Young Adult Month: The Divergent Series: Allegiant

In the not too distant future, after a disaster takes place

A nerdy guy with Rage Issues, among the last of the human race

He was just a media nerd, he ranted a lot, it was quite absurd

But he was special for some reason, so bad men decided it was Rage Issues season

He’ll star in 3 movies, 4 if we squeeze him dry

He’ll go and join a rebel force, as he’ll slowly lose his mind

Now keep in mind, he’s just a guy, no different from you or me

So, he’ll have to learn how to survive, with the help of YA Movies

Franchise Roll call:

Hunger Games

Maze Runner

Diiiiiiiivergent

If you’re wondering how he posts his thoughts, and who he’s posting for

Repeat to yourself, it’s just a theme, and think about it no more

It’s Young Adult Month!

We come to the end of the road for the Divergent series: The Divergent Series: Allegiant

The Divergent movies had never been box office smashes, which makes the move of increasing their budget with each release perplexing to say the least, but here we are, Allegiant had a $140m budget at its disposal, given the box office returns of the other 2 films, it would struggle to break even if it matched them, and it didn’t. The film earned $170m at the box office, resulting in a net loss and the planned follow-up instalment to be tossed in the garbage. I know there were talks of TV movies and mini-series but the actors involved in the films didn’t care and these ideas have largely been scrapped now.

Here’s the weird thing though, usually when it comes to making a 2-part movie adaptation, you film them back-to-back with a joint budget to save costs then release them about a year apart to allow for editing. This movie wasn’t released like that, and you might argue there’s a reason for it. Anyway, the film was critically panned with a dismal 12% Rotten Tomatoes Rating with an average critical score of 4.1/10, audiences too seem to have had enough, giving it only a 41% audience score with an average of 3/5

I know I’ve been pretty detailed in my synopses anyway for this series, but again, major spoilers for both film and book, as I’ll try and summarise both.

The factionless, lead by Four’s mother Evelyn have taken over and the members of erudite put on trial, with Evelyn putting the convicts to death to satisfy the bloodlust of the crowd. If this sounds familiar to you, you've witness the end of the Hunger Games. The wall is locked down and Evelyn has forbidden anyone to cross it. Caleb is among the convicts but Four rescues him on Tris’ bequest. Four, Tris, Peter, Christina and Tori make a run for the wall, Tori is killed by one of Evelyn’s soldiers but the others all make it out (you deserved better than this movie, Maggie Q)

Outside they discover a world that doesn’t make any sense but it’s more detailed than anything I remember in the book so… I guess I can’t fault them. They meet up with the Matthew, a member of the Bureau, and taken to their headquarters in what was a Chicago airport. But because this movie loves wasting its CG budget, everything is given a sci-fi edge it didn’t have in the book.

They explain that a long time ago, people began editing genes to exacerbate certain positive qualities of people and remove negative ones, but it lead to the purity wars, where those who hadn’t gone genetic editing fought against those that did, leaving a broken world in its wake. It turns out that whilst Tris is genetically pure, Four is not. Tris spends most of her time trying to get David to interfere with the situation in Chicago but "he needs permission from the council"

Four and Christina are given military training, including the use of reconnaissance drones which might have been in the book, I can’t remember. Caleb and Peter are tasked with using VR software to enter the Chicago experiment and monitor an escalating situation, as Johanna, formerly a leader of Candor has amassed an army of pro-faction people against Evelyn’s factionless army.

Four discovers that the Bureau are abducting children in the wastelands and removing their memory so they serve the Bureau, this is possibly brought up in the book, it wasn’t entirely clear. He tries to tell Tris about this, whilst acting like a controlling douchebag, but Tris still trusts David. Four heads back to Chicago, but is quickly captured by the factionless.

David takes Tris to a council meeting where she’s told that David had the power to intervene the whole time and hasn’t been. This shatters Tris’ trust in him and makes me wonder how many stupid pills David was taking that day, he took Tris to the only people who could tell her he’s lying to her.

David calls upon Peter to enact a plan to erase the city’s memories using memory gas as Tris, Caleb and Christina head back to Chicago. Peter shows the gas to Evelyn and tests it on Marcus, removing his memories… I’ll have a point about this later but know that Evelyn eventually decides to vaporise the gas and spread it throughout the city. Tris and co arrive and rescue Four, and he eventually talks his mother down, but it’s too late as Peter releases the gas anyway. Thanks to Caleb, they manage to stop it, and Tris gets the city to declare War on the bureau.

This movie is a mess of new technical jargon, old technical jargon, contrivance and convenience and occasionally lousily delivered lines. Neither conflict feels well developed enough to get you invested in them. And worse they feel a little too similar to conflicts in previous movies and of course in the Hunger Games and the Maze Runner. If you can’t draw the parallels between the Bureau and WCKD, both organisations built with the intentions of making the world better, through sadistic experimentation, I’m afraid I can’t help you. (I know The Death Cure movie came out later, but there’s almost a 2-year gap in the opposite direction with the books)

With regards to it as an adaptation, it’s a pretty poor one, cherry picking plot-points and filling the gaps with a story that runs completely against the book. There’s less padding which is good, but there’s less character drama in favour of rushing through a potentially interesting story for the sake of setting up a new one, and god knows what that new one would’ve had in it because there’s nothing left of the book to adapt. I’m serious, the climax of this film is at least partially inspired by the book’s climax, there was no city war against the Bureau in the book.

