Far be it from me to upset the Young Adult
reading faithful, not that they would care what I had to say
anyway, but after sitting through Veronica Roth's movie
adaptation of her novel 'Divergent', this is a film I could've
skipped. It's not a bad movie, not by any stretch, but
just one I had trouble making any connection with. Let's
just call it a function of old age. I have a young adult
in the house who wanted to see this, so I took him.
Apparently the changes to the novel, especially to the
conclusion, did not please him. On the positive side, I
didn't care for the first 'Hunger Games' either, but found the
second film to be a bit of a revelation, so assuming this one
gets a sequel, which it looks like it will, maybe that will
happen here, for me, as well. I sure hope so because at
least in the sequel the character Tris should be finished with
training. Thank God.
The war was terrible. They always are. And from
what we can see, the only city left standing on the planet
Earth is this facsimile of Chicago. Without getting too
deep into it, the current society is divided into five
factions, and young Beatrice (Shailene Woodley), who is part
of the benevolent abnegation faction, and at this time is the
ruling class, needs to choose a faction that she will be part
of for the rest of her life. All the kids take a test to
see which faction they fit in best, but Beatrice's test
reveals her to be divergent, a free thinker. This is
frowned upon in this society. For real.
Fortunately her test administrator (Maggie Q) tells her as
much and ushers her out the room so no one would find
out.
Now in the choosing ceremony, while Beatrice's folks would've
loved for her to choose her family faction, Beatrice on the
other hand chooses the warrior faction of The Dauntless,
because they look like they have all kinds of fun with their
running and jumping and parkouring and whatnot. Plus
they get to shoot guns and throw knives. Why every
single one of these kids don't choose this faction is beyond
me.
Oh… I know why… because they have to train,
and train, and then train some more. I mean this
incessant training would really, really suck, especially if I
were the soft, un-athletic, slow, weak Beatrice, now calling
herself Tris, but I would soon find that training sucks
infinitely less when there's a really cute guy
around. Say like Four (Theo James) who will be training
Tris and the rest of the recruits. But quite honestly,
he's only really there to train Tris… in the ways of young
love.
Tris needs to get really good really fast, because if she's
not good, she will be drummed out of Dauntless and be
factionless. No one wants that. But here the rub…
if she's too good, then the powers
that be will spy her out as one of the divergent, and that
would be way worse because at least they don't murder the
factionless. Also, while training, because Tris will
train, and train and then train some more, she will get word
that the Erudite faction, led by the completely ice cold
Jeanine (Kate Winslet) has plans to take over leadership of
New Chicago from the Abnegation Nation. Violently.
Now Tris has a lot on her plate. She has to pass her
tests in a way that won't let the world know she's divergent,
she has a boyfriend who is sweating her about her tests
results who she's not sure she can trust, and there is a
conspiracy about to happen that she needs desperately to
stop. The good thing is that she's trained for
this. Oh my… has she ever.
Instead of 'Divergent' maybe a better title for this movie
would've been 'exposition', since the filmmakers went to great
pains to make it clear that I completely understood, without
confusion, exactly what was going on in this world that they
have created. To that end, they succeeded. Man… I
know so much about the world of New Chicago and the factions
and the breakdowns and the political setups that I could take
a test on this and pass with flying colors. I get
it. And if my bonus exam was to discuss the training
regimen required to become a Dauntless member, I'd pass that
too. I will say this about 'Divergent'… there is
absolutely no confusion about anything that's going on in this
film. It's crystal clear. Nothing is left to our
imagination.
So you can probably see where I'm heading with this. A
little imagination isn't a bad thing in some cases. The
minute we see the character of Eric (Jai Courtney), we know
he's up to no good. Because he's an asshole. The
minute we see Jeanine… we know she's part of a larger
conspiracy, because she's cold and calculating and that's what
these types of people do. Theo James' Four and Shailene
Woodley's Tris are so rote in their presentation that nothing
they do could possibly shock or surprise us. They just
do what characters in a movie like this are programmed to
do. While my son was describing the parts of the book
that they altered, those parts actually sounded better than
what they went with, which might've gone a little way in
breaking the lengthy predictable monotony that this movie
ended up being for me.
But of course this is just one man's opinion. Perhaps
Tris's wide eyed adorableness and Four's surging male hotness
is enough for the YA Novel fan out there. I, personally,
needed just a little bit more.
