Insurgent

Insurgent picks up where its predecessor, Divergent, ended (you can read my review of Divergent in an earlier post at this blog).

Quick recap: in Divergent, humanity lives within a massive, walled off city, separated from the rest of the world.

Those who live within the walled city must identify as a member of a particular faction, which thus determines each person’s career, clothing, and life.

Tris, our protagonist, discovers that she exists as a divergent (individual). She doesn’t fit into any particular faction.

The city's evil-for-no-reason leader, Jeanine, outlawed individuality because . . . ? Tris must therefore keep her individuality a secret.

So, yeah, pandering. A story that tells the kids that they fail to fit flawlessly into any particular group because they exist as unique, beautiful snowflakes.

Tris and her boyfriend (who finally found a shirt since the first movie), spend Insurgent’s opening on the run from the police, because they’re individuals, and The Man don’t approve.

Tris wrestles with guilt. She feels responsible for everyone harmed by the authorities that pursue her.

Her boyfriend wrestles with his anger towards the mother who abandoned him.

Insurgent therefore seems a movie about forgiveness, to others and to oneself.

Evil Leader Jeanine eventually discovers some strange box, though what she expects to find inside it, why she wants it, and how she even knows it exists remains unclear.

Jeanine also inexplicably knows that only a “100% divergent” can open the box for whatever reason. Only our protagonist, Tris, exists as such a person.

Tris—because Hollywood hates an active, female protagonist—spends an alarming amount of time crying and acting helpless.

Until Act Three, she can’t seem to find the strength to make a single decision. Every action she takes, she takes because someone told her to do so.

Jeanine captures Tris and forces her to open the box. Tris must (Spoiler Warning), in order to open the box, confront and forgive herself.

I feel perfectly willing to play along with such a convenient gambit for the sake of character arc, but this all plays so on-the-nose. Subtly never dips a toe into this pool.

The writers seem so concerned that their audience won’t “get” their movie’s moral premise that they spoon-feed it to them.

The characters trip over the story’s wide plot holes (for example, these characters vanish and rematerialize without explanation, as if entire scenes rest missing from the final reel).

These same characters often perform deeds that make little sense. Loyalties switch at the drop of a hat and rarely for any believable reason.

Spoiler Warning! The hidden treasure within the box? A hologram with two pieces of information to share (keep in mind that someone stuffed this message inside the box over 200 years ago).

1) Individualism is good (seriously).

2) People still exist outside the wall that surrounds the city (funny how no one, in over two centuries, thought to . . . you know . . . look).

The storyline, in short:

1) Tris feels bad, so she cries a lot.

2) Antagonist wants Tris to open some mystery box for reasons that remain cloudy (funny how our antagonist seems the only person with a goal).

3) Tris needs to feel better in order to open the box, so she feels better, because feelings work that way when your writers possess about ninety minutes to sort out everything.

4) The box opens and the audience feels as if it reopened Al Capone’s safe.

Insurgent beats its audience over the head with a shallow moral premise. It marks time with a lot of inconsequential action and tries to distract everyone from how little sense it makes via special effects.

I would skip this one, folks.