Allegiant (2016, PG-13)

Okay – so, as someone who read the books, I feel like I knew where this movie was going even less than someone watching it cold would.  Allegiant, adapted from the first half (three quarters?  kind of?) of the final Divergent book, goes decidedly further afield than either of its predecessors in terms of book faithfulness.  Given the original novel’s unevenness, this isn’t always a bad thing, but it means I have almost no idea what next year’s final installment will involve (premise spoilers, and spoilers for the previous books, especially Insurgent.)

Quick plot stuff:  Tris, her friends, and her entire society have been rocked by the revelation that their City is part of an elaborate experiment conducted by scientists who live in the still-extant world outside the wall.  Our heroine leads a small group into this outside world, where they find a new society divided into the genetically pure and the genetically damaged.  David, head of the experiment, courts Tris with the promise of all the healing her Divergence can bring to the world, but their new surroundings aren’t all they appear to be.

In terms of the adaptation, the movie hits a handful of highlights/important plot points from the book, though even the stuff that gets included is mostly included differently.  But as I said, some of the changes work well for me.  In particular, I think Four comes across much better:  smarter, more proactive, and while the revelations he learns in this film still mess him up, he deals with them more constructively.  I also feel Evelyn is slightly less unsympathetic, and I’m not entirely sure where they’re going with Peter, but Miles Teller gives such good Entertaining Douchebag.  Additionally, I like the increased focus on the relationship between the Bureau and the Fringe.

Unfortunately, many of the changes that don’t work for me concern Tris.  First of all, I didn’t how like the “100% Divergent” thing added to the second film made Tris much more of a Special Snowflake than she was in the books, and that trend continues here.  Also, with the Bureau being more obviously-uncool from the jump, her easy acceptance of what David tells her makes her look way more naïve than she ought to be.  My main issues after that are less with what’s changed than with what’s taken out.  As per usual, the supporting characters have little to do.  Christina is little more than a footnote, Uriah is blink-and-you’ll-miss-him, and neither Amar or George are there at all (if I recall correctly, that means that, in addition to changing Evelyn (PoC – probably Latina) and Four (biracial) to white, the films have removed all mentions of LGBTQ sexuality – Lynn was a minor character in Insurgent, but I believe they took out any references to her feelings for Marlene.  Boo!)  The adults fair a bit better; at least Maggie Q, Octavia Spencer, and Daniel Dae Kim make the most of their incredibly-limited screentime.

As for new cast members, the only character we meet with much focus is David, well played by Jeff Daniels.  However, there is a very brief appearance by Xander Berkeley, Percy from Nikita.  (First all the Nikita alumni on 12 Monkeys, and now this.  I love Nikita reunions, even when the actors in question don’t have any scenes together.  Wonder if Maggie Q helped him get the gig?)

Warnings

Violence, language, sensuality (including sexy decontamination showers – yeah, that happened,) and thematic elements.

A Brief Note about Diversity in the Divergent Series

I still don’t do as well as I ought in actively seeking out stories with diverse perspectives (though I have expanded my “palette,” so to speak,) but I do keep my eye out for diversity in whatever stories I consume.  While Divergent is definitely about the Straight White Able-Bodied Girl Who Becomes a Heroine, I did notice a fair amount of variety within the series.  (A few spoilers.)

Many characters are described as being people of color, including personal favorites Christina, Tori, Uriah, and Johanna.  All are supporting characters without a ton of individual focus, but the PoC supporting characters don’t get less attention than their white or unspecified counterparts.  Christina is Tris’s best friend, and while the Black Best Friend of the White Protagonist trope has its own issues, she’s a tough, likeable character with flaws and struggles.  Similarly, though Tori’s role isn’t huge, it’s a fascinating one, and I’d have loved her even if Maggie Q wasn’t playing her in the movie.  Uriah is hugely entertaining, and Johanna is by far my favorite of the faction leaders (true, not a hard contest, but that doesn’t diminish her coolness.)  Plenty of other characters are mentioned as being PoC, even down to the briefest bit-character descriptions.  And Tris’s boyfriend Four, the second lead, is biracial.  From the books’ descriptions of him, he’s probably white-passing, and it’s true that his PoC mother was out of the picture for much of his life, but it’s at least a bit outside the typical Attractive White Leads at the Center of Everything.

It’s interesting that, while their descriptions imply it, no one is identified as a certain race.  I get the sense that the City inhabitants no longer have names for race groups.  Thus, Tris has no words for “Black” or “Latina;” she only has colors (and eye shape in the case of Asian characters like Tori and Jack, which is super awkward to read.)  It’s logical; like many other words her society, these concepts have fallen away.  Still, it makes me a little torn on Tris’s descriptions of race-identifying features.  What does it say that Tris notices people’s races so particularly in a society that has no words for race?  If race is a social construct, would citizens even register racial distinctions?  On the other hand, describing characters’ races prevents readers from auto-assuming them all as white.  So, it has real-world benefit, but the in-story implications are weird.  Which wins out?  (The films do fairly well with keeping the PoC characters PoC – except for Four and his mom.  Granted, Four’s not described as noticeably biracial, but his mom definitely isn’t white, unlike Naomi Watts.  The series missed a chance to put an interracial couple at the heart of their franchise.  Additionally, I get a whiff of colorism from Christina being portrayed as a light-skinned Black girl when the books describe her as having “dark brown skin.”)

The books also have three queer characters:  Lynn, Amar, and George.  They’re all minor characters, and they all imply their sexuality without explicitly naming it; Lynn, in fact, is this close to a posthumous outing, vaguely confessing her love for Marlene as she dies.  Amar and George are a couple, but their physical affection is limited to hugs and some significant looks.  One could say the minimized visibility is justified – it’s possible that, as with race, society has lost these words, and Amar and George have valid reasons to be discreet in a procreation-obsessed culture – but it’s still annoying.  However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen characters in YA literature of this sort written so definitively as queer.  Yes, it’s vague, but I’d wager it’s pretty hard to miss; if I hadn’t heard J.K. Rowling’s post-series announcement about Dumbledore, I’m not sure I’d have caught the hints in The Deathly Hallows, and at any rate, that was very late in the game to bring it up.  So, Divergent gets my regard as at least a step in the right direction.

Insurgent (2014, PG-13)

I’m still trying to decide what I think of Insurgent.  While the first movie in the franchised diverged moderately from the book (see what I did there?), the second installment veers off pretty substantially.  The characters and story move to the same places, but the routes they take to get there are very different.  Good different or bad different?  Some of each, truth be told, and the big question is, which is more prominent?

As in the book, Tris and her cohorts are on the run from the Erudite leaders out for Divergent blood.  Jeanine, the head of Erudite, wants Tris for a secret project, but whereas Book!Jeanine needs a lab rat on which to test Divergent-proof serums, Movie!Jeanine has a super-special MacGuffin (sort of) box that contains vital information and can only be opened by a perfect Divergent.  The plot here is a bit more focused and streamlined, but what it gains in coherency, it loses in a fair amount of character shading.

Not that the movie is without character development.  The added plot elements offer some pretty neat insights into Tris, and some important points – like her guilt and post-traumatic stress over the events of the first movie – are maintained.  I think Four comes across better in the movie, and the film takes advantage of Miles Teller’s post-Whiplash profile to expand on Peter’s character.  However, we don’t get much into the theme of Tris’s goals and ideas going against the plans of her faction, seeing Tris wrestling with following Dauntless or doing what she thinks is right.  And while the PTSD is included, chiefly in her nightmares and some of the MacGuffin-box-induced simulations, the film completely ignores Tris’s fear/reticence of handling guns after what happens to her in Divergent. 

And of course, most of the supporting characters are glorified window dressing, if that.  As Amity leader Joanna, Octavia Spencer has shockingly little to do, and the awesome Daniel Dae Kim does what he can to bring Candor leader Jack to life with his limited screentime.  Some Dauntless members who were left out of the first film, notably Uriah and Lynn, are introduced here, and while the young actors do a fine job capturing the characters, the screenplay offers little sense of who they are and what their inner lives might involve.  Finally, I know I mentioned Maggie Q’s Tori in my Divergent review, and I still love her, but why did they go to the trouble of casting Maggie Q if they were going to excise Tori’s entire plot?  At least she had Tris’s testing in the first movie; here, she hardly has more to do than any other Dauntless member.  Boo!

Just in general, this movie feels a little tighter, a little more purposeful, than Divergent.  Some sloppiness from the book gets tidied up, the conflict between Tris and Jeanine gets central focus, and some of the fighting is pretty excellent – there’s a long combat sequence on a train that’s terrific.  Additionally, Tris’s dreams and simulations, which I already mentioned, are all fantastically rendered.  They look great, and the simulations are especially cool (well thought-out, too, which is obviously a big plus.)

Warnings

Violence, freaky images, light sexual content, swearing, and thematic elements.

YA Dystopian Heroine Character Comparison: Katniss Everdeen & Tris Prior

Maybe it’s unfair to compare these two just because they’re tough, capable female leads in popular dystopian series, but it’s kind of unavoidable.  As I read the Divergent books, I couldn’t help but think of The Hunger Games, particularly where our central characters are concerned.  (General premise spoilers for both series.)

Basic parallels first.  Katniss and Tris are both 16-year-old girls from the lowest totem poles of their societies (District 12 and Abnegation, respectively.)  The lives of both are changed at the major ceremony associated with their society’s whacked-out principles, the Reaping and the Choosing Ceremony (and, point of interest, their lives are changed based on their choices – it isn’t Katniss’s name that gets pulled out of the reaping bowl.  Even from the start, they’re not just victims.)  Both obviously know their way around a fight (despite their small statures and weak-looking appearances,) both are deeply damaged by their experiences, and both struggle with being a good person in situations that aren’t known for breeding good people.

When it comes to fighting, both girls are underestimated, but in different ways.  Katniss is quite the competent scrapper before she enters the Arena, an experienced hunter with mad survival skills.  It’s just her small size that makes her seem like an easy target, but she sets people straight on that as soon as they see her with a bow in her hands.  Meanwhile, Tris is genuinely one of the weakest Dauntless initiates.  The others are spot-on when it comes to assessing her original abilities, but they underestimate her determination to improve and pull her weight.

Similarly, though both girls get embroiled in regime-toppling rebellions, they come to it differently.  Katniss doesn’t set out to start a revolt; yes, some of her actions in the Arena, like her alliance with Rue, are considered dissident in the Capitol, but her big eff-you to the Gamemakers is ultimately a last-ditch gambit to survive, not a call to arms.  It’s the public who sees her as a symbol of defiance, and Katniss wrestles between keeping her head down to protect the people she loves and accepting her role as a rallying point for the resistance.  Tris, on the other hand, is a more active rebel as soon as she gets the opportunity.  It’s partly her Divergence – she can literally do things that most in her society can’t, and she can’t let her friends get brainwashed when she can do something to stop it.  While Katniss’s initial butt-kickery is to stay alive and get home (where she’s the chief provider,) Tris’s is to prevent genocide.  Heavy stuff.

Tris is a bit more trusting than Katniss, who has a massively hard time buying that anyone is actually trying to help her.  As such, Tris falls more easily into relationships, while Katniss keeps people at arm’s length long after they’ve proven themselves.  Katniss is better at thinking on her feet, and I’d say Tris is a better overall strategist.  Katniss is good at second-guessing herself and agonizing over her choices, and her tendency towards distrust causes her to miss potential allies.  Tris tends to be more confident with planning and tactics, but that can backfire as well, because she sometimes shuts people down when they don’t fall in line.  I love that both have flaws and blind spots; neither is Super Girl, and neither does the right thing all the time.  Katniss can be horrified by her own ruthlessness, and Tris beats herself up when she can’t always find the strength to do the selfless thing.  Despite the intensely-stressful crucibles in which the girls forge themselves, they don’t brush aside their failings.  Instead, they take hard looks at their character (maybe too hard sometimes) and try to figure out how to be better.  Let’s hear it for the girls!

Divergent (2014, PG-13)

Now that I’ve gotten my butt in gear re:  the Divergent books, it’s time to do the same for the film, so I’ll be ready when Insurgent hits theaters.  My overall impression on this adaptation is that it’s uneven, but it has potential.  The design is stylish and ambitious, there’s some fine acting to be had, and the film improves on the book in places while it lets it down in others.

Quick plot recap:  post-apocalyptic dystopian society divided into five factions.  16-year-olds take a test meant to show them which faction they’re best suited for, but when Abnegation member Tris takes the test, she finds out she’s part of the undesirable Divergent, who are immune to simulations and don’t fit into a single faction.  If you’re into screwed-up social schisms, conspiracies, identity crises, and teenage girls learning how to kick butt and become heroes, then this movie wants you to watch it.

First props go to the look of the film.  The emblematic colors worn by each faction come across well onscreen and nice differentiations are made between, for example the sleek, high-tech headquarters of the Erudite and the simple, spartan homes of the Abnegation.  Whatever effects went into making Chicago look like a post-apocalyptic city of the future while still being visibly Chicago are also impressive.

When it comes to adapting the book, there are pros and cons.  Supporting characters get the short shrift, as they often do in these kinds of films, and generally, there’s far less focus on any of the characters’ inner lives.  I know it’s harder to convey someone’s thoughts onscreen, but there’s so much that’s stripped away here:  the way Tris wrestles with her choosing, most of Al’s entire plot, and the reasoning behind Tris’s first tattoo are a just a few of the more internal aspects that don’t get their fair shake.  Additionally, we see more of Tris being handed information rather than figuring it out for herself – again, I get that this is harder to show, but it makes her look less clever than she is.  On the other hand, some of the little details added are very fitting (Dauntless would totally use darts that briefly simulate actual gunshot wounds instead of paintballs.)  That, and the scene of Tris and Four in his fear landscape, as well as Tris in her own, is a major improvement on the book.  While reading, I kept wanting to shout, “The people who want to kill Divergents are watching – stop solving things like a Divergent would!!!” and was even more annoyed when absolutely nothing came of it, so I’m glad the movie addresses that.

Shailene Woodley (best known to me from The Descendants) does a nice job with Tris.  She’s a tough but overwhelmed girl digging deep to find her own bravery.  Among the other young cast, Miles Teller (Andrew from Whiplash) and Ben Lloyd-Hughes (who had a small part in the first generation of Skins) are noteworthy as Peter and Will.  Teller is perfectly punchable as the awful Peter, and Lloyd-Hughes makes Will an intelligent bookworm without being nebbish or overly pedantic.  As for the grown-ups, Kate Winslet captures Jeanine’s icy observation, and Maggie Q (Nikita!) was actually the main impetus for me to read the books and see the movie – my only complaint about her Tori is that I want more of her.

Warnings

Violence, brief sexual content, and strong thematic elements.

Allegiant (2013)

I finished the last book in the Divergent trilogy a few days ago, and I’m still not sure what I think of it.  I appreciate that it really branches out and changes the scope of the series.  Sometimes, it pays off to take a series to unexpected places, which certainly happens here.  However, even in new locales with different crises, it trots out some of the same old plot elements without approaching them in novel ways, and I’m still flummoxed by the ending.  Having reached the end of the trilogy, I’m not left with a “Wow!” or an “Ugh!” – more of a “Hmmm…”  (Spoilers ahead for the series.)

Insurgent ends with a bang – the long-awaited information that infuriating characters had been dangling in front of Tris (and me) for the entire book.  The big bombshell?  Their whole society is a lie, a behavioral modification experiment/genetic sifting bowl cooked up by a bunch of scientists in the post-apocalyptic but still-functioning world beyond the city limits.  The rites and rituals of the faction system are merely constructs, and outside eyes have been monitoring and manipulating the city’s residents for generations.  No factions on the other side of the fence, but when Tris and a small party of citizens venture out of the city, they discover a new social divide.  Tris and other Divergent folk are considered part of the GP (genetically pure) elite, while those who fit nicely into a single faction are GD (genetically damaged) – menial-labor material at best, criminally depraved at worst.  Tris and co. try to find their footing in the outside world, navigate the new order of the day, and wrestle with how they can help the city from the outside.

Complaints first.  The whole series has a penchant for pulling the rug out from under Tris and the reader, and it maybe does it a bit too much here.  Particularly on the subject of Tris’s mom, this book undoes a lot of big revelations Tris already had about her in earlier books, which makes the earlier stuff feel like a waste of time (plus, I think it’s more interesting if Mrs. Prior wasn’t up to her eyeballs in all the conspiracy whatnots.)  I’m also not a fan of the way the narrative is split between Tris and Four, her hunky-but-angsty boyfriend.  There’s a practical reason for it, but it doesn’t work for me, and the ending especially is just too much Four.  I won’t get into the ins and outs of whether things should have gone down like they did, but if I were writing it, I’d have positioned it so Tris’s big climax was much closer to the end and truncated the fallout/epilogue.  Finally, there’s just too much rebellion.  It’s not continuing clashes against one corrupt/unjust authority; it’s several micro-revolutions all mixed together, and it gets repetitive and unspecific.  (Oh, and why did the scientists think that setting up a bunch of diametrically-opposed factions-before-blood sects that engender mistrust and resentment was a good way to maintain peace?)

On the other hand I find a lot of the existential “my life is literally a science experiment” stuff pretty interesting, and I like a lot of Tris’s internal conflict as she explores the outside world and her place in it.  I appreciate that the book addresses dubious moral choices within a rebellion, the idea that being oppressed doesn’t give you carte blanche to return an eye for an eye, but in the end, it sort of drops the ball on the whole idea.  The GP vs. GD thing intrigues me, and though I’m not crazy about the ending, I’m pretty satisfied with the specific circumstances of it.

Warnings

Violence, light sexual content, and disturbing elements.

Insurgent (2012)

The second book in the Divergent series improves on its predecessor in some places and stumbles in others.  Overall, it’s a strong follow-up; it builds on the setup from Divergent and prepares us for the big finale of Allegiant.  As I was reading, I came across plenty of scenes that made me pretty excited for the upcoming movie.  (Spoilers for both Divergent and Insurgent are unavoidable.)

After the events of the first book, both of Tris’s lives – the simple one she lived with her family in Abnegation and the thrilling new one she forged for herself in Dauntless – are gone.  The surviving Abnegation members hide out as refugees, and Dauntless members who haven’t joined forces with the despotic Erudite are on the run.  Tris’s world has been teetering on the brink of revolution, and it’s finally hit.  Her life is now a war:  for survival, for retribution, for truth, and for liberation.  This war takes her all over the city, into and out of different factions as she searches for allies and answers.

The biggest plus of Insurgent is the expanded view we get of the world of the series.  We follow Tris into all the different faction communities and learn a lot more about how each one functions.  We see the various factions’ values, customs, and dangers, and it’s really interesting to explore the peculiarities that crop up when an entire subsection of society devotes itself to a single virtue.  Additionally, more is revealed about Divergence, the world at large, and the secrets at the center of everything.

I also really like the way Tris’s experiences in Divergent continue to resonate throughout Insurgent.  They influence her choices and the way she looks at people, and she reconciles everything she thought she knew with what she’s learned.  Although she’s undoubtedly brave and determined, she’s been traumatized as well, and she can’t just brush that off.  Her damage paralyzes her at critical moments and keeps her up at night turning over what she should have done differently.  The book does a nice job showing how, despite powering through and forcing herself to keep fighting, the things she’s had to do are massive, and they have a major effect on her.

