When will people
learn that trying to please everyone pleases no one? Those walking
in cold to “Divergent” will feel bored by the generic plot and
lackluster characters. If you're a fan, it'll feel like a slap in
the face to the source material.
There's a reason the “Divergent”
series was hyped up as the heir to the “Hunger Games” franchise.
While the author's biases (mostly in the form of
anti-intellectualism) hold the series back, talent can help
compensate for a writer's failings or at least help you tolerate
them. And Tris (Shailene
Woodley)
can certainly be compared to Katniss Everdeen. She is another
complex heroine, capable of cruelty and callousness as well as
bravery and heroism. And she certainly doesn't see her love interest
as her perfect knight in shining armor.
But “Divergent” is merely the cowering reflection of what “Hunger
Games” could have been had its filmmakers been just as timid.
My impressions of the movie stem from
only having read the first book in the trilogy, and they have only
helped to deepen what would've been a very unfavorable impression
going in blind. There is great irony, even humor, in this latest
failure to deliver due to the fact that the movie seems to share the
same fear as the futuristic dystopian society it aims to be
pillorying: an almost
paralyzing terror of Tris herself.
Like many other YA adaptations,
“Divergent” takes place in a dystopian (has hope been officially
declared dead?) society where it's members choose which faction they
will belong to for the rest of their lives at age sixteen: Erudite,
who value knowledge and make up the media, Amity, who value peace and
are the counselors and farmers, Dauntless, who value bravery and
comprise the military. Tris's faction, Abnegation, values
selflessness and service and control the government.
Then there are the factionless, who for
whatever reason, have no faction. They seem homeless and/or equipped
with the bare minimum (sometimes not even that) and have the least
desirable jobs, such as janitorial work. When Tris chooses
Dauntless, she soon has to compete with other recruits to earn a
place there-or risk joining them.
The danger increases when Tris
discovers that she's Divergent, meaning that her mind can't be
confined to one way of thinking, which jeopardizes the control that
her society's leaders so desperately desire.
She naturally starts at the bottom of
the ranks and just as predictably rises. This is where the movie
first starts to stumble. Tris is competing with others, some
enemies, some friends, for entry into Dauntless, and failure has dire
consequences. Competition like this inevitably brings out the worst
in people, or at least a bit of their darker sides.
But you'd hardly know it here. Tris
and her friends are always nice to each other, and they never do
anything wrong. Or if they do, they do it because they have no
choice. Naturally, her enemies have no redeeming qualities, and when
they have her in their sights, they aren't allowed to do lasting
damage. Really, the training and all that occurs in general is so
sanitized you almost wonder why anyone is struggling at all.
No one watching “Divergent” can be
foolish enough to think Tris won't survive the first movie at least,
but all the timidity means it that the suspense, and therefore any
excitement, is completely exorcised.
It actually makes a moviegoer yearn for a little projectile vomiting
to liven things up. Where's the
little possessed Regan when you need her?
This removes
all the edge from Tris, thus making her (and everybody else) a lot
less interesting. Hell, “Divergent”
even goes out of the way to show that Tris doesn't want to
have sex with her obligatory love interest just yet.
Shailene
Woodley has done excellent work in the past in films
such as “The Descendants” and “The Spectacular Now,” and this
this should have been her coming-out party, where she was introduced
to the mainstream in all her talent and glory, (again, think Jennifer
Lawrence in “Hunger Games”) complete with a meaty, juicy role to
sink her teeth into. Instead, it bears more resemblance to processed
tofu.
What with this mess and her role as
Mary Jane Watson being edited out of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,”
here's hoping Woodley gets a role worthy of the talent she seems to
possess and hasn't been fully revealed yet. Maybe the upcoming
adaptation of “The Fault In Our Stars?”
Grade: D
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