Divergent

Divergent, one of those series that jumped on the bandwagon of adapting a book into a movie franchise entirely devoted to charging you twice for the last piece of a trilogy. Seriously, a trilogy is now a quadrilogy for the sake of making more money off of the people who will go and see it, and you know we will. The only thing worse from this, in my humble opinion, was when The Hobbit was split into a trilogy of its own. But that’s for another day.

Divergent was fun because we were finally treated to a heroine in a YA dystopic series that was decisive (albeit impulsive) in comparison to a lot of other lead characters in this genre. It’s a pleasure to see a (generally) levelheaded main character as we can usually relate to them a little bit more easily. And boy does Tris have the makings for an actual person.

In a world where people are divided by personality type there is a source of contention amongst the people, as one faction believes it should be in charge over the others. It makes you wonder why Ambition wasn’t one of those designated personality traits as Erudite seems to have it in spades while Amity seems to just want to sit back and… farm. Either way the ambitious people in blue start to take control of the murderous people in black to kill the kind and selfless people in beige, because when you sign up for a faction your fashion choices are as limited as your personality!

Since this is the YA section, love is a requirement no matter how much it might impede the much more interesting plot of the story (The Hunger Games being a prime example). Tris’ story is all about finding who she is, because of her Divergent status which means she doesn’t fit into any single Faction or personality type, but this interesting tale of being special in a world of similarity is cast aside for the more important burgeoning love story between Tris and Four (yes, a number is a name these days). Yes the plot does remember itself eventually, and in this movie it’s a little more entertaining because the romance eventually falls to the background. This is when you know you have a good love story, it doesn’t dominate the plot and force itself into every little nook and cranny.

Divergent is a tale of standing out amongst the cookie cutter people who surround you, and that is why this genre is appealing to us as consumers. Everyone wants to be special (and yes, Dash was right, everyone being special means that no one is) but there are a lot of us out there who feel like the weight of the world is on our shoulders and being able to identify with a likeable protagonist is a success in and of itself.

Dystopia never looked so good!