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West Aspect Story star joins Tom Blyth in prequel movie that exhibits evil President Snow’s origin story
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Rachel Zegler beloved Jennifer Lawrence’s portrayal of Katniss within the unique Starvation Video games movies. However when it got here time for her to craft her personal heroine within the new prequel movie, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, she was extra interested by making a contemporary new character followers might root for.
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“They’re each doing issues to outlive and wanting to assist their household, in order that they undoubtedly have extra in frequent than not, however the issues that make them totally different are massive issues,” Zegler, 22, says in a digital interview from London.
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“Lucy Grey undoubtedly has her apprehensions about violence,” the actress says. However, like Katniss, she’ll do no matter it takes to win over an viewers thirsting for blood.
Songbirds and Snakes, which is now enjoying in theatres, takes place 64 years earlier than the occasions of The Starvation Video games and follows a younger Coriolanus Snow (Billy the Child’s Tom Blyth), the tyrannical villain of the unique collection, as he mentors Lucy Grey Baird (Golden Globe winner Zegler) — a Tribute from the impoverished District 12 — within the tenth annual Starvation Video games.
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Viewership for the Video games — during which two children from every district are plucked to kill one another in a bloody, televised battle royale — is waning. So Snow joins different mentors in making an attempt to assist the contestants be extra watchable.
However as he struggles to comply with his most righteous instincts to assist Lucy Grey, Snow, who will turn out to be the evil president of the fictional nation of Panem, falls below the spell of the villainous head gamemaker Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis).
The movie additionally stars Josh Andrés Rivera (as Snow’s classmate Sejanus Plinth), Euphoria breakout Hunter Schafer (as the long run dictator’s cousin Tigris) and Peter Dinklage (as schoolteacher Casca Highbottom).
Whereas a lot of the advance chatter round Songbirds and Snakes has been amongst followers making an attempt to attract parallel’s between Zegler’s Lucy Grey and Lawrence’s Katniss, the largest distinction between creator Suzanne Collins’ unique YA ebook collection and this new instalment is that the lead of this new story is massive dangerous — Snow.
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Zegler, who turned an in a single day star because of her breakout function as Maria in Steven Spielberg’s revamp of West Aspect Story, says Lucy Grey is nearly an anti-Katniss.
“Katniss is notoriously — and he or she says this to Cinna (performed by Lenny Kravitz within the unique movies) — in opposition to folks liking her. She’s not good at making pals. Lucy is the antithesis of that,” Zegler, a self-proclaimed superfan of all of the books and flicks, says. “Lucy Grey would have tried to present Katniss recommendation on how you can be likable to the overall lots. However I really feel like Lucy Grey has such a constructive perspective in direction of life that she would have been in a position to persuade Katniss that profitable the group over is her finest technique of survival.”
Blyth was in his early teenagers when Collins’ books had been revealed in 2008. He admits the problem of enjoying an early model of Donald Sutherland’s Snow, who within the later movies and books is depicted as a cold-blooded dictator who revels in watching kids homicide each other, was an irresistible problem.
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This iteration of Snow is broke and energy hungry, however a far cry from the murderous tyrant we all know from The Starvation Video games.
“He was an terrible character in these movies, however we get to rewind the tape on him now and take a look at him earlier than he turned so terrible,” the British-born actor says. “On this movie you start to see an arc the place he’s turning into extra of a tyrant-to-be. However I feel what’s so cool and attention-grabbing about having the ability to play him is I acquired to dig deeper into the query of why he turns into like that; whether or not he’s born like that or if he’s a product of his circumstances residing in Panem.”
“We’re not apologizing for Snow; we’re displaying him earlier than he’s turn out to be absolutely shaped,” returning director Francis Lawrence says.
Rivera, who co-starred with Zegler in West Aspect Story, and Schafer play two supporting characters who attempt to attract Snow away from the darkish facet.
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“What’s attention-grabbing about this film is that regardless that you understand what’s going to occur to Snow, you need to consider that he is usually a good individual,” Rivera says.
Followers of the unique saga will discover that Tigris Snow appears drastically totally different on this early introduction. However like Blyth’s model of Snow, Schafer felt “a way of creativity with this model.”
Tigris, who boasts a tiger-like look and surreptitiously helps Katniss’ riot in 2015’s Mockingjay Half 2, will clearly turn out to be a sufferer of her cousin’s cruelty in later tales.
“I need to see some fan theories about what occurred to Tigris,” Schafer says.
For Blyth, probably the most attention-grabbing side in persevering with a four-film blockbuster franchise that has made almost $3 billion on the world field workplace is the chance so as to add one other dimension that charts the character’s descent into darkness.
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“Firstly, I feel he would say, ‘I might by no means be that.’ He nonetheless has love in his coronary heart,” Blyth says.
The ending doesn’t provide any simple solutions.
“I feel should you requested him then, he’d say society must be managed (via violent rule). That’s the crux of the movie: does somebody should be evil to outlive or can they be a ray of hope and get out alive? That’s a giant esoteric query that we get to ask. I don’t know that we get the reply, however we get to ask that query.”
The Starvation Video games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is now enjoying in theatres.
mdaniell@postmedia.com
X: @markhdaniell
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