I first heard about this movie when it was announced in…I think it was 2021 or 2022. At this time, I had already read The Hunger Games series and had watched the movies. I liked them well enough and they’re still some of my top favorite movies to watch. However, I didn’t pay much attention to the news of the movie since I was still very much in my Percy Jackson and the Olympians phase and was paying more attention to what Disney was doing. Now that it’s 2023, the official trailer has dropped, and the movie is going to be coming out in theaters this Thanksgiving, I have some thoughts about why you shouldn’t see this movie.
#1: Hunter Schafer is in it playing Tigris
If you don’t know who Hunter Schafer is, he (and I use the pronoun he because Schafer is a biological man) is a LGBTQIA+ activist and trans actor who played Jules Vaughn in the show Euphoria (a show I will never watch for its excessive sex scenes, glorification of drug addiction, drinking, hookup culture, abortion, and the LGBTQ+ crap. Remember the main characters are supposed to be teenagers.) Thanks to his contributions to further confusing and endangering children by fighting against North Carolina’s legislation HB2 (a bill that was meant to protect kids by only letting biologically male students use men’s bathrooms and biologically female students use women’s bathrooms), this nutball was featured in this “21 Under 21” feature of Teen Vogue in 2017. Because I do not support the LGBTQIA+ cult that’s out to brainwash the kids, I will not be watching this movie. Tigris is a main character in A Ballad of Song Birds and Snakes and to completely bastardize her character for the sake of pleasing the trans mob is infuriating. While I am grateful that the directors didn’t make Lucy Gray Baird a trans woman, to replace actual women in movies is incredibly mysoginist. The trans movement has only hurt women. Feminists complain about women’s rights in Hollywood; why don’t more of them complain about this.
#2: It’s being promoted because of sexuality
Apparently, the people promoting the movie can’t seem to wrap their heads around the fact that the main characters in The Hunger Games and A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes are between the ages of 16-18. Major news outlets have been promoting the movie by talking about how while Katniss was so stoic and seemed “asexual”, Lucy Gray Baird “wears her sexuality on her sleeve.”
Um…what?
While in the book, Lucy is much more girly and flighty than Katniss is, to say that Katniss was seemingly asexual was absurd. If you’ve read the books, in a way she was forced to “wear her sexuality on her sleeve” in the form of trying to make it look like she and Peta were madly in love. Lucy – while she didn’t have to do that in the arena – was liked by many of the people of Panem because of her talent in singing and dancing. She even uses her beauty to manipulate Snow so she can escape District 12. However, the thing both characters have in common is they were both using their “sexualities” to survive.
Not only is the statement about the difference between Katniss and Lucy inaccurate to the books, but it’s also creepy. As I mentioned before, the characters are just two traumatized 16-18-year-olds who are just tying to survive and will use anything to do it. The reason why I put “sexualities” in quotes in the last paragraph is because today, when someone refers to a certain sexuality, they just mean personality. Katniss just happens to be very introverted. That’s not a sign that she isn’t straight. She liked Gale originally and later fell in love with Peta. Lucy is more extraverted and uses her girliness to win the crowd. To turn those traits into sexualities is ridiculous.
#3: Rachel Zegler
While I have no doubt that Zegler is talented, I’m not exactly a fan of seeing our favorite Fem-Nazi Snow White playing Lucy Gray Baird. While Lucy does have somewhat of a killer instinct for the sake of survival, she is by no means a raging faminist. The last thing this movie needs is Lucy complaining to Snow about how patriarichal everything is and how horrible it is that a white man gets to mentor her. Thank God though that Zegler can’t promote it thanks to the Sag-aftra strike.
Until next time,
M.J.
The Tanuki Corner 
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