Friday, September 25, 2015

Insurgent/Divergent movie reviews

I'm lukewarm on the Divergent books to begin with, so I was never rushing out to the movies.  I've seen them both now.

Or, well, I've seen the first one all the way through and enjoyed it about as much as I enjoyed the book, which is to say... I have a hard time remembering it when it's over, but don't regret the time.

The second one, I just stopped.

The book is not great literature, but it makes some kind of disjointed sense.  The movie just doesn't.  Full stop.  Yes, there's a battle for information.  But it isn't a search for SUPER-SPESHUL divergents who have the power to open a magical box.  It's computer information, stolen from Abnegation during the last story.  The Factionless want to destroy it. Tris teams up with Marcus (despite hating him for how he treated Tobias) to get the information before either of the other sides can.  In this, she works with several good Erudite members.  She also willingly goes to her execution at one point, though Tobias rescues her in the end.

In the movie, there's a weird wire situation happening, and she has to get through simulations (one of which is ???kind of??? like the security on Jeanine's office?), and they magically unlock a box that only the absolute most specialest of special people can open.  People come and go with very little reason.  The characters are changed, again for very little reason (and what are they going to do in Allegiant, since they took out the plot about Tori's brother and her desire for revenge, since he turns out to be a key figure in the next book?).  Marcus is sidelined, and Evelyn is mischaracterized.

Okay, elements:

Setting
The setting on these movies is easily their strongest point.   The set designers created a gorgeously decayed, apocalyptic Chicago, and realized their creation beautifully.  I have no qualms about it.  The first movie gave us the Dauntless.  Now, we see the Amity greenhouse with the central tree, the tall Candor building (though I'm not sure why they didn't use the canonical Merchandise Mart, which is also pretty imposing), the broken down buildings, the crumbling infrastructure.  It's all quite good.  It's the only thing I have no problems with. Roth worked her settings well, and the filmmakers did an excellent job at bringing them to life.  It's like a weird cyber-punk John Hughes joint.

Character
Shailene Woodley carries the franchise as well as she can. She's a good actress, and her Tris overcomes the poor scripting in several scenes.  (She also looks a good deal like the character in the book is described -- one of the most accurate bits of casting I've seen, with the only disparity being that she's taller than Zoe Kravitz's Christina.)  But a good performance doesn't, ultimately, save the character, who's just all over the place in her motivations.  Kravitz's Christina whipsaws around as well, and Theo James's Tobias has the personality of a wet cardboard box.  I suppose it's possible that a sixteen year old could look older than his young-ish mother (played by Naomi Watts, 16 years James's senior, but looking about five years his junior), but she's supposed to have been living hard fo a while.  Watts's Evelyn was portrayed as soft-ish, which is contrary to her nasty book  characterization, and is just not believable as the long-time leader of the city's de facto homeless population. Caleb's characterization is senseless in the book and continues to be senseless in the movie.

Theme
 The first movie is about discovering selflessness, to some extent.  Tris has left Abnegation because she's bored, and by engaging in Dauntless recklessness, she ultimately comes to value the simpler, service-oriented world that she left.  It's not quite as clear in the movie as it was in the book.  There's also the general series theme of not limiting yourself to a single way of being.

In losing the sympathetic Erudite, the second movie's theme becomes, "Smart people are bad."  Seriously,  it's not much more complex than that.  The books aren't exactly subtle in thinking that academics are arrogant and power-hungry, but the movie makes them look like they're using obscure symbolic language.  There's some mileage left in the book's "look yourself in the eye and learn self-forgiveness" theme, but not a whole lot.

Style
Aside from the setting, the style is general apocalyptic dystopia.  A lot of shots of people running, some mirroring themes, with the black and white of Candor used to contrast views of self from time to time in the second.  Nothing to write home about.

Plot
See the intro. The books were at best okay on plot. The first movie is relatively close.  The second one pulls out the supports and lets the whole structure fall in under its own weight.  Irritating.

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