Divergent diverges not very far at all...

Guys, how long has it been since I wrote a movie review?  Since The Great Gatsby I think. Wow, that's a long time.  Probably because I hardly ever see movies in the theatre anymore.  But I did last night.  Saw Divergent with my good friend Mike.  We were both inspired to see the film after we read this article about the "rape scene" in the film (in the interest of accuracy, it's not exactly a rape scene).  Aside from that article and one other, I literally knew nothing about either the books or the movie--nothing about the plot or the themes or the characters.

So I came to the movie as an almost entirely clean slate.  And the overall reaction?  It was pretty good.  But it had a lot more potential than it actually fulfilled.

Quick summary (there be spoilers ahead), for those who want it:  Post the traditional "devastating war" society has once again withdrawn behind a great big wall that shields them from the mysterious "other side."  To maintain peace after said war society was divided into five "factions" which each are built around a specific characteristic: Amity (they're nice), Abnegation (they're selfless), Erudite (the smarties), Candor (totes honest), and Dauntless (brave).  Each faction is in charge of certain aspects of life that suits their strengths.  At 16, after taking a test which supposedly tells you in which faction you belong, you then get to decide which you will belong to for the rest of your life notakebacksforever.  Enter Beatrice "Triss" Prior, born Abnegation, but super conflicted cause she just doesn't naturally let people take advantage of her.  This is reinforced when she takes the test and, instead of neatly fitting into one faction or another, qualifies for three: abnegation, erudite, and dauntless.  This is known as being "divergent" and is apparently real bad.  At the ceremony she makes the difficult decision to abandon her family and join Dauntless (faction over blood so she's basically leaving them behind forever).  Having joined Dauntless she enters into a rigorous training program because the Dauntless are the police force.  Smaller and weaker than nearly everyone else, she struggles to keep up during the first, physical phase of testing.  But in phase two, focusing on mental training, she suddenly shoots ahead of everyone.  It is here her "divergent" qualities emerge as she is able to deal with the mental testing far too easily.  But this is also dangerous, because the better she does in the tests the more evident it becomes that she is divergent....and oh my gosh, the bad guys (Erudites...because everyone knows that heroes are strong and villains are smart) are hunting down divergents cause they're dangerous...because reasons.  Obligatory Love Interest (hereafter known as Eyebrows and Lips because his real name is equally stupid) teaches her how to beat the tests like a true dauntless, however, and she manages to pass her final test undetected and graduate from initiate to official Dauntless.  Just in time for the climactic fulfillment of the evil Erudite plan...which is to drug all the Dauntless into mindless drones who will obey the Erudite's orders to go massacre the Abnegations...because no one can stand those selfless bastards anyway.  But handy!  When you're divergent you're also magically immune to the drone drug!  So Triss and Eyebrows and Lips (who is a sort of...intentionally cultivated divergent?  it's not clear) break away, shoot some people, get captured, Eyebrows and Lips is taken away by Darkest Timeline Kate (Winslet), but Triss is saved by Action Hero Ashley (Judd), also known as her mother who turns out was born a dauntless.  There's fighting and Triss rescues Eyebrows and Lips and together they save the day and then run away with a few friends outside the wall into exile to await the sequel where they'll, no doubt, lead a rebellion/revolution. (end of spoilers)

Shailene Woodley plays the main character, Beatrice (shortened to Triss early in the film).  Ms. Woodley also played Alex King in 2011's The Descendants, which you may know as a movie that I absolutely adore.  This was the only other thing I knew about the movie and I'll admit that it was a big draw.  She had done an incredibly good job as the struggling but ultimately good daughter in The Descendants and really impressed me.  And she did an equally good job in Divergent.  Triss could very easily be ruined in the translation to the big screen, becoming one dimensional and irritating--an especially alarming possibility since the entire basis for the character is that she specifically isn't one particular thing but many).  But Shailene really managed to create a complex character who is both brave AND self-sacrificing AND intelligent.  And even more impressively, she did so in a way that made her believable.  This was augmented by giving her believable physical abilities--namely, she, a tiny little girl who has never hit anyone in her life, is pretty consistently owned in every physical fight she gets into.  Let's all take a moment to celebrate the non-existence of any "waif-fu" in this movie.  By the end she does manage to hold her own for at least a few minutes before being laid waste but that feels more like a realistic development of her abilities due to hard work over time.

