Second instalment of Divergent series doesn’t diverge from dystopian template

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This article was published 20/03/2015 (4190 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Following close on the heels of the penultimate Hunger Games movie, Mockingjay Part One, this second entry in the Divergent trilogy may give fans of the popular young woman-vs.-dystopian tyranny genre a serious case of middle-chapter fatigue.

This is especially true of Insurgent because, with a bit of tweaking, it could have been a pretty good wrap-up.

Put it this way: At the end of this movie, not one significant character is frozen in carbonite.

Let’s refresh. (It must be said this movie does a rather inadequate job of recapping. Director Robert Schwentke must have incorrectly assumed the first movie was more memorable than it actually was.)

Tris Prior (Shailene Woodley) is a young woman who may not seem extraordinary on her placid surface. But in a walled future city where, as in high school, people are socially segregated according to their strongest personality traits (Dauntless, Candor, Abnegation, Erudite and Amity), Tris is one of those rare individuals who qualifies as “all of the above.”

That worries Jeanine (Kate Winslet), the leader of the Erudites, as she makes a bid for power over all the other factions. So she sets her chosen Dauntless thug Eric (Jai Courtney) to eradicate Tris and any other Divergent in her way.

Tris, feeling guilty about the deaths of her parents, has taken to living off the grid with her rebel boyfriend Four (Theo James), a living arrangement that puts them amid the scruffy, homeless “factionless” and their not-entirely-trustworthy leader Evelyn (Naomi Watts).

In the meantime, Jeanine has discovered a mysterious box, designed by her civilization’s founders, that promises to unlock some of the secrets of their society. Alas, its secrets can only be revealed by a very special Divergent.

Guess who?

If last year’s Divergent seemed an interesting departure in the burgeoning young-adult-targeted dystopian tales, this second chapter might diminish any good will earned from the first.

It’s a bit of a slog, frankly, bouncing between Woodley fretting, James being all hunky-stoic, and an endless cycle of fight and flight, each episode more credibility-defying than the last.

It must be said that, despite the fact that her stories have a female heroine, author Veronica Roth takes a dim view of matriarchal leaders as embodied by the frosty, Machiavellian Jeanine and the potentially psychopathic Evelyn.

On the plus side, the film does have an interesting surreal, dreamlike sequence, when Tris attempts to rescue her dead mom (Ashley Judd) from a burning building that also happens to be floating through the air.

Also, Miles Teller makes a particularly engaging cad in his returning role as Peter, a fugitive of dubious loyalty to Tris and her fellow rebels. This whole movie might have been so much more interesting and less predictable if it had been viewed from his perspective.

Alas, cinematically speaking, this saga is only half over.

Apparently, the last book of Roth’s trilogy, Allegiant, will be split into two movies in the tradition of Harry Potter, Twilight and Hunger Games finales.

Is that necessary? Probably not. Bear in mind, Hollywood has a faction of one: Money-grubbing.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca