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Divergent Series - Movie Reviews

 



Incomplete Series?

Originally intended to be a four part series, Divergent only made it to three movies. With the lack of profit from the third movie, the fourth movie budget was dialed back so it could be made as a TV movie. Some of the main cast were not going to do a TV movie which eliminated any thoughts of "completing" the series.

I personally think the third movie was acceptable as the ending of the series especially since I recently found out how far the third movie ignored the source material. This ignoring the source material probably led to the series demise. For those who just watched the movie, I thought it was okay.

Review

Rather than review each movie individually, I thought I would combine my review into one as all of the movies had the same good and bad qualities. Shailene Woodley is a good actress but an action star she is not. Part of this could be due to her being fresh off her TV series "The Secret Life of the American Teenager". I regret watching part of the series with my family as it became one of those partner jumping TV series that I refused to watch. I feel these types of TV series promote promiscuous relationships but I going off topic.

Her character is almost unlikable in the movie. In fact, there are several main characters that are almost unlikable in this series. If you find a character that you would like to learn more about, you should expect that half the time they will be killed off. I did not read the first two books but listened (not read) the third book to see where the final movie might have gone. Imagine my surprise when there were mere highlights in common with the movie story. I imagine when you start going one direction away from the source material, you end up falling off the edge on the other side.

The movie came right after the Hunger Games which I believe was a much better and stayed closer to the source material. Jennifer Lawrence had a character you wanted to root for because she starts the movie series out being selfless. I believe if the Divergent series had been made into movies before the Hunger Games series, it might have done better at the box office. I feel that those who saw this as the new Hunger Games series were disappointed and lost interest. For those who enjoyed the books, it probably diverged (no pun intended) from the source material during the second movie which ended up hurting the final movie.

The cast were fantastic in the movie. I blame the story they were given for loss in audience attendance and subsequent ending before the final installment. Overall, the movies are decent but not a break out series.

Rating

I would give this series a SD rating. If you are interested in the series, I would try to pick up the series for under $10 or individually under $5. I picked up Divergent free from Amazon which started me down the path of completing the collection. I picked up Insurgent (Blu-ray with digital) from Best Buy during a Black Friday sale. I picked up Allegiant from FandangoNow with a coupon for $12.

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