Divergent [Movie Review]

 It seems that there are lots of movies being made based off of books I've never heard of or even read. The books are often acclaimed as 'World Wide Best Sellers,' or something. Now I am a reader. I've done book reviews (Words of Radiance, Memories of Light, etc.) but these all escape me.

Welcome to Hogwarts. Let the sorting begin!

The movies I want made from books like Wheel of Time, or The Stormlight Archive, will probably never happen. Instead movies like this are made from books I've never read.

2.5 out of 5 stars

I'm 100% a dick, despite what Quill says.

No. Not the movies I want. Instead movies like Divergent, and Twligiht, and The Hunger Games, and Maze Runner are made. Why? Is it just that young adult books are an instant teen movie draw?

Let me give a touch of insight into the rating for this film. I was almost tempted to give it a 3 star rating, but the more I reflected on that choice the more certain that I was likely doing that just because I like it a tiny touch better than TMNT. Which upon reflection, might have only been deserving of 2 stars. But I do not want to change my rating. So this film will forever live at the same level of disappointment that TMNT lives.

Though honestly I had a lot more fun with Divergent. I watched it not on the big screen, but at home on a borrowed DVD. I watched it with friends and we just made fun of it once it became readily apparent that the movie was worthy of mockery.

Witness the never stopping trains full of very stupid people.

Again. Non-stop trains of the mentally deficient.

As we watched we noted quite a number of, shall we call them, outside inspirations. Harry Potter is a very obvious one. You take a test to, essentially, get sorted into the right faction for you. The whole knife throwing thing immediately recalled to mind the 90s era science fiction movie Starship Troopers. And this recall paid off immensely some two hours later, when, to our great joy, Tris finally threw a knife through someone's hand! Payoff! I also got flashes of Total Recall or Inception whenever they injected the test serums into people...

Divergent. Because conformity is so conforming.

Now, let me say this. I fully accept and expect that media 'references,' 'rip-off,' or makes use of 'homage.' This just seemed over the top obvious to me. And I do not really, completely, hold it against it. No... what I hold against it the things that I consider stupid for stupid's sake.

Lets play this game.

The children of people who were in Hufflepuff House.

#1. In what delusional fever dream would a system that divides people into five factions ever create harmony? Factions create division, disharmony, and friction. We see this right away... the movie actually shows us, and yet the Erudite Leader(s), from the smart people faction, cannot seem to see this. No. They want to maintain status quo (sort of, because they actually want to usurp governing power from another faction). But this seems to be a trend - the whole city (since this all takes place in Chicago) seems to be populated by really stupid people. This is seriously a stupid idea.

#2. Why does Dauntless seem to be less about law enforcement / military than stupid people doing bad parkour? Also, why does Dauntless seem to stand less for 'brave' and more for 'amazingly stupid?' Is it necessary to jump everywhere?

#3 The endless unanswered questions. I'll just list a few.

- Why did the Divergent not become Zombies when injected with the mind-control drug? No, this is a serious question, because it actually implies that Divergent are not just different, but they have differently functioning brains, physiology, etc. They could be classified as a new species.
- Who was that chick who seemed to know everything? This has got to be some big thing from a later book because after a while I got tired of her just magically being right where she needed to be. 
- Who would build a giant wall around Chicago, for defense, and then leave the farms that grow food outside of said wall? Well, it is easy to defend Chicago (from what, we are never told), but they'll starve in the process.
- Do the trains never stop? We never see a train stop. Trains just run and run and run, and then people jump on and off of them. I guess that saves on platform costs.
- Why did it take 80 minutes to actually get to the actual plot of the movie?
- At what age do people choose their house, I mean faction? It appears as if Tris and her brother are different ages, but they both choose at the same time.

I know. I imagine a good number of these are somewhat resolved in the book, but you know what. This was a long movie and it could have taken some of its filler out and added in a few answers.

And yet, I still had more fun with this than TMNT. Still this was a bad movie... maybe it suffers from Book to Movie translation failure, but that is a tired excuse. More effort can be made to fill holes without relying on people having read the book.

Still it was better than TMNT, and Twilight... but a colonoscopy is better than Twilight (and as the internet obliges me to say, a colonoscopy is a better love story than Twilight).

This stance is begging for someone to make her hit herself.