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Reviews Literature / Divergent

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Thesegougou (Don’t ask)
01/10/2016 10:48:27 •••

Insurgent: Guilty Pleasure.

Haven't read the book, don't really care about it, moving on:

Long story short: After foiling Erudite's plan to take over Chicago by turning Fearless idiots into brainwashed idiots, Tris and the others are now fugitive, meet the homeless and Naomi Watts who plans to overthrow the Erudite, Jeanine wants divergents to unlock the Scenario-Ex-Machina, and after Tris clears the five tests of various difficulties (mostly easy) we learn divergents are kind of Newtypes, the future of the humanity, and more generic YA Stuff...

So let's start with my positives: Despite the Wangst, Tris at least endures the consequences of what she did last time, as opposed of just being out of the rules because Mary Sue, and the last 30 minutes are enjoyable, with buildings crumbling and simulation stuff (which is headscratching, but i'll get to that). It's like the director said: "Screw doing YA stuff, I want to rip off action scenes from Matrix and Inception !" ...And Peter.

Onto the negatives: I don't know whether Theo James is a terrible actor or Four's character is that mishandled (which is likely, because I still don't understand how he is important to the plot), but when Quattro is on screen, I find somebody trying to be intimidating: It's such a failure, it's adorable.

It's also obvious how much things changed from the book for no good reason. (Tris being 100% divergent as opposed to being 3 out of 5 in the first movie, the Laplace Box and the fact it negates the lucid dream superpower of the divergent without explanation, why only full divergent can open it and not five divergent one by one...), and none of the questions really answered or badly implied (why divergents are hated by most factions, how come there's a lot of Factionless, how come such a system can still survive, what happened, how come divergents are the evolution when they are mostly just humans like us, etc...).

Another thing that I fear is how bad the last book will be when it will be split into two movies, but that's for another time. Despite that, I did not hated the way I hated the first one, but I do understand why people did not like it, and If you didn't like the first one or loved the book version, I can only recommend it for the Snark Bait, and even then, it doesn't have that much material for it.

Immortalbear Since: Jun, 2012
01/10/2016 00:00:00

What really killed the movie for me was when the Eric started looking for divergents with that weird sensor scanner. As if individuality and non-conformity are traits that can be detected and measured in percentages. Tris isn't even that counter-cultural when you realize her goals are to win attention in the Dauntless faction, go out on dates with a good looking boyfriend, and not grow up to be like her parents. She's really the typical teenager and somehow this makes her the oracle in a sea of the emotionally blind.

What's really funny is that if Tris was truly the epitome of divergent then she should have been terrible at joining any faction rather than a star soldier in Dauntless. People that excel at one trait do much better in certain situations than someone who has a grasp at a full range of traits. It's why iron-man professionals typically don't compete in the Olympics.

What's frustrating is that the movie's ending implies free will is determined by biological make-up as opposed to actual choice. It doesn't if the revelation of this area being some kind of weird test zone is revealed, if the subjects are not divergent, then they are still trapped in their ways archaic and one-sided forms of thinking and the government will eventually regress back to its original flawed model.


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