Divergent

[Ashbash]

Hey all. I feel like I jumped on this bandwagon a little (okay, super) late but has anyone seen the Divergent movie? If so, what did you think?

 

I saw it yesterday in theaters and I absolutely loved it. I honestly think I might be a bit obsessed, I want to go see it again! I'm not a huge fan of Shailene Woodley so I wasn't sure if I was going to like the movie but she was pretty awesome. Everyone was.

 

I really want to get the books now and read them. Has anyone read them? I assume they'd be better than the movie as most books are but just wondering what others thought. Let me know!

[dawnshine]

I've heard all of the hype surrounding this but haven't gotten around to checking it out. I certainly wouldn't mind reading the books, however.

[majesticMagi]

i've read all the books and the ending of allegiant pissed me off so much D:<

the movie was pretty good, though :)

[the_microwave]

I haven't read the books but I'm looking forward to seeing the movie! I don't go watch a lot of movies but I'm always eager to show support for a Hollywood movie with a female protagonist :) I've heard really good things about it so I'm hoping it lives up to my expectations.

[sky_blue_eyes]

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I enjoyed the first book. Trying to decide if I want to buy the hardbacks of the next two books or ebooks, or try to find paperback books! Ah, choices.

[siniri]

I've read the first two books, but I haven't seen the movie yet -- and after hearing some of the changes that were made, I'm not sure I'm going to, especially since the poster doesn't look like anything I pictured. I had a bit of trouble getting past the premise (it took me over a year to read them because I had read the "sneak peak" on Amazon and thought the set-up was a bit silly), and the ending of Insurgent (the second one) seemed pretty unrealistic to me. I've heard the third book (Allegiant) really bothered a lot of people. I've got to wait a few months for my place at the library, anyway, so I guess I'll read it once it comes in.

[Atta]

I read the books, and they were quite good.
But... I'm quite afraid to see the movie. As I really did enjoy the books I'm scared they'll completely slaughter the story.
It's happened so often with movie adaptations of books I enjoyed (Cough. Percy Jackson. Cough) that I actually forced myself not to get too excited about Divergent coming out as a movie.

I might watch it later on, when it comes out on DVD, But... I'm definitely not going to bother going to the movies in case it's a complete failure.

[BEE.]

I've read the first two books (currently reading the third, which is really annoying me!)

I enjoyed the first though not as much as I thought I would, but it kept me entertained for a while, and I also liked the pacing. It didn't rush into anything too quickly, and I liked learning about Dauntless.

The second I really didn't like as I felt it focused too much on the whole 'girlfriend and boyfriend thing'. (Actually, I don't like it when a lot of books do that.)

I don't like the fact that the third switches between Four & Tris' point of view. I don't understand why the author changed the style and feel like it wasn't needed at all. I get confused with who's POV I'm reading.

 

I'm seeing the film this Friday because that's when it's released in the UK. I haven't been too sure about the casting, but hopefully my mind will change :)

[x3xpotterx3x]

I've read the books but have yet to see the movie. Honestly I'm afriad to go see it.
I LOVED the first book it was really good and entertaining. However, I depised the next two. Honestly the only redemption was the ending of Alleigent which is supposed to be a shocker but I saw coming from the moment she started book 3.

[officialsarahjay]

I read the books and I thought the movie was good when I first saw it - okay, incredible - but then it really started to bother me with how much was missing from the book and I'm a purist, so it made me upset. But the special effects were amazing and that scene where Tris is ziplining through Chicago makes my stomach turn and I love that feeling.

 

But no, I love Divergent, I thought the movie was good, but read the books if you haven't they're incredible. Except the third one. Everyone says you'll be disappointed and you will be. I liked how it ended myself, but its execution was awful.

[siniri]

So I suddenly jumped from 56 on the waiting list at my library two weeks ago to find that Allegiant was ready for me to pick up yesterday. I'm about halfway through it, and honestly, it's even worse than I was anticipating after finishing Insurgent.

 

I'm honestly not sure I want to finish it. Is there any payoff at all? I already figured out the fate of one of the characters thanks to people's posts above, so I can brace myself for that. But it took a huge suspension of disbelief to even start the first one, and I feel like every time I've tried to put my trust into the author and say "Okaaay, that's a stretch, but maybe you're not taking it there," she does.

 

Two of my biggest pet peeves in books are 1) Illogical actions by a character for the sake of plot (evil people just being evil for the sake of evil, or characters acting outside their personality just because the author needs them to) and 2) long explanations that actually don't make any sense (especially when using pseudoscience).

 

I guess I'll use spoiler tags since most of my comments focus on the later books. The first spoiler deals with Four's personality (no specific plot-related spoilers):

 

I've been troubled by Tobias since Insurgent. I know that humans are inconsistent, but his swings stretch the level of believability. He showed signs of potentially becoming abusive (emotionally, at least, though he also showed early warning signs of the potential for physical abuse), but then those were dismissed -- by Tris, the narrator, which would be consistent with the victim in an abusive relationship -- except that the plot didn't really develop this further, and it seems like this is supposed to be a "normal" relationship. I know that abuse can cycle with brief "honeymoon" periods of the abuser being sweet, before the victim-blaming ("you made me feel X and do Y") begins again, but the Tobias-Tris relationship doesn't follow this pattern either.

 

I'm not necessarily wishing she had explored the potential for Tobias to become abusive (though it could be interesting given his upbringing); there's more than enough going on in the story that them having a "normal" relationship is fine. I just don't get him as a character. Or I guess I don't quite get the discrepancy between so many people respecting him (wanting him to be Dauntless leader, Tris thinking he's the most amazing guy ever) and some much of his behavior. It's like he's two different people at once, and I can't quite figure out which is the real him.

