DIVERGENT: Predictable, with No Deviations
Divergent (2014)
Screenplay by Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor
Based on the novel by Veronica Roth
Directed by Neil Burger
Produced by Douglas Wick, Lucy Fisher, Pouya Shahbazian
I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the target audience for this. Divergent is clearly trying to capitalize on the success of The Hunger Games, and it’s not quite going to meet that goal. Many have speculated that the YA market for movies will depend greatly on how Divergent performs.
Not having read the books, I’m evaluating the film on its own merits, and it’s “passable” — it hits all the expected marks and delivers a decent story. But that’s all it does. It’s predictable. There are several places in the movie where, even if you’ve never read the book, you know what’s going to happen next. And it’s a slow burn, taking its time to get to the point of the whole thing — which it does in time to act as a setup for the next film. This is something Mr. Harvey and I have talked about on H2O — we miss the days when films were made to stand on their own. Even Star Wars could have been one movie and not three because it told a complete story. But Hollywood is absolutely desperate for the next franchise.
This might be it, but probably not.
A few words on Shailene Woodley: she’s a decent actress, but I can’t see her as Mary Jane Watson. Nor do I see the same screen presence attributed to Jennifer Lawrence, her contemporary in this category of films. You can’t compare the two, because they approach acting in different ways. Woodley may be in her twenties, but she comes across as much younger on screen, which makes the natural chemistry between her and co-star Theo James just a little creepy in the one romantic scene they share.
Miles Teller has a lot of work to do in order to convince me he can play Reed Richards. I think The Fantastic Four is starting off behind the 8-ball, and I don’t think it’s going to do as well as Fox hopes. Teller did not impress me in this picture. His character was one-note, paint-by-numbers. Which is most likely a symptom of the book’s trope-heavy story.
Because the movie is full of tropes. I’m almost at the point where I don’t even want to go to a movie anymore because I’ve already seen everything. Divergent is predictable, but watchable.
