DIVERGENT(PG-13)
** (out of 5)
March 21, 2014
STARRING
Shailene Woodley as TRIS
Theo James as FOUR
Ashley Judd as NATALIE
Jai Courtney as ERIC
Ray Stevenson as MARCUS
Zoë Kravitz as CHRISTINA
Miles Teller as PETER
Tony Goldwyn as ANDREW
Studio: Summit
Directed by: Neil Burger
BY KEVIN CARR
Listen to Kevin’s radio review…
After the “Harry Potter” movies hit it big at the box office, Hollywood has been chasing the next big young adult novel adaptation. There have been two more series beyond “Harry Potter” that have struck gold and – fortunately for Tinsel Town – overlapped each other so the constant supply of new tween and teen fans were replenished like patrons on a never-ending cruise ship buffet.
However, in the search to find “Twilight” and “The Hunger Games,” there is a minefield of failed franchises: “Eragon,” “The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising,” “Inkheart,” “The Golden Compass,” “City of Ember,” “Percy Jackson,” “The Mortal Instruments,” “Beautiful Creatures,” “The Host” and “Vampire Academy.” Now, Hollywood (and more specifically Summit/Lionsgate) has pinned its future hopes on “Divergent.”
From its pre-production announcement, however, “Divergent” seems to have been mismanaged where “The Hunger Games” was shrewdly developed. Aside from casting up-and-comer Shailene Woodley, casting veteran Oscar-winner Kate Winslet and securing an identical release date, “Divergent” has been plagued by terrible casting decisions and the inability to cut a coherent trailer.
But populating your movie with the likes of Jai Courtney and Mekhi Phifer rather than Donald Sutherland and Woody Harrelson isn’t the core problem. The core problem is with the story, which makes no goddamn sense in the big picture or in the specific.
The movie takes place 100 years from World War III where Chicago (which is miraculously mostly still standing a century after a devastating war) has been sealed off with a massive wall. Why? I have no goddamn idea. I don’t think anyone else in the film does either. But just go with me. The seclusion and technical inconsistencies of this future is the least of the film’s worries.
Tris (Shailene Woodley) is approaching her 16th birthday, when she is tested to see which faction of society she fits in. Think of it as a Myers-Briggs personality test or Harry Potter sorting hat that slams people into the extreme of a group with little or no middle ground. Fortunately, you have the freedom to choose a different faction from what you test into (which again makes no goddamn sense, considering the society is all about rigidly keeping people into their groups).
Tris tests abnormal, not fitting into any one group. This is bad. This is really bad. She’s known as a Divergent. Why is this bad? Again, I have no goddamn idea. Aside from a very simple and blanket statement that she cannot be controlled into a group (even though the people in this society can choose to be in a different group), the film doesn’t even attempt to answer this question until two hours into it. Even then, the explanation is whisper-thin and so narrow that it only covers one single event rather than a pervasive issue in the society.
I could spend five thousand words explaining why “Divergent” is terrible science fiction from a world-building and high concept stand-point. But I’m not going to because the film itself isn’t worth the effort. Suffice to say, this movie is a painfully dumbed-down version of politics and human nature. It is exactly what you’d expect for a book aimed at 13-year-old kids that has been made into a hopeful franchise targeting the “Twilight” movie crowd.
Aside from world-building and internal logic, there are plenty of other problems with this film. The acting, for the most part, is pretty bad. It’s not “Twilight” terrible, but it’s not going to win any respectable awards. (The MTV Movie Award wins it’s bound to have don’t count, considering the voting block for those.) Even Shailene Woodley, who has impressed many people with her performances in “The Descendants” and “The Spectacular Now,” goes back to her early delivery we saw in the painful-to-watch “Secret Life of the American Teenager.” Sadly, she seems to be taking a Kristen Stewart acting nosedive rather than a Jennifer Lawrence acting uptick.
Even the character of Tris is weak and flimsy. She’s more Bella than Katniss, and the tired cliche of her being an extraordinary person to lead a revolution even though she’s wholly unremarkable in every way is wearing thin in these films. The reason Katniss is a great hero is because she is just an everyday person who rises to the challenge. She was not foretold. She was not thrust into the spotlight because she happened to be special beyond her own knowledge and experience. Katniss symbolizes perseverance and triumph. Tris symbolizes passivity and recklessness.
The internal logic of the story is either too convenient or nonsensical, leaving an array of unanswered questions that should have been addressed: Where’s the rest of the world? What’s outside the walls? Why are all the lawyers so honest? Why are all the farmers so happy? Why would they allow the sister of a Divergent who was killed test others for Divergent qualities? Why are all the factionless people meth addicts with no ambition? Why do they have factionless people in the first place? Why aren’t any of these factionless people Divergents themselves? Why does no one realize the tests are tests that can’t hurt you? Why is Tris afraid of birds? Why can people sprint like Jesse Owens after being shot but never bleed or wince? Why do people magically appear at the most convenient moment? Why do everyone in this film know Parkour? Why do people always wear robes in the future?
I could go on…
Ultimately, “Divergent” is not “The Hunger Games.” It’s no “Harry Potter.” Heck, it’s not even as targeted at least as the “Twilight” movies. The focus of the story is all about the amazing nature of being different, but sadly there’s nothing unique or innovative about this film at all.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Great Review. I had no hope for this movie and will not be seeing it after reading this. You have peaked my interest for the Budapest Hotel movie, I have not even heard of that one before, but it looks interesting.
