Prequels have become much more common these days, thanks to IPs taking over the media landscape. Often, a prequel can feel like an afterthought and a shameless cash grab, but every once in a while, a studio will put out a prequel that completely redefines its franchise. While plenty of IPs have struggled to tow this line (even beloved series like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings have been hit or miss with their prequels), one series has managed to absolutely knock the prequels out of the park, every time: The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games helped create the YA landscape that fans know today, especially in the literary space, and have become something of modern dystopian classics.
The series' lore laid excellent groundwork for further exploration of the events before Katniss ever took on the role of Mockingjay, and so it was only natural that the series' creator, Suzanne Collins, would decide to share more of Panem's history with fans. Where other series have pumped out prequels with little payoff, Collins' work, and subsequently, the work of the filmmakers who produced the movies based on her work, completely changed everything that fans knew about the events of the main Hunger Games trilogy. As far as prequels go, THG has some of the best that have ever been produced, and both The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and Sunrise on the Reaping prove how they can elevate an entire series.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Revitalized The Hunger Games Series
Fans Were Excited to Learn President Snow's Backstory
When The Hunger Games' first prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, was announced back in 2019, the news was met with equal skepticism and excitement: would author Suzanne Collins be able to make good on one of the best franchises of recent memory? What's more, would the film be able to capture the magic of the book? The answer was a resounding yes, with both the novel and the film adaptation being well received to this day.
Ballad's novelty is that it gave fans the backstory of the main trilogy's cruel dictator, President Coriolanus Snow. Not only did fans get to see a whole new side of the ruthless tyrant, many actually found themselves endeared to Snow in a way they never expected; this was helped by the fan-favorite casting of Tom Blyth as a young Snow in the movie. Similarly, fans were taken with Rachel Ziegler as songstress Lucy Gray Baird, and her role in the film helped launch her career to new heights.
One of the most interesting facets of Ballad was that it gave fans the perspective of the mentor rooting for his tribute in the arena; up until this point, the perspective of the books had, of course, been focused on Katniss as the point-of-view character of the series. Fans got to see a new side of the Hunger Games with this story; it also gave them an insight into how the games work, and how they came to be the machine they are by the time of the main series. What's more, Snow is revealed to actually be a key part of developing the rules for the games; he is revealed to have come up with the idea for sponsorships in the games, for example.
The key takeaway for what makes Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes so special as a prequel is that Collins gave herself a near-impossible task as a writer: create a story that allows readers to empathize with a truly evil man, while also never losing sight of the fact that he's evil all the way through. Collins created a story that held a balance and nuance that is rarely seen in any fiction, let alone the YA genre, and the film adaptation's capturing of this dynamicism is what has cemented this story as a fantastic film in an already fantastic franchise.
Sunrise on the Reaping Gave Fans a Much-Requested Story
Haymitch's Games Are Set to Make a Highly-Anticipated Move to the Big Screen
One of The Hunger Games' most beloved characters is Haymitch, Katniss and Peeta's obstinate but loveable mentor in the 74th Hunger Games; his endearing to fans was, of course, helped along by Woody Harrelson's pitch-perfect portrayal of Haymitch in the movies. Sunrise on the Reaping, then, gave readers a look into Haymitch's winning of the 50th Hunger Games, also known as the Second Quarter Quell, in which there were twice as many tributes as usual.
Fans already had the rundown of the events that led to Haymitch winning his games: he outsmarted the Gamemakers by using the force field boundaries of the arena against his final opponent. The greatest addition that this story brought was Haymitch's encounters with his fellow tributes, particularly with Louella, who, upon being killed in the games' opening ceremonies by accident, is replaced by a Capital-created doppelgänger who the other tributes call Lou Lou.
Lou Lou's inclusion is yet another shade of how cruel the Capital really is. All throughout the original trilogy, readers were given allusion after allusion to the atrocities committed by the Capital — what they were doing to Katniss and her peers was proof enough, to be sure. But Lou Lou gave fans of the series another insight into how creative the Gamemakers could be with their methods of torture, and this inclusion serves to further paint out the world of Panem in vivid detail.
