Review of Insurgent (2015) by David R — 30 Sep 2015

As a fan of dystopian stories it hurts to express my disappointment with the latest release of the Divergent series, Insurgent. Once again we have our two main characters, Tris and Four, carrying the story forward. They have left the main city and started this phase of the adventure in the Amity compound. Here is where my unhappiness begins. In the book, Tris is injured having been shot, but at the start of this new movie, Tris is mysterious healed. That is not the way to capture the fan of this series, but that is just the beginning.

In the first movie, Tris has shot Will leaving a lasting trauma to her spirit. In the books she has great difficulty even holding a gun. She is so injured that the very handling of a gun brings back the nightmares of shooting Will all over again. In the book, we find a journey Tris is taking to recovery which is a big part of her story. Sadly, in the movie she has only occasional nightmares and they are disjointed and have little impact on the story. This leaves a big gap in our understanding of her character.

The biggest disappointment lies in the great liberties the movie takes in the storytelling. At times there is very little that even matches the original story. Most notable is that the movie brings in unbelievable and unnecessary special effects. The one standout effect is Tris literally floating in the air during a simulation. This is unfortunate because this actually takes away from the believable mind games they did such a good job of establishing in the first movie which were very consistent with the book.

The movie is worth viewing, but only because we can hope that the final installment will be better written and much better filmed and edited to return us to a closer version of the book. That story would be well worth seeing.