Official Synopsis
Divergent is set in a future world where society has been divided into five distinct factions. But Tris will never fit into any one group-she is Divergent, and what makes her different makes her dangerous. Targeted by a faction leader determined to eliminate all Divergents, Tris turns to the one person she believes she can trust: Four, an instructor for the militant Dauntless faction, and a man full of dark secrets. Together, Tris and Four uncover a mind-bending conspiracy that will put their courage to the ultimate test…and forever link their destinies.
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To be honest, I didn’t have much hope for this film. It felt like maybe it was trying to ride the Hunger Games wave. From afar (and from the marketing), Divergent looked and felt the same way the Hunger Games felt the first time I watched it. You had a society separated in groups that would come together on one occasion to see how things panned out in life, though the Hunger Games was a bit more violent on that end of the stick. Regardless, it felt like a rip-off – from afar.
Guess what? It completely wasn’t a rip-off. Guess what again? Divergent’s first attempt at setting the rest of its films up was far stronger than the Hunger Games’ first attempt. The story in Divergent seemed far more competent and together, as we start out with our protagonist, Tris (Shailene Woodley), going through a test to figure out where she fit in the scheme of a faction life. Thinking that she would be part of the Abnegation faction, a selfless faction, she is soon awakened from the test to find out she is divergent – someone who has no particular ‘one’ skill, but rather fits all factions. Also considered to be a dangerous group that is usually killed off quickly by the evil Erudite faction.
You couldn’t start an action/drama off a better way. The tension in the beginning, and pretty much throughout the film around the ‘divergent’ element is thick. Tris’ life is constantly endanger, should people figure this nasty secret about her out, and she does her best to fit into the most opposite faction she can to hide her secret – she runs to the militant Dauntless faction. When Tris gets to the Dauntless part of the story, things start to really kick into gear.
The Dauntless are led by two brutes – Eric (Jai Courtney) and Four (Theo James). Eric keeps the new faction recruits on their toes and in check, while Four plans out how things are going to go down in the scheme of things with the recruits. The constant fear of failing and being booted from the faction is always present during this training portion of the movie. The two leaders help to magnify and reinforce that fear. Two seemingly evil characters that progressively make life worse for Tris, as the training in the faction gets more intense, helps to show what’s at stake – and it’s just another layer of tension on top of an already tense situation.
A good majority of the film has Tris training and growing in the Dauntless faction. It’s a good way to develop her character properly and to set her up for later films. The movie does a great job with taking this weak character and making her into a strong leader. In the scheme of things, this is proper development of a character for a story like Divergent, though long in the tooth at times. But, you have to establish everyone, especially your lead, with the utmost care and director Neil Burger seems to do just that with the amount of time given to the training.
Ultimately, the training gets to its zenith and the story shifts. You get to learn more about Four, who is an important character, especially in Tris’ life, as well as Tris’ next step.
Once training is over, and there is about 45 minutes in the film, stuff goes down from one faction, which will affect other factions. The Erudite (the ‘smart ones’) devise a plan to get rid of the Abnegation faction by controlling the minds of the Dauntless to do the dirty deed. Having spent a good majority of the film learning how vicious, fearless and ruthless the Dauntless can be when fighting, the notion of using the Dauntless army to kill is quite frightening. See how good it gets when you properly develop characters?
Should the Erudite take out the Abnegation, they take control of the faction government. The catch? Divergent minds can’t be controlled, which would out those who are divergent. Without giving too much away, Pandora’s box is opened in this portion of the film and all hell breaks loose, setting up the next movie.
I will stop there.
While the majority of the review sounds positive, and the movie is more positive than negative, there is one underlying issue that needed to be addressed. The movie needed to set up the Erudite a bit better and get them to that point where they’re corrupt. It only lightly sprinkles corrupt into the story and depends on the audience to go along with how evil they are implied to be in the movie. I wanted to hate the Erudite and wish for Tris and crew to take them down. Sadly, there wasn’t enough motivation for me to get to that point in the film. We just know they hate the Abnegation through various character comments, but we never really see the reason or are given a reason, as it’s more hearsay than coming directly from anyone’s mouth or actions. You still realize they are the bad faction, and that certainly works to an extent, but the payoff in the film would have been much better hand the Erudite been given the proper amount of time to cultivate into a hated group. We needed more information to make them a true antagonist, and it simply never came to fruition. Maybe some of the training time could have helped with the Erudite development, but we’ll never know. In the end, this was the greatest flaw in the film, as everything else was pretty darn solid.
Shifting gears a bit, the actors and actresses in Divergent made this work. The casting of the movie was perfect, especially our hero. Shailene Woodley’s performance might night have ended up as tough as Jennifer Lawrence’s in the Hunger Games, but Woodley’s transformation from scared school girl to someone with fight, seemed helluva lot smoother. Credit Woodley for this and the director for giving a proper amount of time to allow it. Outside of Woodley, her cohort Theo James also did a solid job as Four. Again, if you let the marketing suck you in, you’ll assume they hired him for his pretty face (and his face is pretty), but his performance certainly backed that pretty face up and then some. He was tough, ruthless and badass. He and the rest of the cast did a great job with backing Woodley up.
Anyway, at the end of the movie I felt like it had done enough to impress. Divergent is no clone of the Hunger Games. It’s led by a different type of warrior, one that has flaws and isn’t afraid to admit them. She depends on friends and depends on more than just her leadership to see the story through. Seeing Tris rise from the ashes of weakness to lead people into a potential better world makes for a fun ride.
As for the Blu-ray portion of this movie, it’s quite good. While the literal tone of the film is on a high contrast tint, and the colors are mostly blue/gray/white scheme, the movie looks gorgeous at times. The factions are neatly portrayed by different shades of colors, which come through flawlessly. You won’t see any artifacts or graininess in the transfer, but the tone of the film doesn’t help the HD to jump out at you. It is fine, as the tone drives the story in a sense. In the end, the Blu-ray is gorgeous and without flaws, and still the best choice when you’re deciding between SD and HD. Summit did a fantastic job with this Blu-ray transfer.
The audio in the movie comes to you in DTS-HD 7.1 (yay and completely worth it) and the aspect ratio of the film is 2.40:1.
Finally, here are the features you get with Divergent’s Blu-ray package:
– “Bringing Divergent to Life” Documentary
– “Faction Before Blood” Featurette
– Deleted Scenes
– Ellie Goulding – “Beating Heart” music video
– Audio Commentary with Director Neil Burger
– Audio Commentary with Producers Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher
A good amount of features that do extend the life of the movie. The ‘Bringing Divergent to Life’ featurette gives you a lot of good insight to how the book made it to film. It’s a tough gig, if you’re not named Peter Jackson. The deleted scenes were good and the audio commentary is brilliant. Lots of good stuff and details to provide a bit more insight into the story and production.