Once again, Shainlene Woodley is one the few saving graces of the film, and Miles Teller gets expanded screen-time which is always nice. I swear Ansel Engort’s acting was worse in this film, but it might just be down to the kind of person he was portraying. I will say it looks pretty, the budget clearly went to the special effects and whilst some weren’t necessary, it at least looked decent.

I really have nothing to say on the quality of Theo James’ acting as Tobias/Four, same goes for Zoë Kravitz’s portrayal, who has next to nothing to do in this movie.

Honestly, the changes from the book are so perplexing to me, I don’t understand how we got to this, for splitting the book into 2 films, they seemed intent on adapting most of this book (badly admittedly) for this film, with an entirely new story the only way forward they could’ve gone with the book. The lack of originality is the core problem with both the film and the books, but what could’ve been.

So, to catch up on where we are with the book. There was no box that needed to be opened in the book, in fact Jeannine was determined the information wasn’t leaked to the public. The tests were of why Divergents can resist serums. Peter got her out by swapping the intended kill serum with a knock out drug.

They return, and plan an attack, Tris is still intent on releasing information, something which Marcus also wants so a group lead by Marcus conducted a stealth attack on Erudite whilst Erudite were busy fighting Evelyn and the Factionless. Tris released the information in time, and it was of similar enough context to the movie. But the point is she was not in Evelyn’s good graces either for this.

Oh and Tris seems to be able to resist all serums, including the Truth drug, she used this to pin the blame for her actions solely on Marcus. She’s let off and Christina is also. The plot from there follows the film till about the point where they leave the wall, I don’t think there’s a secondary camouflage wall in the book. Also, there are a few more characters that leave including Uriah (who is so unimportant to the movie franchise, this is the first time I’ve mentioned him) and Cara… I don’t know who Cara is in the films (or the books really)

They’re picked up and we’re introduced to Zoe and Amar. Amar was Four’s trainer and believed dead, the death was faked and he was escorted out of the city, by Tris’ mother. Tris’ mother’s origin matches the film, but they never explained in the film what she was doing, or anything beyond her origin really. She was in the city to secretly smuggle Divergents out since the city was intent on killing them. Another among them was George Wu, who Tori briefly talked about in the first film, he was her brother.

The reason for their like of Divergents is similar enough to the films, although it was more about them having lots of children to repopulate the Earth than any kind of cure they were insinuating the films. Tris and Four are tested and it’s revealed that whilst Four can resist the serum, he’s not truly divergent, he’s ‘genetically damaged’ this has a profound impact on his self-esteem. Tris doesn’t give a sh*t, and acts like she did in the film.

It’s revealed that genetically damaged people aren’t treated well, with their aspirations capped below that of those are genetically pure. A GD (I can’t be bothered calling them genetically damaged every time) named Nita promised to start an uprising by using a gas that erases memories, this intrigues Four but Tris is immediately distrustful, if in part because she’s kinda jealous of her.

And yes, you’re right, they did the exact opposite of what they did in the film here. Thanks to a talk with Matthew, another new character from the Bureau who did make it into the film, Tris finds out that Nita instead intends to steal death serum, but needs David, the head of the Bureau, to open the weapons vault to get in without unleashing it.

The attack happens and multiple explosions rock the compound, one of them injures Uriah into a permanent coma. Tris stops Nita by holding David at gunpoint, she’d recently discovered that David had helped Jeannine with the simulation serum used in the attack in the first book, and the suicides in the second. Nita is stopped and placed in prison, Four is released but his relationship with Tris is damaged because of this. Tris is offered a high-ranking position for her bravery, David respecting her ability to sacrifice anything for the greater good.

In Chicago, things have gotten worse, with the Allegiant planning raids on Evelyn’s weapons stockpiles, she plans to retaliate by unleashing the death serum on everyone. Yup, she’s that corrupted. David plans to rectify the situation by unleashing an airborne version of the memory serum. Tris, Matthew and a few others plan to unleash the memory serum on the Bureau instead, but Four becomes concerned about the situation back home, and heads back with Peter and some of the memory serum. He also plans to visit Uriah’s parents, admitting he failed them by being a part in the attack.

Peter has decided, rather out of no-where, that he wants the memory serum to start over and become a better person. Four confronts his mother and gets her to back down rather too easily (this was handled better in the movie without question, in the film it always seemed like she was in way over her head) she ultimately makes a peace agreement with Johanna. She would leave the city and pass leadership onto anyone, as long as Marcus would agree never to stand. 

Oh, Marcus was officially exiled for his role in things, and with his abuse exposed, no-one seemed to like him. I like this ending for Marcus because he loses everything and has to live with that, the memory wipe was more a convenient fix.

The agreement is made and the war called off. Meanwhile back at the Bureau, the only way of getting into the weapons vault without David is to take on the death serum. Caleb ultimately volunteers. The relationship between Caleb and Tris is much worse in the book, they come to blows more than once, despite Caleb’s attempts to make amends (a problem from the book and film is that Caleb’s change of heart makes me think that he lacks any sort of conviction) ultimately, Tris takes his place and is exposed, but it turns out, like with other serums, she’s immune to it.

She succeeds in getting the memory serum into the building but David is waiting and kills her before succumbing to the memory serum himself. Four brings Uriah’s parents to the Bureau and they agree to turn off his life support.

It's a fairly sombre ending all things considered, although we jump forward 2 years where things are a little more hopeful. I’m glad the film cut out a number of extraneous characters, but would this story have made a better movie? Maybe but we’ll never know because this film is what we got, and what a waste it was.

Rating 25/100