Insurgent picks up from where the previous film left off: the main character Tris (Shailene Woodley), her very hunky boyfriend Four (Theo James), her brother Caleb (Ansel Elgort) who runs funny, and the very annoying git that is Peter (Miles Teller), have escaped with their lives and are seeking refuge in Amity camps. On the other side of town, the bad guys that are led by Erudite leader Jeanine (Kate Winslet) have found themselves a box that was guarded by Tris and Caleb's now-dead parents, a box that is rumoured to hold an important message from the Founders on what to do in case of a crisis. And there is no other way to open it than by using a Divergent. (It is only after watching the movie and refreshing my memory by reading the book's summary did I realise that this box and the tests needed to crack it open do not exist in bookverse. Apparently, it's not the only big difference there is.)
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| This whole thing? Doesn't happen in the book. |
I loved Divergent. I've never read the book, never planned on watching it in the first place since one can only take so much YA dystopian fiction before feeling completely nauseous. And maybe it's because of that, maybe it's because I never had much of an expectation in the first place, I was blown away by Divergent. Perhaps that's the beef I have with Insurgent; I was so blown away by Divergent that a certain level of expectation has been fixed, I needed something more, something better from Insurgent in order to be impressed. I thought Divergent was amazing simply because I had no expectations going in and it was easy to impress me. Insurgent had to try harder this time and it's sad to say that it didn't.
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| Naomi Watts plays Four's mother; it's just disconcerting that she looks like she's the same age as him. |
It's not to say that Insurgent is bad; as someone who watched it because she loved the first movie, it was decent at best. Everything was just all right. The writing is just all right; the world that the series is set in seems to be a little less all right than in Divergent for some reason. If there's something in this movie that is better than all right, it would be Shailene Woodley's acting, and the special effects in Tris's dreams and the countless simulations she's thrown into.
If there's one thing that fundamentally wrong with Insurgent when you compare it with Divergent is the soundtrack, or the lack of it to be more precise. I won't deny the possibility that the reason I love Divergent as much as I do was partly because of its killer soundtrack, scenes with Ellie Goulding crooning in the background or M83's ballad sending shivers down my spine, nothing of that sort exists in Insurgent. Who knows, maybe they spent most of the budget on special effects and allocated little to none for the music department.
In short, Insurgent is a much poorer sequel to Divergent on many fronts. Maybe they're trying to emulate the book series since each book becomes progressively worse in terms of quality and plot. But hey, that's a story for another day.
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| Raise your hand if you have ever been kissed by Shailene Woodley. |
I rate it : 6/10 stars
THE GOOD : Shailene Woodley's acting and the special effects, that's pretty much it.
THE BAD : So much wasted talent in one movie (Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer, even Maggie Q who returns from the first but has an appallingly short time onscreen in this installment); almost everyone seems to be an asshole in this movie
WATCH IT IF YOU...
- ...are a fan of the first movie. (Just don't get your hopes too high up)
- ...are a fan of the book series (Obviously)
- ...would like a reunion of Shailene Woodley's famous onscreen boyfriends.
INSURGENT (2015)
Genre : Sci-Fi Adventure
Runtime : 119 minutes
Director : Robert Schwentke
Cast : Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Miles Teller, Kate Winslet, Ansel Elgort
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