Divergent (2014) (P.S. It sucks)

     Now here we have a genuinely unpleasant movie to watch. A bad cast of bad actors wrapped up in a convoluted sci-fi plot that's just stupid enough to have actually come out of a teen novel ooooooh it's movies like this that really bring my blood to a boil, it has no redeeming fun qualities it's just all bad all the time. It tries to be emotionally engaging and comes off as weakly scripted, it tries to have good action but no one on set was qualified to direct good action, it tries to be intense and comes off as really boring, but worst of all when it tries to be serious it all comes off as a big joke.

     Let me make one thing perfectly clear, movies based on teen novels suck (Harry Potter is not a teen novel in the same sense) period. Beautiful Creatures kind of got a pass for being really well cast and adapted but the others including Mortal Instruments and Hunger games do not. Besides the weak premises of the both those series' their biggest problem is a lack of proper adaptation. I've never read these books it comes across clearly in the dialogue and pacing. When I first heard that Divergent was getting a crack at the big screen all my hope came from the setting and the main plot which sounded okay ; A run down post apocalyptic Chicago inside of a giant wall houses a society of people split up into five classes based on their skills and personality. Everyone gets to take a test at a certain age to determine where they're most suited and then gets to choose their path in life. The twist is that some kids' take the test to reveal that they are Divergent and "don't belong in a single category because their brains work differently".... okay so the setting was cooler than that central idea I mean that just screams "DON'Y WORRY 13 - 17 YEAR OLD GIRL YOU DON'T HAVE TO FIT IN YOU'RE SPECIAL" ughhhhhhhhhhhh this is painful.

     So the core sucks but hows the rest? Well it all sucks too but let's talk about it anyways. This movie takes a long walk off a short pier in the third or fourth scene by introducing the supporting cast, which is mostly terrible, and the bad guy who is only vaguely hinted at as the bad guy until you realize about halfway through that she has to be the bad guy or the movie can't have a story (Played oddly enough by Kate Winslet). The rest of the supporting cast in order of importance is her racially ambiguous best friend who's personality is having things around her be unfair, two white guys who are SO generic and interchangeable I often forgot there was two of them even when one of them dies, Miles Teller as a smug douche bag, annnnnnnnnnnd her love interest. Oh yeah I guess I haven't mentioned the two characters in the above photo. Let me tell you why. I forgot their character names, I forgot how they become romantically involved, I walked out to go to bathroom and consider ditching my friends and when I came back they suddenly were in love POOF PACHANG CHIZOW! To put it mildly they are little bland to be leading characters in this strange little sci fi world. All the basic film making stuff feels really weirdly cheap ; what little special effects happen are bad, there are no big sets everything is either outside a building , in a small room, or in an ugly big sound stage. Since they never venture outside the city we never get any good outdoor landscapes except for these ugly little nightmare sequences that make no sense at all.

     This movie is not redeemable but the worst thing about it is how slow it all feels, the story is lightly sped up over the course of what is supposed to be months if not a year but they give very little indication of any time passing so the pacing comes across as they just tore out half the pages in random spots of the book and wrote "AWKWARD TRANSITION" between all the pages. Just... don't go see this movie. Please. See Captain America The Winter Soldier or something.