Divergent

Every good story is ultimately about a person (or persons) answering the question, “Who am I?”

However, the movie Divergent explores this questions in such an extremely on-the-nose fashion, that the writers seem terrified their audience might not “get” the premise (much as the writers did with the movie Green Lantern).

Divergent takes place in world where everyone must “fit in” with one of five factions (high school pandering, anyone?).

Teenagers must take a test that determines which characteristic they possess (if they have more than one, there’s trouble. More on that later). The one trait that a teen possesses determines which faction she or he should join.

People who possess selflessness run the government (how optimistic does that seem?).

People who possess a sense of peace become farmers for some reason.

People who prove honest become lawyers (even more optimistic) or something like lawyers (I wasn’t 100% on this part).

Brave people join the police force.

Intelligent people become scientists.

Who builds and maintains cars and other mechanical equipment? Are the no artists of any kind? Teachers? Who designs the buildings? It seems that more than five jobs ought to exist (perhaps the novel by Veronica Roth better explains this).

The “trait test” proves moot. Teens may, after they complete it, choose whichever faction they want to join. The test therefore serves only as a plot device to tell our main character, Tris that she doesn’t fit into any single faction!

She’s an individual. No one can tell her what group to join, what clothes to wear, and what to do with her life. She even afterwards changes her name and gets a tattoo (perhaps the lawyers serve as the tattoo artists?).

But wait! Individualism remains illegal for vague reasons. Oh-no!

Once Tris decides to keep her individualism a secret, she joins the police force, and the movie thankfully switches gears to becomes pretty enjoyable.

Tris must pass a series of challenges before she may remain in her chosen faction. If she fails, she faces a lifelong expulsion.

I love that sort of story. I use it all the time in my own writing. It gives me basic-training nostalgia.

The pass/fail system remains foggy, so the audience never really knows how much danger Tris faces of said expulsion.

A lot of scenes dangle at this point. In one scene, three of Tris’s fellow classmates try to throw her off a cliff. They get caught, and . . . nothing really happens to any of them as a consequence.

The cliff scene serves only as an excuse for Tris’s love interest to rescue her, because beating up bad guys makes people sexy in Hollywood’s strange formulas.

If a four-foot, morbidly obese guy with lazy eyes, acne, and crooked teeth saved a woman from would-be robbers, she probably wouldn’t find him attractive as a result. Sorry to say it, but you know I’m right.

Of course, the guy’s attractive. Tris looks good, too, because even a protagonist who struggles for acceptance in the face of permanent exclusion must own a pretty face. Why else would we care about her?

Once Tris passes all her physical challenges, she faces a series of interesting mental challenges, in which she’s force-fed terrifying hallucinations. She must overcome these hallucinations to pass this second portion of her exams. These scenes worked really well.

Then the movie crumbles. Tris’s behavior threatens to expose her secret individualism. Her love story turns corny and formulaic.

Our villain decides that she must use mind control to restore peace (there’s no war whatsoever) She mind-controls the police force, sets one faction against the other for no good reason.

Mind control doesn’t work on individuals (what a surprise) and Tris and Shirtless Individual Guy must now save the world with the power of their individuality (good grief).

The movie goes backsies on its own rules. It turns out that mind control does work on Shirtless Individual Guy, but only when it’s structurally convenient.

Tris’s journey to join the police force feels like a wonderful movie trapped within an otherwise terrible film designed to pats teens on the head and tells them, “You are special. The fact that you don’t fit into a clique proves it. Have a cookie.”

I don’t take issue with the movie’s message. The message is, and always has been, great. My issue’s with how the movie presents this message. It’s too damn on-the-nose, beating itself over the audience’s heads.

This story would’ve worked better if its director, Neil Burger, had played the individuality angle subtler while he focused more on Tris’s trials to join the police force.

A more concrete pass/fail system for those trials would’ve improved things, as well.

I’m not the target audience for this movie. However, “It’s for kids (or teens)” is not an acceptable excuse to express a moral premise via the first idea that pops into your mind. Give kids credit. They can “get” a message without having it forced down their throats.

(You can find Martin Wolt, Jr.'s novels on Kindle and his short fiction at martinwolt.blogspot.com)