Shailene is supported by a nice cast of surrounding characters.  Eyebrows and Lips seems a little too beautiful (hence his name here) but puts in a pretty solid performance for a generic character.  But my favorites were Triss's friends.  They gave great performances and their relationships felt realistic and grounded.  I particularly liked Zoe Kravitz (yes, Lenny's daughter) who looks like a cross between her daddy and Kerry Washington.  She delivered her "candor" lines believably and she and Triss worked off each other nicely.

And as the original article I linked to discusses, the movie is definitely an impressive effort at bringing a real "strong female character" to the screen.  Triss's bodily autonomy is zealously defended.  She is independent and able to enforce her own decisions.  She manages to be a fighter without being completely cold and emotionless, which seems to be a very common trend in characterizing "strong" women.  And while she retains a great deal of selflessness, a solid argument can be made that it is the product of her upbringing rather than her gender.  Overall there are some really worthy ideas that they're tucking into the film.

But guys...there's some issues.  The premise itself seems pretty deeply flawed to me, and then the specific plot was kind of arbitrary.  Apparently the Abnegations run the government because they're selfless, but the Erudites want to seize control because...they want the power I assume?  But that's never stated, instead you have Darkest Timeline Kate, apparently the architect of this plan, asserting that she believes in her cause--indeed, she is willing to die for it.  But...what is her cause?  Because being willing to die for power doesn't quite make sense.  So what is she so passionate about?  I mean, she says several times that Abnegations are going to destroy the peace...but she never explains how.  There's just a whole bunch of sort of implied accusations and nothing concrete.  It was frustrating.

Additionally, it was painfully predictable.  I don't know how many times I leaned over to Mike and called exactly what was going to happen in the next moment.  I am, however, sort of lenient with predictability in films because the opposite problem--twists simply for the sake of twists--is infinitely more grating to me.

I did find the idea interesting.  Telling people what they are and then shutting them into societies built around that one trait so that they never try to develop any further aspects of themselves has some really interesting potential.  But I'm not sure that they followed through on the full possibilities of it.  They touched on it a bit with Eyebrows and Lips when he says that he wants to be more than just one thing.  But perhaps that further development will happen in the second story?

I think that in the end my biggest complaint is somewhat more meta than just this one film.  It is a complaint about the way YA books are adapted into movies, over and over again.  Let's look at some trailers.  First, here's the trailer for this movie:

How about The Hunger Games

The Host

Do you notice how all of these kind of feel the same?  Let's try one that's a little more fantasy

Those are all pretty recent, let's look at one that is sci fi and based on a pretty classic book

Huh...it somehow still looks...just the same.

Now lets look at a trailer that was just released for one of the greatest YA books ever written, The Giver

.....


....

....

wow.  Exactly the same.

Now, if any of you have read The Giver, and I sincerely hope you all have, you know that if ever there was a book that did not fit in the "heroic action adventure" category this is it.  The Giver is about reason and emotion and decision making and many fantastic things...but it is definitely not about action.  And if anyone had, for some reason, called me up and asked me if I had any ideas about how to make a movie of The Giver I could have given you plenty.  Creative and different ideas that would work with or maybe even enhance the natural strengths of the story.  I'm not being arrogant here, I'm pretty sure that any fan of the book could do the same if they tried for 10 seconds.  But what do we get here?  Perhaps the most egregious example of the same movie that they've now been making for years, with an almost insulting effort at ill-deserved legitimacy in the casting of some big names (but really Meryl...it actually hurts me that you're in this).  Say what you want about the source material being similar (I won't argue that there's a disturbing lack of innovative creativity in contemporary YA lit), if The Giver is being steamrolled flat into the same exact movie as the rest then it is clear that the source material has only the very most cosmetic influence on the actual move.  As my brother said "we based this movie on the title of a popular book."

And that was my biggest complain about Divergent.  Instead of trying to make a complex interesting movie that excels in different or unusual ways, they made the only kind of movie they think you can make--pretty people fighting in exciting action scenes.  And sure, the book may be a generic entry into the Hunger-Games-inspired dystopian YA genre (I'll let you know once I've finished reading it).  But the thing is, and this is the most frustrating part, you can still see the echoes of interesting and unique ideas; however they're like over cooked vegetables...recognizable as something that once had nutritional value, but now just a soggy mess.  

But as I said, that is more of a meta criticism leveled at Hollywood in general.  If I set aside that overarching annoyance I can say that I liked this movie more than I expected to.  I went in fully prepared to enjoy myself MST3K style, but ended up appreciating the movie for its merits rather than its mockable potential.  So maybe go see it...but I support you if you decide to wait for it to hit the dollar theatre.