Publicity still from Summit

I attended an advance screening of Divergent on Tuesday, before a lot of the reviews started to come in. As of the moment I write this, the movie holds a 36% rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes. With 71 reviews counted, it doesn’t seem likely to gain much ground. These numbers surprised me initially, since I thought the movie was pretty solid: beautifully shot, impressive settings (particularly the dystopian Chicago landscapes), and strong acting from Shailene Woodley.

The problem, I think, is that the movie is pretty solid for fans. It’s not going to win over people who didn’t care for the book, and I don’t think it’s going to hit a home run with people coming in blind.

The major issue comes in some of the translation of the political conflicts from the book to the screen. As readers of the book, we know why Erudite wants to slaughter the Abnegation and its leaders. We understand better how the serum that controls the Dauntless works. These explanations are thorough in the book, but perfunctory, almost throwaway, on the screen.

There’s a very brief scene where Four shows Tris some of the serum that is later used on the Dauntless, but it doesn’t explain how the Erudite can control them so completely – Four simply says it makes the Dauntless suggestible. There’s a missing link there.

Similarly, there’s a great deal of foreshadowing that Erudite and Jeanine have something nefarious planned, but it’s never indicated clearly why they want to do so. There’s some discussion of rumors about Abnegation abusing their power, but it’s so nebulous that viewers are left wondering why anyone gives these rumors any credence. And there’s no motivation given for the Dauntless leaders to team up with the Erudite – as viewers, we can speculate, but the only concrete reason given to us is that they’re just colossal jerks.

These gaps are problematic for a number of reasons. Some viewers may think they missed something, but more will assume that there’s simply no explanation given. The end result is that people unfamiliar with the book will write the movie off as silly. The premise (about dividing people into factions based on character traits) already strains credulity, despite its power as a metaphor for teenage life. When character motivations are muddy too, it’s easy to see the entire movie as nonsensical.

I’m writing all of this as a fan (though not a superfan) of the book. I enjoyed the movie quite a lot. It’s stunning to look at. Woodley is a great Tris. The first half is actually quite good, even for people who haven’t read the book. Viewers will understand the initiation process and the physical and psychological tests, which are action-packed and thrilling. The way the fear landscapes are brought to the screen is interesting (albeit slightly different from the book, but in a way that makes sense). There are some genuinely funny moments during the first half as well. It’s the second half that suffers due to the reasons I mentioned earlier.

I was watching in a theater of mostly adults, and they giggled at some moments that weren’t really funny. It was a little irritating to me, but I can see how people would view some of these lines as cheesy. (It’s not just the lines about feelings, either. There’s a couple in the final confrontation with Jeanine that are a bit wince-worthy.)

On a final note, the director or screenwriter or some other person decided to change the fear of intimacy with Four into an attempted rape in Tris’ final test in the fear landscape, which boggles my mind. I feel like I could write a whole other post about this thing alone, so I won’t discuss it more here – but it’s definitely discussable. (Non-spoiler: I don’t approve.)

Let me know in the comments what you think of the movie when you see it.