Divergent, which is similar to The Hunger Games, is the movie everyone’s talking about
IT’S been compared to the Hunger Games and is tipped to be one of the biggest films of the year, but what is Divergent actually about?
NO prizes for assuming this adaptation of the best-selling young-adult novel by Veronica Roth will be kind of like The Hunger Games.
When your story involves a future where the youth have no future at all, you’d be silly not to tailor your movie towards the Katniss Everdeen crowd.
As Divergent begins, it is the 22nd century, and all is not well for what remains of mankind.
The population has been divided into five selective “factions”. If you’re not a member of one, your survival prospects plummet from moderate to slim.
There are the Erudite, known for their incisive, scheming intellects. They are dangerously clever. The Candor are all honesty, all the time. They can only say what they think, and nothing else.
The Amity are a stoic, peace-loving bunch.
The Abnegation devote their lives to helping others.
And last, but by no means least, there are the Dauntless. They patrol the fault lines that continually open up between good and evil in this shaken-up world. They are young, fit, brave and up for anything.
When a person turns 16, they must undertake a test to determine what faction will be their life’s calling. Once the choice is made, there can be no turning back.
It is not compulsory to select the faction of your family, but you must sever all association with them if you don’t. So there are the rules, then. Who’s going to break them? Enter Tris (Shailene Woodley).
Her test results are somewhat inconclusive. She carries traits of several factions. This makes her a “divergent”, a threat to the established order thatwho are usually hunted from existence very quickly.
Keeping her status a closely guarded secret, Tris throws in her lot with the Dauntless, and begins a ruthless training program to earn the right to run with this pack of unofficial police.
This section of Divergent is where it really puts the Hunger Games formula to effective use.
Things inside the Dauntless camp are not as honourable as they seem.
Furthermore, trainees who don’t hit certain benchmarks are kicked out at regular intervals. They will be forced to wander about without the protection of a faction, and no one lasts very long when that is the case.
Tris is an interesting enough anchoring character in her own right to drag Divergent out of the shadows of The Hunger Games when it matters most.
While Shailene Woodley (best known as George Clooney’s petulant daughter in The Descendants) doesn’t have the broad range of acting skills of a Jennifer Lawrence, she battles valiantly (and successfully) throughout to keep the audience on her side.
The supporting players are blandly unremarkable for the most part, with the sole exception of Kate Winslet. She plays a cold and calculating control freak who can sense something’s up with Tris, but can’t quite put her finger on it.
Overall, this is a solid first-up effort for the Divergent franchise. Even though the film loses momentum in its final act as it sets up shop for next year’s sequel, a majority of fans will be perfectly content with what has been achieved here.
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