The Divergent Series: Allegiant
Directed by: Robert Schwentke
Written by: Noah Oppenheim and Adam Cooper - Based on the novel by Veronica Roth
Starring: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Jeff Daniels, Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort, Zoë Kravitz, Maggie Q, Ray Stevenson, Mekhi Phifer, Daniel Dae Kim, Bill Skarsgård, Octavia Spencer, Naomi Watts, Keiynan Lonsdale, Jonny Weston, Nadia Hilker
Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi - 121 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 16 Mar 2016
Written by: Noah Oppenheim and Adam Cooper - Based on the novel by Veronica Roth
Starring: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Jeff Daniels, Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort, Zoë Kravitz, Maggie Q, Ray Stevenson, Mekhi Phifer, Daniel Dae Kim, Bill Skarsgård, Octavia Spencer, Naomi Watts, Keiynan Lonsdale, Jonny Weston, Nadia Hilker
Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi - 121 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 16 Mar 2016
In the world of Veronica Roth’s Divergent, there is always another person lurking behind the curtain. No sooner do Tris and company overcome the latest puppet master than the real, previously unseen, power behind the scene emerges to play antagonist. Post-apocalyptic Chicago was already threadbare and monotonous before Allegiant, the third installment in the series. However, finally escaping to the other side of the wall fails to produce the excitement and wonder we yearn for; in fact, I rooted for the cavalcade to find their way back to Chicago. Bombed out buildings are more interesting to look at than nuclear wasteland and military barracks.
Dutifully following its young adult series forefathers, Lionsgate places finances above audience patience and bisects the final installment of its trilogy into two films. Nobody on Earth says Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 nor The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 are the best films in their franchises; they are frequently held up as placeholders. They are an opportunity for you to buy just one more movie ticket before the real men behind the curtain, the producers, decide to let the series die.
Dutifully following its young adult series forefathers, Lionsgate places finances above audience patience and bisects the final installment of its trilogy into two films. Nobody on Earth says Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 nor The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 are the best films in their franchises; they are frequently held up as placeholders. They are an opportunity for you to buy just one more movie ticket before the real men behind the curtain, the producers, decide to let the series die.
The evil Jeanine is dead and the Chicago factions learn their community has been an observed experiment directed from the outside for the past 200 years (*cough* Maze Runner). Evelyn (Naomi Watts, While We’re Young), pretty much indistinguishable from Jeanine, decides the best way to lead is through fear and sets up some old-fashioned mob justice to retaliate against the scheming Erudite faction. For a PG-13 film, it’s unusual to see victims take a bullet straight to the skull, but as brutal as that sounds, there is no blood and you don’t really see the shot; this isn’t poor Marvin from Pulp Fiction in the back of the cab.
Tris (Shailene Woodley), her boyfriend Four (Theo James), still an eye-rolling name, and the rest of the gang take the first trip out of town scaling the wall, maneuvering through an electrified fence, all under a hail of gunfire, and enjoy their newfound bright red, radioactive desert. The man behind the curtain, or Camo-wall in this case, is David (Jeff Daniels, Steve Jobs). David leads the Bureau of Genetic Welfare, a hierarchical cult-like militia running the Chicago experiment and obsessed with the idea of pure vs. damaged genomes. However, even David says there are people even more powerful than him, the council, hidden away in the pure city of Providence aka another being behind the curtain.
Allegiant opts to ignore its most promising lead. According to David’s origin story, human beings a long time ago started tampering with their children’s DNA to produce better looking, smarter, and stronger offspring. This genetic tampering interfered with the natural order, people nuked each other for some reason, and here we are, searching for signs humans will one day evolve back to a pure DNA. Looks like Tris is our girl. Ah, but Four knows David isn’t on the level and when he urges Tris to run away once more, she’s got higher level motivations on her mind.
Screen adaptor Noah Oppenheim, who coincidentally wrote the first Maze Runner about a genetic experiment, switches protagonists on us. For the first two installments, we followed and identified with Tris, our heroine against the world. Now we identify with Four because Tris has lost her way. Four settles his scores with his fists rather than his brains so Allegiant detours into hand-to-hand combat much more often than its predecessors. According to science, Tris may contain the ultimate personality, equal in all faction areas, but she remains as one-dimensional as can be. Four is even flatter than that.
The details also annoy a bit more than usual. Tris is the only character wearing white, representing purity, while everyone else remains in black, blue, and grey; a bit too overt to remind us Tris is a cut above the rabble. David relentlessly emphasizes how important Tris is to the future of mankind, yet she could have easily been killed escaping over the wall catching just one of the 19,000 munitions thrown her way. David is the omniscient game master, yet he could lose his prized possession as routinely as all the superfluous supporting characters around Tris fall away one by one. There are overt shades of The Giver surrounding Allegiant based on its preoccupation with genetics and personality, but this placeholder will bore you even more than that lackluster production did. Borrowing from my buddy who came up with this, we have Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant; will they clean all this up with Detergent? Come on now, that’s funny.
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