Divergent!

On Sunday, I went to the Arclight to see Divergent in the Cinerama Dome. I read all three books in the series a few months ago. I enjoyed Divergent, but had diminishing returns for the next two books. I felt like it was a really good adaptation of the book, and Shailene Woodley made a great Tris. 

One thing that annoyed me was that Tris's friends in the movie were so interchangeable that I couldn't even tell you how many guys there were in her group, because they literally all looked the same. I don't know who was supposed to be who, except for Will, and that was only because he was always with Christina. Tris's main enemy dude, Peter, was so dulled down; what happened to the eye stabbing incident? When Al betrays her with him, it means barely anything because which one is he even? Were they friends? I don't know!

One good thing you can say about Tris is that at least she acts on her own agency. Katniss, in the Hunger Games, is pulled and pushed along, left out of the loop of the more important behind-the-scenes machinations of the adults. She doesn't act, she only reacts. Tris is all about acting and making decisions that affect the narrative.

I liked Hunger Games much more than this. That felt like a world that could actually come about. Split the country into sections, each producing products, all to benefit the Capitol, where the 1%-ers live, uncaring about the have-nots. In Divergent, it's just like, take an unnecessary test to determine where you belong, even though you pick what you grew up in anyway, and it doesn't mandatorily assign you, you can still pick what you want to do. And they're all based on just one personality trait, if you even want to call it that? Even the explanation for why their way of life is like that, given in the later books, still warrants a side-eye from me. Also, the serums used throughout the series annoyed me. They seemed like a plot device; there can't really be all these magical liquids that can cause you to do all these things. I don't know why I couldn't seem to suspend my disbelief, but I just couldn't.

I feel like this is all really negative; I actually pretty much enjoyed the movie. I thought it looked great, the acting was good, Kate Winslet is in it. Though it was two and a half hours, it didn't seem super long. Didn't seem short either, but it felt like just the right the amount of time it needed to get everything across. Hopefully a lot will be added to the next two movies. After all the world-introduction is out of the way, I feel like there's a somewhat thinner plot, especially if everything is coming from only Tris's point of view and it's just her discovering all these things that are happening outside of what she knows, and fighting, lots and lots of fighting. Hopefully, they'll be able to add more to flesh out the storyline, kind of like they did with Hunger Games by adding in scenes that weren't in the book, from other character's perspectives.