 

Even in Allegiant, when someone suspects he might not really be Divergent, they say he doesn't display some of the typical signs, but they don't say what exactly he's lacking -- in Divergent, he seemed to epitomize it even more than Tris (him rejecting the faction system because he wants to be brave, selfless, smart, honest, and kind). So I'm left going "Huh? He's not? But Marcus is? What the heck does Divergent even mean, then?"

 

Now that the narration is switching back and forth (though I can't remember who's talking half the time unless I flip back -- great character differentiation, that...), I often am shouting in my head, "Shut up, Four!"

 

tl;dr: Okay, that was a long rant, and I'm not even sure what I wanted to say. Just that I find a lot of the characters inconsistent, illogical, and semi-unbelievable, including one of the two biggest ones. Honestly, the only character I find well-developed and relatable is Tris, and that's because we've spent 2+ books inside her head.

 

Note: I tried to use "normal" in quotes to indicate a relatively healthy, non-abusive relationship, not implying that there's only one right way to relate to others.

 

 

The next part is super-spoilerish for those who haven't read past the first book. It includes references to Insurgent and the first half of Allegiant.

 

When I read the Edith Prior revelation at the end of Insurgent, I actually laughed. I was like, "Umm, you expect these people to save civilization when they've just had a violent, anarchic civil war because of their faction system -- led in large part by the very "saviors" you've been hoping for -- the Divergents [remember that many of the factionless are supposedly Divergent]? Right, then..."

 

So yeah, I was hoping that the message was a bit of a lie, but the actual explanation was so much pseudoscience and fear-mongering. Really, you're going to isolate people with undesirable mutations, urge them to reproduce with each other, and hope that the mutations go away? That's not how biology works. The government would have been much more likely to sterilize them (especially given the U.S.'s history of eugenics) -- I'm not advocating for this, obviously, but the whole premise of the experimental sites is totally illogical. And how does the faction system help with behavior modification? If the problem is that the genetic modifications created too much of one "virtue," suppressing the other virtues, how would having the people live rigidly according to that one virtue they already have in excess be beneficial? That whole civil war thing basically proved that it wasn't...

 

The kicker was when Matthew explains that he wants to test Tris and Tobias because "we haven't gotten to test the genes of someone in such a late generation of the experiment before" -- because Amar and George Wu aren't in the same generation as Tobias? What about all the other Divergents who escaped, and those from other sites? Surely many of them were in later generations than Tris, the unusual second generation? Humans doing these kinds of genetic experiments on humans is ludicrous because of the long lifespans and low reproduction rate.

 

And so much of Allegiant is explaining this stuff. And now I just read that there's another insurgency. Of course. But seriously? The overall message seems to be that you can't trust the government and you can't trust science; that both are inherently unethical. And I'm not sure I really care anymore whether they have that insurgency, and who wins. This book has spent so much time on all this boring, illogical world-building, I don't even care about the actual characters anymore, to care whether they live or die -- I barely even care about Tris, even though she's still narrating half the time, and I only care about the others because she cares about them (because really, they've barely been developed). So I'm left with, why should I bother reading the rest? To find out what happens to people I don't care about? To find out how whatever happens to Tris in the end happens to her? To read more about this fictitious, illogical world I can't pretend to believe in anymore? To hear more about how my chosen profession is evil?

 

 

But seriously, is there any reason to finish, or should I just forget about it?

 

P.S. I finally saw the movie, too, but this was long enough, so I'll just say it was okay but was lacking some of the most important themes of the book.

[Shatooty]

Man I keep hearing how bad Allegiant is but I'm gonna read it anyway for the sake of completion. I saw the movie a couple days ago. I thought it was pretty good but like the rest of you I felt certain things were lacking. I didn't particularly like the way Al and Peter were portrayed in the movie. They watered Peter's character down A LOT. As for Al the book just made him seem a bit different I guess.

[officialsarahjay]

Man I keep hearing how bad Allegiant is but I'm gonna read it anyway for the sake of completion.

 

Since I wrote my post in this thread, I've barely made it past the halfway point. Finishing the book is pure torture, and that's absolutely disappointing considering how much I loved the first two.

 

I have a copy of Wintergirls coming in soon, and I'm...probably going to start that and still put off finishing Allegiant. I really should finish it just to have it done. :( I just...don't want to. Ever.

 

Can't Roth re-write it? I'd think it's fair for her to re-write it! I would if I put out a horrific novel and my fans were disappointed.

[siniri]

 

Since I wrote my post in this thread, I've barely made it past the halfway point. Finishing the book is pure torture, and that's absolutely disappointing considering how much I loved the first two.

 

I have a copy of Wintergirls coming in soon, and I'm...probably going to start that and still put off finishing Allegiant. I really should finish it just to have it done. :( I just...don't want to. Ever.

 

Can't Roth re-write it? I'd think it's fair for her to re-write it! I would if I put out a horrific novel and my fans were disappointed.

I don't know how she'd fix it, honestly. I think Allegiant just made me realize a few problems with the earlier two that I was able to overlook because there was so much going on (e.g., she's not very good at character development -- the only one I knew enough to care about halfway through Allegiant was Tris). She'd also have to change her basic premise for her world, and that would be difficult for someone who's had that vision for so long.

 

All that being said, once you're at the halfway point, it doesn't get any worse -- they actually do stuff instead of just her yakking on and on about dubious science, so if you're halfway, I recommend just plowing through. (That's where I nearly stopped, too, but I'm glad I went ahead and finished it -- just so I knew for sure what happened to everyone, even though I barely cared at that point.)