bombing hard - get in the bin with Amber Turd and Brie Larsen.
 
This is doing better than expected (but not compared to the previous films) at the box office, hitting over £137m worldwide in its first week (Friday to Friday) and more than likely it'll be $150m+ worldwide by the end of today due to a stronger than expected domestic US box office. Internationally, China has taken a bit of a back seat with this one and its mostly European countries its doing well in.

Based on the publicised budget of $100m I'd say this one will make money, but probably not a lot, and nowhere near as much as the studio would have liked either.


***EDIT*** - It made $200m with an absolutely amazing (compared to everything else in the cinemas right now) domestic Box Office, dropping only 35%-ish in the 2nd weekend compared to its first and thats a relatively weekly small drop compared to everything else right now (The Marvels dropped over 80% over the same 1st to 2nd weekend etc) .
 
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