Insurgent Review (finally)
This is probably going to be really really long like I don’t really expect any of you to read all of this. It just sums up my thoughts about the movie.
obviously spoilers
Things I didn’t like: Book accuracy was at about a 6/10, which isn’t bad, but they substituted a LOT of intimate, important, scenes for action sequences which I could do without. I don’t like how they’re selling this movie as purely an action film. If anything, Insurgent was THE LEAST intense in terms of action and it was chock-full of really great character development FOR ALL of the characters. ALL. OF. THE. CHARACTERS. What happened to Lynn? Tori? Marlene? Hector? Uriah got like a minute of screen-time? CHRISTINA????? I like to think that the way they resolved Tris and Christina’s falling-out was when Tris pulled her over the side of the cliff, but that’s not enough for me, sorry. I liked how they showed Tris’ PTSD, but she had no fear of guns and I kinds wanted to see some more pure vulnerability. I know that I’m kinda hypocritical in saying what I just said because of what I’m gonna say next, but: I wanted Tris to be stronger. For the past two movies, we’ve only seen her get stronger physically and not mentally. There was this one scene in the book [Insurgent] that I remember so clearly that just defines Tris’ character so well for me: After the Traitor-Dauntless come and shoot everyone with the disks, Tris is really crying in a bathroom. She’s, like, loosin’ it. She’s seriously having a panic attack type thing. But all of a sudden, she gets her shit together, takes the disk in her hand, and pulls that damn thing out of her arm with her bare hands. Uriah is standing there in the doorway watching her do it in awe and says something like, “Do you even have nerves, Tris?” She just stands there and looks at it, like, it took so much to do it, but it was the easiest thing ever. I love that scene and I wasn’t expecting it to be in the movie because it’s not a really important scene, but I love it so much and it’s one of my favorite scenes in the entire series. I feel like her strength was communicated, but not until the end. Tris seemed, like Peter says, “a walking bleeding-heart.” She was moody and sad, which is understandable, but she had no balance between her strength and her moody-ness.
Okay so I LOVE relationship angst, and I was really looking forward to some Fourtris angst because it makes their relationship real to me. I was bitterly disappointed. I really wanted that. Also, I NEEDED to see Tobias serve his parents up a hot plate of retribution, but that didn’t happen either.
What I liked: I’d just like to start with saying that both Shai and Theo seemed so much more comfortable with their characters in Insurgent. Especially Shai. When I watched Divergent, there were some scenes where she seemed really shaky and unsure to me, and I’m glad that she seems more comfortable with herself and her (frankly amazing) acting because she seemed a lot more ~Tris-y~ in this movie. Before Divergent, she was NEVER part of an action film and she never had really played a strong character both mentally and emotionally (not that Tris was particularly strong at first). Not that I didn’t love Divergent, but I have to say, I did question Shai as Tris for a little while. She just didn’t seem to understand the character for a little while, but as the movie [Divergent] went along she became stronger with her character which I appreciated, and I like to think that it was purposeful.
ANSEL’S FUCKING RUN! I laughed so hard because I thought that was actually how he runs, and then I was disappointed to see in an interview that he ran like an idiot on purpose. Ansel was perfect. He made me hate him even more than I already do. And for people that have followed for a while you already know that I hate Caleb with my entire being.
Octavia as Johanna. She even had the scar! Yes!!
FOURTRIS SEX!! Okay, I know a lot of you were pissed about this, and I understand why, but man, I love them so much. I WAS kinda pissed at the fact that they ignored her fear of sex, but that’s leftover from Divergent haha. I wish it was longer! But I know, PG-13.
The fact that they kept using the bird motif! There were crows everywhere in the movie, and I was really happy with that. I don’t really know why.
The score and soundtrack!! I wish they would’ve kept the same theme of the score that Junkie XL wrote because I thought that his score was perfect. But, other than that, it was really good.
The truth serum scene made me so proud of Shai and Theo...they really proved themselves as amazing actors in that scene.
All in all, I thought it was a great film. Compared to the book, it was okay. But I was in a theater full of middle-aged to elder people the second time I saw it and as I was walking out, all I heard was good things. So, I’m proud!
