Divergent

(Movie Review)

Why I Watched This Movie 
 For better or for worse, it has become standard practice at my school to let the students choose to watch a movie on the last day of class, and this is what my students wanted to watch.

My Background With This Movie 
 I’m vaguely aware that this movie is based on a series of Young Adult books, because I’ve been seeing a lot of my teenage students reading this series, and talked with a couple of them about it briefly.

Negatives
 * This really feels like a paint-by-the-numbers YA movie—from the standard dystopian future setting, the standard sorting into school “houses” (in this case “factions”), the training in the new factions, and the standard classmate friends and standard classmate antagonists, and the standard love interest.

* Loses points for a cheesy soundtrack

 * I’m aware that in a science fiction dystopian story, you usually have to be willing give the basic premise a little slack, but from first to last the whole premise of this movie makes absolutely no logical sense.

 * I suspect this is a result of adopting a longer book into a 2 hour movie, but the movie is juggling way too many characters it doesn’t have time to develop.

 * To its credit, the movie attempts a very shocking ending, but the script doesn’t give the main characters, or the audience, time to process the emotional impacts of any of the deaths.

Positives
 * If you’re willing to overlook how completely formulaic this movie is, and how completely ridiculous the whole premise is, then the acting, directing and general production values are pretty good.

 The Review
 Maybe this all made more sense in the books, but what kind of whacked out premise is this? I know part of the fun of science fiction is the ability to imagine “what ifs”, but it’s at least got to have some sort of logic in order to seem slightly plausible. Dystopian future stories get their power from imagining a future that might be slightly plausible if humanity is pushed far enough. But this movie is just nonsense.
But, my teenage students seem to love it, so what do I know?

 Other Things I Would Talk About if I Wasn’t Limiting Myself to 100 Words
 * Listing all the things that made absolutely no sense—although it’s all pretty self-evident anyway, so…

* Listing all the YA clichés in this movie—although this is also all pretty self-evident, so again…

* Admitting I’m probably not in the target audience for this movie, and talking about how I’m just glad my students are excited about the movie and the accompanying book series, and talking about the benefits of reading whatever you like for ESL teenage students.

Ratings :
2 out of 10 stars. (Despite all its faults, it gets at least 2 stars for being competently produced, and acted—also keep in mind this is just the subjective opinion of someone clearly not in the target audience for this movie.)

Links 
Here are my reviews of Harry Potter and Hunger Games (Because it’s impossible not to think of all the other comparisons to other YA film franchises when watching this.)

External Links
I’m in complete agreement with both the avclub’s take [LINK HERE] and uproxx’s Film Drunk [LINK HERE], which both pinpoint the film’s strong points and weak points. I particularly like Film Drunk’s line: “[Divergent is] a movie so bad it aspires to be formulaic.”

Update: Just watched Cinema Sins "Everything Wrong with Divergent in 16 minutes or less".  Completely nails all the plot holes and cliches in this movie.


Honest Trailers is also very good:



Link of the Day
The World is Cruising Towards Nuclear War