Movies News Talk
Allegiant follows Tris beyond the Frange, outside Chicago's walled limits, to the Bureau of Genetic Welfare, a shrouded metropolis kept from the world. Four enlists for military activities for the new society while Tris discovers fresh allies and direction. But like Katniss Everdeen's path in *The Hunger Games: Mockingjay*, Tris finds more truths to be unearthed and that the resistance she has been fighting for is faulty.
Apart from a basic recounting of the story, *Allegiant* is seen as boring with clumsy pace and adds too many complex story pieces that fail to feel coherent in the end. Moreover, *Allegiant* pits one character against the other in a haphazard manner, producing unconvincing and overcrowded with artificial CGI sequences lacking true stakes or immediacy. Although the divisive *Allegiant* turned out to be the franchise's demise, the poor cliffhanger did not excite much interest for viewing the second half of the story regardless.
Following the events of the first movie, *Insurgent* zips in on Tris and Four, who are on run when Erudite stages a coup meant to bring about the total collapse of the faction system and continuous shifting allegiances. The film takes the heroes into the conflict that would expose secret truths about the reality they have been offered and introduces Evelyn, the leader of the Factionless elements of society.
Viewers are given a peep into the inner workings of the surviving factions—Amity and Candor—along the course of the movie. Although this benefits the original *Divergent* books, it scarcely adds anything significant to the movie since the plot starts to collapse from this point on.
Under Neil Burger's direction, *Divergent* opens the series with introducing the audience to Tris, the main character and her epic trip. The film is set in Chicago's post-apocalyptic remnants, where the whole population is split into several factions depending on their aptitudes and means of best service for society. Tris finds she is Divergent, a personality type not suited for any of the preordained factions, when testing for her own faction, nevertheless. This helps her to uncover a major plot inside their culture.
Fundamentally, *Divergent* is about individual and collective identity, and how the latter is sometimes reinforced at the expense of the former—true in the case of Tris, who wants to live out a life larger than socially allowed. This is an innovative arrangement for this trip, but as critics noted the irony, the film itself fits YA clichés and presents an annoyingly homogeneous approach of the genre. Though Shailene Woodley and Theo James give excellent performances and the idea is intriguing, *Divergent* does not stand out.
Although the franchise as a whole is mostly considered as a failure, opinions about which *Divergent* film is the finest varies. Inspired by Veronica Roth's explosively popular YA book series, the *Divergent* trilogy is set in post-apocalyptic Chicago, in the wake of a battle separating society into five factions. At the core of the narrative is Beatrice, or Tris (Shailene Woodley), who satisfies the much used cliché of "the chosen one," which is then somewhat undermined over the trilogy by a number of turns.
Reflecting the ideas of authoritarian control and the danger faced by those who dare speak out against the system, *Divergent* tracks in the footsteps of its more subtle YA contemporaries like *The Hunger Games* and *The Maze Runner*. Still, the *Divergent* films are best understood as lackluster and inconsistent as they never grabbed on viewers or critics. Though *Divergent* remains an unfinished series, there were obviously great ambitions for what it could be. Looking at the franchise overall, though, there are some shining areas as well as indicators of where mistakes occurred.
Although the *Divergent* book series hasn't always had the best reviews, reading the books 11 years later exposes several problems and doubts. Though much loved, the *Divergent* series has never reached the same heights as other young adult books, most notably *The Hunger Games*. Although the show is somewhat well-liked, it has not gotten the same praises and viewership. Though it has themes, *Divergent* is an interesting narrative with certain defects.
Though the books are an interesting and captivating read, it is rather clear that the series and several of its characters have some fundamental flaws. Many readers have been somewhat let down by the shallow character development as well as some of the book's issues. Some viewers could have considered the series to be somewhat predictable and could have also found them to be rather challenging to relate to. Some find the series to be somewhat oversimplified and devoid of the subtlety of other books in this genre.
Though the inability of the *Divergent* films to reach their end was viewed as a big loss, *Mortal Engines* was released as an interesting new YA franchise that fell short of pasting past. Likewise, *Ender's Game* performed poorly and had any further ambitions for its narrative to remain unfeasible dashed. Naturally, there are also other achievements to contrast *Divergent* with. Though they did not become as well-known as *The Hunger Games*, the *Maze Runner* movies attracted a loyal following to enable them to complete their whole story.
Like many of these YA adaptations, the *Divergent* films descended into a similar trap whereby the directors lacked a strong grasp of the original content. They had a decent enough beginning point and rights to a YA novel series with an inherent following. Still, there was insufficient thought paid to whether the narrative and its ideas fit a live-action film. Many of these weaker YA adaptations are thus hampered by relentless exposition and poor world-building, which makes the filmmakers seem as bewildered as the viewers.