Insurgent is the second installment of the Divergent series, and we’re once again following the adventures of Beatrice Prior, aka Tris, in a dystopian faction-based world. Even if I thought Divergent was nice, Insurgent had me rolling my eyes more than I cared to count. What happened here? After a very entertaining first movie, Insurgent is a huge disappointment.
Can I just point out that Insurgent is two hours long, and there’s at least 30 min of footage with absolutely no purpose to the plot. They could have used this time to show us a little bit more than Tris and Four’s underdeveloped relationship. Seriously, how long have they known each other at this point? It’s ridiculous. There are many other characters with different storylines that I would have loved to see, the Dauntless journey to Candor for example. I don’t get why we always need to stay this focused on the main character’s sentimental feelings. It’s uninteresting, and it prevents me from form any kind of emotional bond with any of the characters. You know too much about very few, and not enough about others, it’s a mess.
In addition to being long, it’s boring. Outside of a few action scenes, mostly happening in the dreams of Tris or in Candor, nothing really happens. They talk a lot about doing things without doing them, they walk from faction to faction, they fight about going or not going etc… It’s poorly structured and balanced. And everything is so predictable. Usually it doesn’t bother me much, but when there isn’t much to hold on to, it’s just irritating. For those who haven’t read the books, you can’t tell me that you didn’t expect the message to be about how divergents are actually the saviors of humanity, based on how much they insisted on Jeanine’s “Divergent are evil” speech.
However there’s a few good points, and by a few I mean two. First of all, it’s stunning. The deconstructed Chicago set, the beautifully crafted dream sequences, or even the Factionless area, everything is beautiful and very pleasing to the eye. The second good point is Miles Teller. He’s the character you love to hate, always trying to take advantage of a situation, changing sides as soon as he can… His character is actually the only character I like having on the screen, even if he’s a complete jerk.
And that end, I swear that if I didn’t know there were two other movies coming up, that could have been the end. There’s nothing that made me want to watch the next movies, no real suspense. Apart from the “what’s behind the wall” plot, I don’t know if I’ll care enough to see Allegiant.
Divergent follows the same pattern as The Hunger Games; a great first movie, and a mediocre second one. Since I loved Mockingjay part 1, let’s just hope that Allegiant will be good as well. I can’t talk from the point of view of someone who read the books, because I’ve only read the first one, but unless you have 2 hours to put in a YA adaptation or you really want to watch the whole series, don’t bother watching Insurgent.
Rating: 2/5
For more Divergent, Hunger Games, or Dystopian related content, click the tag below!
SHARE:
