As we continue on in this
generation, the YA franchise craze still rages on. With “The Hunger Games”
officially over and the “Harry Potter” series returning to theaters this
November with “Fantastic Beasts,” the other struggling franchises: “The Maze Runner”
and “Divergent” continue on to fill the void until then as best they can. The
latter of which is today’s topic.
The first “Divergent” film, directed
by Neil Burger, told the origins of a dystopian Chicago, where the citizens are
divided into factions: the Abnegation (selfless), the Amity (peaceful), the
Candor (honest), the Dauntless (brave), and the Erudite (intellectual). When it
comes time for Tris Prior, played by Shailene Woodley, to be chosen into a
faction, she comes out as Divergent, meaning she fits all the attributes, but
that could cause chaos among the city, so she hides out as a Dauntless. For the
first film in a franchise, it actually does a damn good job establishing this
world really damn well, and how it handles Tris’s character is really neat. It
did have some major drawbacks, especially with Jai Courtney, but it was still
pretty decent. Plus, you had some great supporting young actors like Miles
Teller, Ansel Elgort, Theo James, and Zoe Kravitz to work off of.
The second film, “Insurgent,”
directed by Robert Schwentke, showed the characters on the run from the
authorities after finding out about Tris being Divergent, with the leader,
Jeanine, having plans for Tris to open a cube that holds the future to the
city. While there were some nice improvements in the production value and the
cinematography, the film maintained a decent balance from the first film. Not
much was different from the first film in terms of quality, but I did manage to
enjoy it slightly more for one major reason…we got to see Jai Courtney’s
character die. Good, now he’s out of the rest of the films.
And much like previous YA
franchises, the last book had to be separated into two movies. Look, it made
sense with “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” but since then other
franchises are just doing it for money. However, with “Allegiant,” it wouldn’t
matter if it was one film or two, because it would still be bad. Yeah, not going to beat around the bush
here, “Allegiant” is not a good movie.
After the death of Jeanine in the
last film, the prisoners are left with that message about how the whole
fractions thing was just a test and that they were waiting for a Divergent to
emerge sooner or later. However, Evelyn Eaton, Four’s mother and the new ruler
of Chicago, tells the citizens to stay put until further notice. So as you’d
imagine, Tris, Four, Caleb, Peter, and Christina escape over the wall and find
the people beyond the wall, leaving Evelyn and Johanna to go to war with each
other. When brought to the Bureau of Genetic Welfare, Tris meets David, the
leader of the Bureau, who tells her that her Divergence is completely pure and
is what they need to help the others considered damaged. But as you’d suspect,
some shady shit is going down.
As you’d imagine, the story has now
reached the point of “what the fuck is this?” and it definitely shows. Trying
to explain it after seeing it doesn’t necessarily help, because it makes you
realize just how stupid this series has gotten so quickly. The whole point of
the first movie was that someone divergent was dangerous to the fractions, then
the second one says the divergent was a key to the secrets of why we were here
for so long, and now this film tells us that the fractions are important to get
more divergents, but Tris is the only pure divergent and not four…okay, I need
to stop, my head’s starting to hurt just thinking about it.
Despite being the third film in this
series, you can tell that most of these actors are phoning it in, even Shailene
Woodley and Theo James. Every time either of them show up on screen, they look
as interested to be here as the audience who paid to see this movie. Even for
young talents as this, they’ve reached a point where they’re just doing this
for an easy paycheck. Same can be said for the rest of the cast, even with big
name actors like Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer, and Jeff Daniels. Daniels in particular
acts like he doesn’t give a shit about this movie, using a monotone voice throughout the entire film, and barely showing an ounce of emotion. It’s like he’s thinking “I was in two Oscar nominated
films last year. What am I doing here?” Also, for someone who runs a station
that has been wiping the memories of children, why did the soldiers do it in
front of Four when he’s on patrol with them? Trust me, there’s a lot of other
dumb shit that’s too stupid to explain.
Out of the entire cast, the only one
who had some energy in this was Miles Teller. He was easily the best part about
this movie, being such a snarky double-crossing asshole, but at least he was
entertaining. It’s like he took some pointers from Nicholas Cage on how to
steal the show in movies like this…in fact, a movie with Miles Teller and
Nicholas Cage would be kind of cool to see. I’ll also say this: the production
design and effects are still pretty nice to look at. I mean, sure there are
those wasteland scenes and dystopian Chicago that look pretty boring, but
everything else still has some quality effort put into it.
Other than that, there’s not much else
to say about this film. It’s another example of a YA’s final book being split
into two movies, because it wants money. Although, considering this film was a
bomb at the domestic box office, barely making its budget back with foreign
revenue, I think that should be taken as a sign. It’s just a confusing mess of
a film, with its only saving grace being Miles Teller, but even then I’d say go
see other Miles Teller movies like “The Spectacular Now” or “Whiplash.” It’s
not the worst film I've seen this year, nor is it even the worst YA adaptation I've seen, but it's still not a good movie.
Rating: 3/10
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