The first look at The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes offers a glimpse that makes the Hunger Games prequel look more like a romantic drama than a dystopian action adventure. The movie adaptations of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games novels proved to be a huge success, filling a specific cinematic niche by catering to the demand for fantastical young-adult action, and The Hunger Games franchise quickly became something of a sensation, catapulting Jennifer Lawrence to super-stardom in the process. As a result, the franchise's success saw Collins write a prequel titled The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
As a prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes takes place earlier in The Hunger Games timeline. Following a young Coriolanus Snow (played by Donald Sutherland in The Hunger Games and its sequels), The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes documents the future dictator's rise to prominence following his mentoring of a young tribute in the 10th Hunger Games. Following the success of the Hunger Games movies, a film adaptation of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was announced, with Rachel Zegler and Tom Blyth cast as Lucy Gray Baird and Coriolanus Snow, respectively.
An exclusive first look at The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes from Vanity Fair offers a peek at Zegler and Blyth together. However, the Hunger Games prequel image seems to conjure an incredibly different atmosphere from the Hunger Games movies, and without any context, it appears to be a shot from a romance movie rather than a dystopian action film. This indicates that The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes may be incredibly different from The Hunger Games, and that's actually a better sign than it may seem.
How Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes Will Be Different From Hunger Games
As The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a prequel, it will need to strike a careful balance in its tone and its approach to the story. It's important for the prequel to feel independent of The Hunger Games - particularly as it's set roughly six decades prior - to avoid criticisms of unoriginality. It's key that The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes doesn't emulate The Hunger Games, as it will indirectly set up the events of the franchise and therefore needs to be something of a separate entity. Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes may make changes in order to better facilitate this, which could explain the more romantic atmosphere conjured by the revealed image of Lucy and Coriolanus.
That the photo contains no obvious connections to the Hunger Games franchise may actually be a good thing because it indicates that the prequel intends to stand on its own merits. The more romantic air of the first look image indicates a different tone for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, with a focus on the intimate relationship between Snow and Lucy. This would make a change from the more action-based stories of the Hunger Games movies, and would also better fit the prequel's story, which is a more personal look at Snow's younger years.
Though the first look image may seem a bizarre choice for the Hunger Games prequel, it's actually genius. It doesn't hint at Hunger Games characters for Songbirds and Snakes, and it doesn't attempt to create any parallels between the prequels and the existing franchise. In short, the first look at The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes actually distances the prequel from the Hunger Games franchise, which is a good way of setting up the key differences in its tone and story.