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
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