I really enjoyed reading this review. It is very thorough and provides enough description to evaluate the merits of the movie. It is safe to say that this movie is not living up to the hype but I am sure that it will find its audience with the fanatical 13 year olds.
From the moment I saw the trailer a long back, I was not an inch interested. The trailer is bad which mixes with the acting and dialogue even worse. Surely it might gather some crowd, but I had too much of these “utopian society” that it is almost at the point of saturation.
Your review is right on target. Divergent is a phony story that drags on and on (two hours and 20 minutes), with a confused script, lots of violence in which nobody shows a bruise. The acting is poor, mainly because the actors have not been given anything meaningful to say. Lots of prepublicity will cause many to see it, but as the word gets out, sales will drop.
This movie was terrible. I would rather watch 5 hours of twilight than look at 5 minutes of this film. This 2 hour movie felt like it was really 7 hours long. The plot was so bad, I finished the movie and didn’t know what the hell they were talking about still. This movie left loop holes EVERYWHERE. Just terrible. I give it a 1/10.
I agree with this review when applied to the movie. However, Divergent is completely different as a book. I wasn’t expecting much when I went to see it, as most of these types of movies suck, but I never thought it would this bad. All of your unanswered questions are answered in the books, or asked by the main character herself. You don’t get to see much of Tris’s character in the movie, but she is no Bella, even though the movie does seem to portray her as so. As the series goes on, things become more clear, even by the end of the first book, you know Tris is not completely unique, there are many more divergent besides her, and by the third book you learn that the reason she is so ‘unique’ in her society is because she is normal In our society.
I really hope they stop producing these movies.
This review hits the nail on the head. This movie was horrible. All I wanted was the damn thing to end after about 10 minutes into the movie. Also, why did they have 25 minutes of previews??? (I am not exaggerating about this, I timed it). After about 8 previews I thought to myself: “This doesn’t bode well for the film if they have to distract us with this many previews. The movie must suck.” And I was right. The acting was horrible, the music was out of place and the movie tried to cram too many things in without providing any context. This movie stunk on ice.
Had low expectations expecting it to be a Hunger Games clone and was pleasantly surprised. I went because I have a daughter who loved the book, and found myself enjoying the movie. Some of the questions raised are legitimate, such as the agricultural workers seeming so delighted to be out in the fields picking crops by hand. Other than the factionless, they are clearly the most disadvantaged group and that’s where you would expect a revolution to be most likely to start. On the other hand, you could view the revolution coming from someone who was born into the ruling class to be a clever twist. But the portrayal of the farm workers did feel like a mistake.
The question about why the factionless aren’t divergent is answered in the movie. Divergents can’t be pigeonholed because they have the characteristics of multiple factions, which raises them above the limitations of any one faction and that’s why they’re feared. The factionless are disenfranchised misfits who don’t exhibit enough of the characteristics of any faction to even be categorized. Asking why the two are not the same is like asking why the most talented members of our society aren’t just like our homeless.
I disagree that the story offers nothing meaningful to say. There are parallels to The Incredibles. The faction system is a stand-in for enforced mediocrity. Especially talented people are often ostracized, ridiculed and even persecuted, at the very least encouraged to suppress their abilities in order to fit in, to the detriment of everyone. Preteens and teens struggle with finding their place in the world every day. I’ve seen many people dismiss the movie online because it is clearly designed for the young adult audience, but young adult sci-fi is as legitimate a genre as any.
Comparisons to Twilight are spurious. Twilight lacked any characters to care about, any positive role models, or any positive messages for young women. I will agree this movie isn’t quite in the class of Hunger Games or Harry Potter, but it’s a pretty good movie and the level of negativity I’ve seen about it online is overdoing it quite a bit in my opinion.
“The question about why the factionless aren’t divergent is answered in the movie. Divergents can’t be pigeonholed because they have the characteristics of multiple factions, which raises them above the limitations of any one faction and that’s why they’re feared. The factionless are disenfranchised misfits who don’t exhibit enough of the characteristics of any faction to even be categorized. Asking why the two are not the same is like asking why the most talented members of our society aren’t just like our homeless. ”
That’s not correct at all. It’s fleshed out more in the books, though it barely makes any sense there, either. Although if the movie does not do a good enough job of presenting even that, then it’s a flaw of the movie as well.
The Divergent are people who fit neatly into two or more factions, while the factionless do not fit into any of them. However, there is no test result that presents one with a “negative” result, as in, you did not fit into ANY faction. There is no “factionless” test result. People who become factionless are ones who once belonged to a faction but left because they decided they didn’t fit in, or they went through the initiation phase into a faction but failed. Factionless is not a separate identity like Amity or Dauntless; a person cannot “be” factionless, like it’s another aptitude; they merely “become” part of the factionless by choice (whether that choice is theirs or not). Spoiler alert: The factionless community actually houses the largest percentage of divergent people in the city, since people who have more than one aptitude are more likely to fail initiation into one specific faction or quit because they had trouble adhering to the one rigid lifestyle. Factionless is not an actual identity. It literally just means not belonging to a faction.
Other than the gratuitous profanity, this review is way better than the movie. Toward the end of the movie, I imagined the trio from Mystery Science Theatre 3000 slinging barbs at the screen.