The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes | 2023 | PG-13 | – 2.6.3

Why is “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” rated PG-13? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “strong violent content and disturbing material.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes a few kissing and hugging scenes, some non-sexual partial nudity, many scenes of young men and women and children being killed in an arena during fights with each other as well as drones crashing into them and snakes slithering over them, two people being shot and killed, many fights and arguments, and some moderate language. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.

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The origin story of Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) and the games that pit young people from different districts against each other in a dystopian setting, forced to fight to the death. Also with Rachel Zegler, Viola Davis, Fionnula Flanagan, Peter Dinklage, Jason Schwartzman and Hunter Schafer. Directed by Francis Lawrence. [Running Time: 2:37]

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes SEX/NUDITY 2

 – A young man and a young woman kiss tenderly in a few scenes and passionately in one scene. A young man and a young woman embrace. A young man and a young woman hold hands. A young woman tries to kiss a young man and he pulls away. A man and a woman hug. Men and women dance in a concert hall.
► A young woman says to a young man that she wishes that they could have had a drink together.
► A young man is shown wearing boxer shorts and we see his bare chest, abdomen and legs. A young woman wears a low-cut dress that reveals cleavage. Part of a young man’s shoulder, chest and abdomen are visible when he gets stitches for a back wound. Young men and young women wear swim clothes and jump into a lake (we see cleavage, bare abdomens and legs on the young women and the young man’s bare chest, abdomen, back and legs). A young woman wears a low-cut dress that reveals cleavage.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes VIOLENCE/GORE 6

 – A young woman in an enclosure breaks a glass bottle and uses a shard to stab another young woman in the throat killing her (we see blood); guards outside the enclosure shoot and kill the first young woman (we see blood on her clothing). A young man is shown hanging from ropes tied to his wrists and with bloody wounds on his head and face (we see that he is still alive later when a young woman kills him with an ax and then cuts him free from his bonds; he falls to the ground with a thud). Many young men and young women fight each other with heavy and sharp implements, slashing and stabbing each other; a woman watching the action from a control room vomits on the floor and we see a glimpse of goo. A few people crawl through a hatch in a door and one person is stabbed in the legs or back when she is half-way through (she screams and we hear a crunch) and then she is pulled back through. A young man panics and spits foam from his mouth as he chases a young woman, accusing her of having done something to him (he is suffering from rabies from a bat bite); he thrashes and falls from a ledge slamming hard onto the ground and he dies (we see some blood and his discolored flesh).
► A young woman with a sword chases two young men and slashes one on the back (we see blood on his shirt later and he gets stitches). A young woman is surrounded by a young woman with a pitchfork and another one with a net that they use to hit her, trying to knock her off a ledge; she is stabbed in the back and the abdomen with the pitchfork and falls off the ledge to the ground below. A large tank filled with slithering snakes is dropped into an arena, the glass shatters and the snakes flow out and cover several people killing them as they scream and writhe; snakes slither around the arms of a young woman as she sings (they do not bite her). A young woman is surrounded by other young people holding weapons and she is struck by a chain and poked with a sharp weapon as she runs away; drones zoom into the area and crash into people and rocks, blowing stuff up. A young man follows another young man into a dark passage and a room where he is held at gunpoint by others; they argue, one man fires a gun and shoots a woman in the back (she falls to the floor), and another man is shot and thrown against a wall by the blast.
► A man drinks from a small vial of what appears to be poison, he thrashes briefly and dies. A young woman drinks from a poisoned bottle of water, coughs a few times and lies on the ground dead; a young man screams in grief when he finds her dead. A young man is sprinkled with poison dust and falls dead.
► A woman screams in a crowd as she watches her husband about to be hanged; we see the man and another man as a table they are standing on falls over and they hang. Young men and young women enter an arena, heavy doors are closed and explosions ring out; people are thrown from the blasts, rubble falls around them as they run and one young man is pinned and we see small flames on his clothing, while others are shot as they run toward an open gate and we hear that 4 people were killed in the attack. A man orders people responsible for a shooting to be found and hanged; we hear guards searching and gunfire bursts in the distance of a scene. We hear birds making what sounds like people’s voices, yelling, and singing in a few scenes. A man shoots at someone running through the forest and we hear a yelp (no one is shown injured); he fires many rounds into the sky as birds swirl around above him.
► A young woman drops a snake in the back of another young woman’s dress causing her to scream and fall to the floor writhing; the first young woman is struck hard in the face and falls to the floor as guards approach her. We hear a woman yelling from inside a train car and the sound of punches or slaps landing, as guards march other people out of neighboring cars. A young man slams another young man against the wall of a transport vehicle and several other young people threaten to kill him; the vehicle is tipped to dump the occupants into an enclosure like in a zoo. Young men and young women are chained to tables in a large room and one young man pulls at his chains and lunges toward a young man. A woman grabs a man as he tries to get onto a stage in a bar, another man pulls the man away from a woman onstage when he tries to grab her skirt and the man punches him several times; several other people fight with punches and throws.
► Two young children watch from the shadows as a man cuts a piece off a body in a street (we see him raise a hatchet and hear a thud as the children turn away, with no blood being shown). Two young children find food in a dark area and a dog snarls and barks aggressively at them until one child scares it away. Many snakes slither in a large tank and a young woman reaches into a pile of the snakes to retrieve something and she is bitten; she recoils and screams, and then falls back off a platform landing hard on the ground where people attend to her and inject her with something. A young man finds a scarf on the ground when he is searching for a young woman, he lifts the scarf and is bitten by a snake (we see bite marks) and he screams. Vultures pick at dead bodies in a few scenes (we do not see debris or matter). Eels swim around in a pool of water. A young man is shown with a wound on his face and eye.
► A young man is punished by a man for cheating and he is sent to a remote district to serve as a peacekeeper for 20 years; we see him having his head shaved and being sprayed with something (perhaps a disinfectant). A young man finds guns hidden under the floorboards of a cabin. A man punches a footlocker and cries in grief and frustration.
► A woman tells a young boy, “Your father is dead.” We hear that a young man was bitten by a bat (we see a festering wound on his neck); he is later overtaken by rabies and foams at the mouth while hallucinating. A man tells a young man, “Cheating will be punished.” There are several references to “fighting to the death.” A woman talks about what it takes to control human beings. A young man talks about someone buying his way into the capital. The children of wealthy families attend a reception and joke about their privilege. A young man talks about the reason for the games being to punish the people for an uprising. Someone says, “Hunger is a weapon.” A young man says that he was so hungry once that he ate a whole jar of paste. A man instructs people to “smile, that’s why we have teeth.” A man tells a woman, “If you’re going to vomit, do it off camera.” A man says that unsolved mysteries tend to drive people mad. A man says, “It’s the things we love the most that destroy us.”
► A man spits something out and it hits a young man in the neck (we don’t see what it is, but the young man holds his neck). Creatures are shown floating in jars of liquid in a laboratory-type setting. A dying rat twitches and screeches on the floor (we see some damage to its flesh).

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes LANGUAGE 3

 – 1 scatological term, 1 anatomical term, name-calling (the dark days, horrific, radical, disgusting, vulgar, clown, out of her mind, ashamed, insubordinate, rebel, savages, treason, swamp potato, anonymous grunt, stupid, useless, gorgeous, songbird, tragic, bad news, mentally ill), exclamations (shut-up, I swear, kiss my [anatomical term deleted], it’s not fair). | profanity glossary |

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes SUBSTANCE USE

 – A man drinks from a small vial (of what appears to be poison) and dies (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details), and a young woman drinks from a poisoned bottle of water and lies on the ground dead. People eat and drink what could be champagne at a reception, a man drinks from small vials in several scenes, a man says that he came up with an idea when he was drunk, a man says for someone to get him a drink, and a young woman talks to a young man about wishing that they could have had a drink together.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – Starvation, proving your worth, patriotism, mentorship, cheating, pride, guilt, treason, order, civilization, banishment, exile, friendship, desperation, hate, war, revolution, hope, survival, making real change, friendship, trust.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes MESSAGE

 – Greed and power are strong motivations for some. Trust is more important than love. People aren’t all bad, it’s what the world does to them.