The Hunger Games Prequels Don't Just Add Lore, They Recontextualize Everything That Came Before Them
One of the common fan takeaways from the Hunger Games prequels is that Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and Sunrise on the Reaping is that the former serves as a prequel to the first book in the series, while the latter serves as a prequel to Catching Fire. Ballad gave fans a whole new understanding of just why Snow hates Katniss so much: in addition to her threatening his dictatorship, Snow has a personal history with District 12 in his scorned love with Lucy Gray Baird (some fan theories even suggest that Katniss is a descendant of Lucy Gray, given there's no real confirmation that the Covey girl died after her final confrontation with Snow in the woods).
Sunrise, then, not only shows Haymitch's winning his own games back in the second Quarter Quell, but gives fans a whole new insight into just how long Haymitch has been involved with the rebellion. Katniss may have been the revolutionary who was successful in leading the rebellion to overthrow Snow, but Haymitch was involved in trying to bring about his downfall a quarter-century earlier. It would have been easy for Collins to simply give fans a quick and easy rundown of how Haymitch won his own games, but instead, she spends a great deal of the novel focusing on his scheming on a level even higher than his moment-to-moment survival.
In turn, fans didn't just get another rehashing of a tribute in the arena: they got a whole new insight into how Haymitch was working with other revolutionaries like Beetee to try and take down the games from the inside. This information is particularly enlightening when contrasted back to the events of Catching Fire, when their plans finally came to fruition with Katniss, who was otherwise completely in the dark about the plan during her second games.
Hunger Games, The: 5-Film Collection - DVD, BLURAY, Digital HD
What's more, Suzanne Collins has made plain in her interviews that she only writes a story when she feels she has something to say. After fans took a liking to Snow given his own backstory (in which he was still depicted as a cold, selfish person even from a young age), it seemed that Collins wanted to make sure viewers wouldn't forget who Snow really was by depicting just how brutal a dictator he could really be: enter Sunrise on the Reaping, in which Snow's horrific crimes against his people are on full display.
Then there's the matter of relevancy and timeliness. Collins began Sunrise with a series of four different epigraphs, or quotes at the start of a book — an unprecedented move for the series. These quotes were by famed dystopian author George Orwell, English poet and painter William Blake, and Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume; all the quotes dealt with propaganda and authoritarian governments. Collins couldn't have made it clearer what she wanted to say with this story, and her desire to speak to ongoing political events that are relevant to this day speaks to why The Hunger Games has remained eternally relevant, and cemented its place in the canon of dystopian stories once and for all.
No Other IP Does Prequels Like The Hunger Games
Sorry, Star Wars Fans
The Star Wars prequels are back in the cultural conversation in a big way, most likely because enough time has passed now that fans can return to Episodes I, II, and III with nostalgia adding a new shade to the experience. One of the most endearing things about the Star Wars series is that it can have rough edges at times. Certain aspects of the films just haven't aged well, and the continued contention surrounding Jar Jar Binks' inclusion, Hayden Christian Anderson's performance throughout the prequel trilogy, or the flashy lightsaber choreography has kept the series in discourse for decades now.
Other stories in the Star Wars series are equally fraught with debate; fans can't seem to come to a consensus about whether prequel series and the like of The Acolyte, Solo, or The Book of Boba Fett are worth their time. Although, it can't be ignored that the series has had its fair share of wins when it comes to prequels, with Andor, The Mandolorian, and The Clone Wars animated series being among them.
The Hunger Games has the advantage of having far, far fewer prequels to choose from. However, it can't be ignored that THG's batting rate still sits at 100%, according to most fans. Perhaps the deciding factor here is that Collins has still remained at the helm thus far, while the Star Wars canon has introduced many, many authors aside from George Lucas. All factors considered, however, The Hunger Games reigns supreme as the series with the best prequels to date. Fans will just have to wait and see how the Sunrise on the Reaping film stacks up — but if the rest of the movies are anything to go on, things are looking pretty good.
- Created by
- Suzanne Collins
- First Film
- The Hunger Games
- Latest Film
- The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
- Cast
- Jennifer Lawrence, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jena Malone, Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Zegler, Peter Dinklage, Viola Davis, Stanley Tucci
- Movies
- The Hunger Games (2012), The Hunger Games catching fire (2013), The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part One (2014), The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part Two (2015), The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023)