What’s left in the dystopia for audiences to discover? After The Hunger Games rejuvenated interest in a world broken at its very social foundations, turning on cruel, clandestine power structures, several other franchises ran after. Now, we arrive at Insurgent, the second installment of Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy, which has the auspicious distinction of being the closest clone to Games, complete with a talented, over-qualified and charismatic young actress leading the charge.Insurgent gives us plenty of pretty faces, nifty special effects and futuristic action aimed at stirring the pot of teen angst, but it hits a wall when it tries to explore the ideas at its seething heart.
I must confess that the first film in this saga (the now typical four films culled from only three books) left me mostly cold. The post-apocalyptic but socially reorganized Chicago of the future that featured prominently in Divergent didn’t make much sense, even by the typical standards of pseudo-allegorical fantasias. Shailene Woodley, a bright and sure-footed onscreen presence, stole the show as Tris Prior, an unassuming member of one of the five fractured factions that made up Roth’s world. She was coined ‘divergent’ there, and deemed dangerous because of her ability to fit into any faction of her choosing. It’s easy to see how the idea of the Divergent franchise appeals to a teen set that constantly faces premature categorization by parents, peers and the public, but there’s a certain lacking central logic in the Factions, what it is exactly that the Erudite baddies fear, and how the divergents of the world plan to change it.
Read our full review of Insurgent.
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