Plot-wise, I feel like Insurgent isn’t quite as tight as book one.  It feels a little more aimless, spinning its wheels from time to time.  A good chunk of that is intentional, since Tris and many of the other characters are at a loss and trying to regain their bearings – I mean, come on, their entire society is going up in smoke.  However, it still results in some uneventful time-killing that’s a bit tedious to get through.  Plus, it might just be me, but the way certain characters handle the big secrets in the series are flat-out insufferable.  It’s that infuriating situation where a character says, “I have so much important information that people are willing to kill for and nothing is more important than getting this information out and your life will never be the same after learning this information!!!  But I can’t tell you the information.”  Talk about a prick-tease; I didn’t know how long I could take that.

I will say that we (finally!) get to the big reveal by the end of the book, and while it still seems unfair to keep us on the hook for so long, it doesn’t come off as anticlimactic.  My foremost thought when I finished reading was, “Allegiant is gonna be insane!”

Divergent (2011)

Having recently spent a lot of Oscar-related time at the cinema and thus having seen the trailer for Insurgent multiple times, I’m finally jumping on the Divergent bandwagon.  It was only a matter of time – I love dystopian fiction, smart YA series, and compelling female protagonists, and this book hits several sweet spots.  (Some spoilers – it’s simply unavoidable.)

It’s not a dystopian novel without a completely jacked-up society, and in Divergent, we have a post-apocalyptic Chicago populated by five factions allegedly installed to prevent a repeat of the devastating wars of the past.  The members of Abnegation, Dauntless, Erudite, Candor, and Amity each follow certain guidelines and traditions based on their self-evident virtue of choice, and every young person’s life leads up to their aptitude test, which tells them the faction they naturally align with, and the choosing ceremony, in which they decide if they want to remain with their home faction or transfer to another.  Beatrice Prior has tried to uphold the selfless principles of Abnegation, but she’s always felt out of place in her faction.  Their ways don’t come naturally to her, she’s drawn to the reckless lives of the Dauntless, and try as she might, she can’t quiet her so-called “selfish” inclination toward curiosity.  She meets her aptitude test with apprehension for the future it may suggest for her, but her results are even more world-shaking than she could have anticipated:  she is Divergent, someone with multiple aptitudes and no clear place in her society of never-the-twain-shall-meet factions.  As she moves forward and explores who she’s supposed to be, hiding her true designation is of the utmost importance.

There’s a lot more plot stuff, but even if I only cover the skeleton of the narrative, there won’t be time for an actual review, so let’s just hint at creepy societal conformity, secret outsiders, teenage romance, ultraviolence, the coolest zip-line ever, giant conspiracies, drug-induced hallucinations, and personal revelations galore.  So much going on here.  For the most part, it hangs together well – some of the twists pulled the rug out from under me, though I guessed others early on, and the book lays some good groundwork for the expanded scope of its sequels.

So far, the world-building is the most interesting aspect to me.  I enjoy exploring the different factions and learning about their practices, values, and inner workings.  It’s especially interesting to meet the various transfers (16-year-olds who changed factions at the choosing ceremony.)  Though they obviously transferred for a reason, they still carry the upbringing of their old factions with them, and it’s neat to see the hodgepodge of their interactions with one another.  However, I have to say – there’s just no way the whole faction system is sustainable.  You have certain factions hating others, Abnegation is sort of the punching bag of the entire city, and while teens are allowed to leave the faction they were born into if it isn’t the best fit for them, it’s viewed as a detestable betrayal, and transferring essentially means breaking from your family forever.  Despite its beginnings as a means of peacekeeping, it’s charged with bristling tensions, tribal superiority, and familial resentment.  No wonder the place is spoiling for the revolution.

Warnings

Some petty insane violence (much of it involving teenagers,) sexual references, drinking, and thematic elements.