Movie Review: Divergent

I was going to write a short book review but I haven’t actually finished a book recently (terrible I know) and I don’t want to overwork whatever brain cells I have left to try and remember what I thought of a book I read years ago. Being the genius that I am I remembered that I haven’t actually shed light about what I thought of the Divergent movie. Scandalous as that is.  

I was very late to join the dystopian train; I read Divergent about a week before the movie came out as I never thought I would like it; how wrong was I. Therefore I didn’t bother getting too hyped up about the movie even though I was excited to see it. Usually I stalk everybody involved on twitter or try to find out as much as I can but with Divergent I didn’t bother. I knew what I needed to know and I was excited enough.

When I first watched the trailer my heart sank. I loved the actors, I loved the plot but I hated the trailer. I was certain that the movie was going to be terrible and I would end up hating it. It just seemed to me that Evan Daugherty (that’s the guy who wrote the screenplay) missed all the important aspects from the book. I basically judged a movie by its trailer. One of my friends from class was watching a leaked version and I kept glancing at the screen trying very hard not to surrender to the pull of wanting to watch the movie alongside her before the UK’s release date. I know it’s probably just the jitteriness of the guy holding a camera in a cinema and being a bad person for doing it illegally which ruined the quality of the image; from my glances at the screen the whole thing just looked a mess.

So I managed to watch it a month or two after it came out from my lack of enthusiasm towards the movie and my thinking of it being ruined by Evan. I watched it in the comfort of my bed and I was sitting gaping at the screen half the time. I absolutely loved it. The fact that one of my favourite books came to life in front of me was amazing; and the fact that it was done so incredibly well amazed me even further. Neil Burger the guy who directed this along with the Illusionist which is one of my movies to watch when I’m ill in bed for some reason…

So to sum up my big mess of a review which I just noticed mostly centres around the fact that I wasn’t excited to see this film… the movie was great. I think it captured the world beautifully, it also had my name in on the scoreboard so that is always a plus. The one thing; actually two things that I would love to see would have been the love interest between Tris and Four. I feel like if I haven’t read the book I wouldn’t have known they were meant to be so in love. During the movie it seemed to me as if they just had small crushes on each other and nothing more. The second thing that I think every single fan of the Divergent series would have loved to seen was the whole entire book fit into this movie. I will forever be saying this whenever an adaptation is made. The whole book must be in the movie somehow.  The whole production team was great, all the actors were fantastic, the script writer didn’t mess up and the lovely director did a great job.