10 Dystopian Sci-Fi Films Where The State Wins

A surprisingly strong re-entry into the Hunger Games universe, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes winds the clock back to the end of the games' first decade, when audiences were tired of the format and ready to see either rejuvenation or ruin.

In a last-ditch attempt to save the games, a select few of Panem's young elite are given the task of each mentoring a tribute in the games, competing to win a coveted scholarship. Among them is an 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), his family brought to ruin by his once-powerful father's untimely death. Despite purporting to do anything within his power to win - even at the expense of his charge - Coriolanus unwittingly falls for his District 12 tribute, Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), and his interventions to ensure her survival get him kicked out of Panem's affluent Capitol to live as a peacekeeper in the districts.

The film could conceivably have ended on Coriolanus and Lucy Gray reuniting and spending their days loving each other in secret, except happy endings don't happen in this world. Coriolanus becomes the villain, rejecting nature and love and the possibility of ending the hunger games, and accepts his inheritance as the heir to the games' bloody legacy, paving the way for him to become a tool of the state, and ultimately its face - the Big Brother of Panem.