I saw Divergent on March 21, 2014!! The theater was packed. I had been anticipating this movie for a while. I think the storyline of Divergent is intriguing, and differentiates itself from other dystopian novels like The Hunger Games series very nicely. For those that haven't read the book, the gist is that Chicago was divided into five factions following a devastating war. The five factions are: Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless, & Erudite. Each faction has a theme. If you're in Abnegation, you're selfless. If you're in Amity, you're kind, If you're in Candor, you're honest. If you're in Dauntless, you're courageous/brave. If you're in Erudite, you're knowledgeable. Everybody is placed into a specific faction to maintain order in society. A test helps young members of factions decide what faction they will end up. There's 3 options: 1. they stay in the faction they were born to, 2. they defect to another faction shunning their family due to the test results, or 3. they go into a faction and aren't cut out for it thereby making them factionless. In these selection tests, some tests can be inconclusive-this is on rare occasions. This means that you possess qualities from multiple factions, which makes it harder for society to control you. This is known as Divergent. That's the basic premise. I really like it, though. I like how a personality trait defines what a faction is rather than an occupation like you'd see in The Hunger Games...but I'm going to stop comparing them, because they are very different stories.
I felt the movie did an incredible job of capturing the essence in the pages of the books. All key events and moments were present. I absolutely love the Beatrice "Tris" Prior character. Her character is constantly evolving from when we're introduced to her in Abnegation to when she undergoes Dauntless training (basically has to forget everything about one faction and survive to adapt in another) to a courageous fighter helping to save the factions. I thought Shailene Woodley was excellent in the role. I find her to be a very talented actress, most notably a spectacular performance in The Descendants. In this movie, she really pulled the character out of the pages and made into a real life entity. Her acting was great-she sold emotion with her eyes extremely well. There was also one scene where she basically lost it following a certain event. Everybody in the theater was upset, and Woodley just made the scene that much better selling the raw emotion. Woodley nailed it for me, and I'm looking forward to more from her. Kate Winslet was phenomenal as Jeanine (basically the main villain of the movie). She absolutely nailed the essence of Erudite to an E!! Theo James captured that mystique of the Four character really well-I believe he was in Underworld: Awakening, which was my favorite of those movies since the original. I also was pleased with the selection for Tris's parents: Ashley Judd & Tony Goldwyn. I liked that Judd's presence seemed to have more layers when we're first introduced (it should based on what readers of the book know), while Goldwyn seemed more plain as he should have been. Goldwyn is a particularly talented actor. Some may know him from Scandal, but I've always known him as Michael Drucker in the Sixth Day-which interestingly enough dealt with a different society as well. Hmm? I was impressed with Zoe Kravitz as Christina, and Miles Teller did a great job of being the douche Peter.
The movie was blended nicely into three parts: 1. introduction/Choosing Ceremony/Intiation 2. The different stages Tris must undertake, and 3. breakdown of society/rebellion. It all blended really well. While it was really faithful to the book, there were a few tweaks here and there that I liked as did the audience which allows this to stand on its own as a movie. The action sequences were very well done, and everybody was cheering, clapping, or crying at certain events during the last 20 minutes or so. It was such a cool atmosphere. I love being in a packed theater for movies like this. The biggest applause and cheers came in a scene involving Tris & Jeanine at the end-it was awesome. You have to see it to know what I'm talking about. As I said, it captured the essence of the book really well, and did great making itself a good movie. The performances, action sequences, and evolution of Tris were captured in a positive light. I give this a definite 5/5. It's one of my favorite movies of the year along with 300: Rise of an Empire. I highly recommend this even if you haven't read the book. It's an incredible story, and one that I was really into reading and watching. At the end of the movie, the entire audience clapped. We knew we just witnessed a really good movie. This isn't a movie where the basic premise is killing people. This is a movie about finding your place in society-I love that.
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