Looking back, I may have been a bit harsh in my review of Divergent a year ago. When that film was released, I criticized it for its overall blandness. In a world where young adult novel-to-film adaptations run amok in the industry, I felt that Divergent offered absolutely nothing new. All of its concepts and characters were so blatantly taken from other works that it was almost as if the story was created on an assembly line.
In all fairness, that initial assessment may have been a little rash. After all, it was only the franchise’s first film, and as such this first movie had to dedicate a lot of time to world-building and establishing exposition. The sequels, with the groundwork in place, could then take the series in its own direction.
Nevertheless, sometimes first impressions are correct because The Divergent Series: Insurgent, the franchise’s sequel, is even worse than the original.
Whereas the first film suffered from unmemorable characters and concepts lifted almost directly from Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and other popular franchises, Insurgent takes these concepts and cranks the “rip-off dial” to maximum capacity. Looking back, I cannot find a single bit of original material in this film. It’s simply an amalgamation of comfortable, safe and recognizable ideas mixed into an unpleasant homogenous glob.
The story of Insurgent picks up immediately following the events of the prior film. The setting is a dystopian society in which people are sorted into one of several “factions” based on their defining character traits. Tris (Shailene Woodley), Four (Theo James) and a small group of friends are all known as “divergents” since they exhibit traits of multiple factions, making them impossible for the government to classify.
Following the Erudite faction’s revolution in the first film, Tris and company remain on the run. Meanwhile, Jeanine (Kate Winslet), the leader of the Erudite faction, discovers a box left behind by their society’s founders, which can only be opened by a divergent. Desperate to use the box’s contents to end divergence for good, Jeanine begins rounding up all of the divergents she can while Tris struggles to rally a factionless army to oppose the oppressive government.
While stories about oppressive governments and free-thinkers opposing repression are certainly nothing new, typically the burden falls on the writers to add something new to the genre or to at least tell it in an interesting way. And while it is not always fair to judge a film based on the other seemingly unrelated films, the incredibly close releases and similar premises of Insurgent and the following film makes ignoring the comparison impossible: Mockingjay did the story first, and Mockingjay did it better.
The rallying of the impoverished subgroups, the arbitrary divisions of the citizenry and even the evil-for-the-sake-of-evil villains of the two films are so remarkably similar that it’s almost embarrassing.
It certainly doesn’t help matters that the film suffers a chronic case of middle-film disease. As is common in franchises like this, the second film typically serves less as a stand-alone story and more as a prolonged exposition for the final installment (or the next-to-final installment in the case of young adult Hollywood where final books are always cut in half). Insurgent has these failing symptoms in spades.
While its quest is interesting enough to carry the film to its conclusion, once the credits roll one feels that everything that just happened occurred solely so the third film could happen. The resolutions are weak while the cliffhangers are strong, and blatant next-movie-baiting is always a weak storytelling technique.
The more technical aspects of the film certainly do nothing to alleviate the film’s overall bland feeling. The action scenes, while potent and plentiful, don’t really do anything particularly unique or memorable. There are no moments where one will look back and remember “wow, that was awesome” or even “wow, that was ridiculous.” The action is there, but nothing more. (Although, to give credit where credit is due, I do applaud the film for using less shaky-cam than its predecessor.)
The actors, similarly, all give passable performances but nothing exceptional. Winslet in particular almost seems bored in her role as Jeanine. While the performance is by no means bad, especially considering how one-dimensional the character is, there is simply nothing charismatic about the acting. It’s unfortunate because memorable villains can oftentimes save otherwise forgettable films, but Winslet just doesn’t pull it off here.
The one exception to this criticism is Woodley herself, whose performance as Tris manages to gain this film some favor. While Tris was a pretty forgettable Katniss Everdeen ripoff in the first film, Woodley certainly works to give her a bit more distinct of a presence in Insurgent. While she doesn’t pull it off completely (due to the nature of the script), she certainly makes the role a bit more salvageable. The character may not be great, but Woodley continues to prove herself as an exceptionally capable actress and is definitely the best part about this film.
Aside from Woodley’s performance, however, there is simply not enough in Insurgent to warrant recommending. It offers nothing new, opting instead to try and copy far superior predecessors. While the film may not be explicitly bad, it is a complete and utter waste of time.
Overall rating: 2/5
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