Analyzing Evil: President Coriolanus Snow And The World Of The Hunger Games

Hello everyone and welcome to the one hundred sixty-first episode of Analyzing Evil! Our feature topics for this video is Coriolanus Snow and the World of the Hunger Games. I hope you enjoy, and thanks for watching. If you have any feedback or questions feel free to let me know below!

The song in this video was provided by CO.AG

#hungergames #movie #evil

[clarapilier]

The most satisfying thing about rewatching The Hunger Games is knowing that President Snow was going through it since the moment he heard the name Katniss.

[hxllxwpxint.]

In an interview with Donald Sutherland (the actor for President Snow), he talks about how he purposely approached playing the character as not evil, but a pragmatic leader trying his hardest to hold together a fragile nation in a broken world using every tool at his disposal. That makes an incredibly compelling villain because we then understand he is not doing things for the sake of evil, but because he genuinely believes it is the right thing to do. Even in the end, when he knows he is going to die for his crimes, he does not apologize for what he has done, he apologizes for what Katniss lost. "We both know I'm not above killing children. But I'm not wasteful."

[cowboycurtis]

I love when Katniss shoots Coin instead and Snow bursts out laughing. It's like he's saying "She did it, the absolute madwoman!" Even getting torn apart by the mob, he dies with glee.

[TetsuShima]

I like the fact Snow has a passion for growing roses, being that a reference to Stalin's love for gardening. It shows that totalitarian leaders, despite being monsters, still have normal hobbies

[presidenttogekiss]

I think the idea of Coin is that she viewd Panem as rotten not because of how horrificly optessive it was, but because the wrong people (aka not her) were in charge

[PristineMess]

The fact that throughout Songbirds and Snakes Snow has so many chances to choose to be good infuriates me. He's got so many people around him he cares about urging him and making sure he knows that he can be a good person despite his past and what he's been taught by the Capitol, like Tigris and Lucy Grey, and yet he still falls to his selfishness and keeps making choices to further himself and Panem just makes me hate him more. Suzanne Collins is such a good author, I'm so glad she made these books!

[jrgenvellesen]

Donald Sutherland was a great casting choice for Snow. A truly memorable performance, both sinister and affable to the point you can see him as a charismatic leader and a cruel tyrant.

[iamapancake]

“It is the things we love most that destroy us.”

Snow is such a great villain. He’s really the embodiment of the quote from the Dark Knight: “you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

[sobekmania]

The writing of Hunger Games feels so connected to reality because what happens in the books is very emblematic of how warfare and revolutions work in real life. Snow and Coin follow similar paths: they start off well, and power is placed in their hands for valid reasons. Regardless, they both gradually begin to fall prey to the desire for more power, leading them to instill pain and terror across Panem for their own benefit. It doesn't matter how good or righteous the cause is, because power can always fall into the hands of someone who ends up craving more of it. The French Revolution is a good example: the people revolted against their lavish, unstable monarchy by dethroning and executing the monarchs, but the wrong revolutionaries gained the upper hand and used their power to execute anyone who opposed them. It's a tale as old as time, and Collins writes it perfectly.

[TetsuShima]

It was quite refreshing the revelation that Alma Coin, the leader of the revolution, was also an evil person like Snow with her own selfish goals. Unlike other stories like the original Star Wars trilogy, Coin gives a much more credible and realistic depiction of a revolutionary leader, mirrowing the perverse personalities of Robespierre and Lenin.

[ShaDHP]

At last. One of my favorite irredeemable villains. Apart from President Coin, he is the most cruel and despicable individual of the Hunger Games. I love how much fun he has being so vicious and the style and presentation he had to himself. I always look to him when writing an authoritarian antagonist.

[mercuriology]

personally his relationship with Lucy is something interesting to me, because thats as far as “love” that Snow can feel. however the movies fail to show, how he treated lucy in his inner thoughts. the way he talks about her in the books is honestly very disturbing, when she sings about her ex, he was very mad, because in his mind she was “his girl”. he was extremely possessive of her, and wanted to own her. i think this has to do a lot with his background, he grows up as a person, in a world full of the richest people in the country, being told that he needs to keep the family name. He feels a sense of ownership towards her, he cannot love in a selfless way, like Katniss and Peeta do with each other. They are both different types of people, he wants to have control, while she is very free spirited. not to mention that at the end of the book, he thinks that his relationship with her "made him weak".

[danielsantiagourtado]

"Fear does not work as long as there is hope" one of the Best villains

[EmilyAlton-qm]

I honestly love how Suzanne Collins intentionally left what kind of extinction event led to Panem vague. It could have been famine, it could have been war, it could have been a global flood, it could have been climate change (in my opinion, all four are viable, especially the flood, considering how the map of America/Panem looks slightly smaller than it does in real life). We may never know what led to the destruction of the rest of the world, or how North America survived, but it sure would've been one hell of an extinction event.

[eldenlion]

The thing I like most about Snow is that he wasn't what you'd expect when he was cornered, he didn't cower or try to cut deals, he accepted his fate, and just like Roger Smith once said, he didn't win, but he could spoil, so he spoiled Coins victory on his way out 😂😂

[syco]

Pretty sure hunger games is not set in an alternate timeline but 300 years in the future after earth suffered an ecological collapse

[JMac]

I think the reason why Snow was unable to develop much empathy for the people of the poorest district is because he was in a position of power. He was encouraged to lord his authority over those people. Also, may have been sociopath. He looked like he was enjoying most of his activities

[Treyvah]

I know I wrote an article-long comment before about Snow, but one thing to also know about him. You know how in the books he says that he and Lucy Gray were having their own Hunger Games, and how in at least the film he realizes that the whole world is an area? That is the point of the series of three books, and their four other film adaptations: that the Games are just a symbol of the oppressive violence of entrenched power. And what happens in the third book and fourth movie of the series? When the Capitol is being invaded again by Rebels, Snow turns the entire Capitol into one great arena: where he releases Mutts that have human DNA into the sewers and in all other places.

It's the last ditch effort of a madman, and a spiteful one. He basically took what Tigris called "bomb time" in the novel when he and her like so many others were caught in the Capitol Bombing of the First Rebellion, internalized it, then internalized the Game he found himself and Sejanus in, that he extended to his time with Lucy Gray in District Twelve, and not only improved on the quality of the cruelty of the Games as a Game Maker himself under Doctor Gaul's teachings but expanded throughout the Capitol. Panem was already a Hunger Game but now the Capitol was explicitly so: a vast arena dedicated to one man's lust for power, fear of losing that power, and inflicted his pain on generations culminating into make the whole city a death trap. It was beautiful, and horrible all at the same time even *before* The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes existed, and it is more all the more terrifying and fitting after Collins made it. Snow really was a product of his birth and his culture, and boy did he ever come back to bite all of Panem.

[jalen]

"Fear does not work as long as there is hope" - President Snow

[rayn]

RIP Donald Sutherland, the perfect actor for such an iconic role