Divergent Review

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Katniss Everdeen's shadow looms large over the dystopian genre on the big-screen- can Summit's latest escape it?

Screen adaptations of dystopian literary texts are a dime a dozen these days. Whereas a few years ago we might have argued that the film industry was in sore need of a critically respectable, commercially empowered franchise based around this particular genre, it’s safe to say that Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games series has upped the benchmark for future contenders tenfold. Next to step up to the plate is Neil Burger’s Divergent, the first instalment in an already-guaranteed series of adaptations of Veronica Roth’s best-selling teen fiction novels. So assured was its apparent commercial success that distributors Summit Entertainment saw fit to confirm the development of a sequel months ahead of its release, yet make no mistake, there are more than a few kinks present here that’ll need to be sorted out if Shaliene Woodley’s Tris Prior is to come anywhere close to matching the near-iconic status of Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen.

Contrary to what might have been inferred from my last sentence, though, Woodley’s performance isn’t one of Divergent’s many shortcomings (far from it, in fact). Although this reviewer can’t confess himself to have been a profound advocate of the actress’ work prior to this year, she’s fast becoming one of the most talked about young thespians of recent times, particularly with contributions to much-anticipated productions such as The Fault In Our Stars and The Amazing Spider-Man 3 still to come. Indeed, if we view her portrayal of Tris, Divergent’s morally-righteous and refreshingly multi-layered protagonist, solely as a stepping stone towards her future performances, then we’ve plenty to look forward to, since hers is without a doubt one of the most confident and engaging contributions of the lot. When a rising star such as Woodley can come up against A- and B-listers such as Kate Winslet and Mekhi Phifer (both of whom seem decidedly wooden by comparison) and come out of top, it’s impossible not to take note, and we’d wager that once Insurgent lands this time next year, she’ll have established herself as the go-to gal for studios seeking out adaptive and esteemed young talent.

Nevertheless, neither a standalone motion picture nor a budding blockbuster franchise can survive on the merits of a single cast member, regardless of the extent of said merits. As if it wasn’t enough to see Winslet in particular let the side down with her contribution as the oft-enigmatic and elusive faction overseer Jeanine Matthews, a performance which elicits an unparalleled sense of déjà vu in its spectacular failure to break the mould in any way, shape or form, several up-and-coming players who are surely aiming to reach the big leagues are let down either by the generically clichéd dialogue frequently afforded to them by screenplay artists Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor or by the abundance of cuts clearly instigated by the editing team in order to reduce the running time down to a still-exorbitant 139 minutes. Miles Teller (who plays Peter, a deceptively brash recruit in the faction to which Tris finds herself assigned) may well be set to take on the role of Reed Richards in next year’s risky reboot of Fox’s Fantastic Four saga, but the groundwork laid here isn’t exactly promising, not least since those sequences which do feature Peter are generally devoid of emotional weight and as such fail to leave a memorable impact in the slightest.

A more prominent misstep, perhaps Divergent’s greatest fault, lies in the one aspect of the movie which fans of Roth’s novels and newcomers alike would expect to be sound from the outset. Despite the tone of the piece remaining consistent in its conformation to many of the tropes which have defined its genre (for better or for worse) of late, the structure of the narrative itself is fundamentally weak, falling well short of the rapid momentum and sense of drive which bolstered The Hunger Games’ vastly superior debut outing. This is not to say that the movie doesn’t boast its fair share of aesthetic and technical issues (indeed, Burger’s direction of events is ambitious at first, yet quickly descends into the form of an underwhelming echo of genre efforts gone by, as does Junkie XL and Hans Zimmer’s teen-appeasing pop soundtrack), but to find oneself checking one’s watch on multiple occasions towards the end of a viewing is disconcerting enough and to find oneself doing so as early as the film’s halfway point (even if various key story arcs do kick into a remarkably higher gear from that point onwards) is truly telling of its script’s weaknesses. You’ll be doing well to catch a whiff of precisely where the plot is heading before the 70-minute mark, and once you do, you’ll soon realize that any kind of satisfying resolution to many of the story arcs which are raised and left hanging here is at least one or two sequels away, a frustrating truth that isn’t made any easier by Tris’ final voiceover, the gist of which essentially amounts to the phrase which big-screen directors daren’t make explicit for fear of speaking too soon: “To Be Continued…”

The increasingly confounding realization that reviewers such as myself are beginning to wrestle with when it comes to works such as Divergent is that their voice and influence will hold little in the way of consequences for the film’s target audience: Summit and Burger evidently know exactly which demographic of viewers they’re aiming for with their drama-turned-blatant love tale, and I can’t imagine that I’d lose any bets with the assertion that romance-craving teen viewers will flock to auditoriums to check it out regardless of its current critical status (indeed, Twilight’s plethora of Razzie nominations and victories never did the franchise any great harm at the box office). All the same, if Burger’s as-of-yet unnamed successor and their production team hope to amass acclaim not only from their target demographic but from academic and critical bodies, then they’d do well to dedicate further time to collaborating with Roth on strengthening the script-drafting process and Part Two’s overall structure as a result. For a piece which places such profound emphasis on its protagonist’s divergence from the status quo, Divergent is ironically trapped by the conventions of its genre, and just as Tris’ reflection reminds her that her surroundings are “not real” during her Dauntless indoctrinatory hallucination challenges, so too must Summit come to the realization that their latest franchise is about as far from the Hunger Games-dominated big leagues right now as it can get.

3/5