Allegiant★★
Divergent: Part 3
What the hell are those bubbles
Yes, there is one left
After the earth-shattering revelations of Insurgent, Tris must escape with Four beyond the wall that encircles Chicago, to finally discover the shocking truth of the world around them.
WARNING: Possible spoilers ahead.
Although I am thankful to know the women (and occasional guy) of the Austin chapter of the FYA Book Club all of the time—because they are wonderful, amazing people who I am beyond honored to call friends—there are certain times when I am ever so slightly more thankful. Having them around to go see movies like Allegiant with, rather than having to drag Colt or going by myself, is definitely one of those times.
Before the first movie in this franchise was released, it had promise. Unfortunately, the quality of the movies seems to be matching the quality of the books in the trilogy; i.e., getting worse with each new addition. Allegiant, the book, was my least favorite of the series, and the book that made me question if Veronica Roth had really thought about the overarching plot of the whole series before she wrote Divergent. (TL;DR: Basically, I thought the last book was a drastic departure from the rest of the series that completely threw off the entire storyline.)
The individuals who made Allegiant, the movie, seem to share my opinion that the story in the third book needed some changes, but they took things way too far in the opposite, WTF direction. It's been a while since I read the book, but a general consensus from my friends—who've all read the series, too—was confusion about the movie's plot. More than once, we found ourselves asking "wait, was this in the book?" (It's even one of the drinking game items.) I totally get that adaptations often aren't close to the source material, but this was one of the worst examples I've ever seen.
The cast continues to average out to mediocre. The good/decent: Theo James as Four (his action scenes were a saving grace); Miles Teller as Peter (even though his character isn't anything like the one in the books, and feels like a real-life person randomly stuck in these movies); Zoë Kravitz as Christina. The bad: Naomi Watts as Evelyn (I still can't suspend disbelief to see her as Theo's mom); Bill Skarsgård (new to the franchise in this movie, and super, cuper creepy even when he's not supposed to be?); Shailene Woodley (I sincerely hope the time of her being cast in everything has come to an end).
Part of me is really curious to see what happens in the fourth movie—because, yes, this is another franchise that's fallen prey to the last book being split into two movies—but that's only because I want to see if anything can redeem the series or if the train wreck will finally burn itself out.
If you're a completist—or have a group of friends to hate watch with, like I did—feel free to see this movie. Otherwise ... eh.
Previously, in this franchise:
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