Review: Insurgent

After many months of waiting I finally got to see ‘Insurgent’, the second instalment of the Divergent series last Thursday. I loved the first movie so much it prompted me to head straight to the book store and buy the pack of three books plus the additional book she wrote from the character Four’s perspective. I read the three Divergent books in about a week and still craved more. Of course now I’ve seen the second movie I’m still left unsatisfied because there are two more movies left. Yes that’s right, it’s just another series squeezing as much money out of us as possible by splitting the final instalment into two parts.

Before I get into my thoughts on the movie I’ll give those of you who don’t know a little bit of info on what it and the series is about.

The series surrounds the story of main character Beatrice ‘Tris’ Prior, a young girl living in a dystopian future. She resides in an old destroyed Chicago where the population believe themselves to be the last left in the world. Their society is divided into factions based on their dominant personality traits.

The factions are:

Abnegation – the selfless faction;

Amity – the kind faction;

Candor – the truthful faction;

Dauntless – the brave faction; and

Erudite – the intelligent faction.

Each faction has its duty within the society in order to keep it functioning properly. When each person comes of age they must undergo a test that will tell them their most dominant personality trait, information they then take with them to the choosing ceremony. In the choosing ceremony they decide whether they will remain in the faction they grew up in or move to another, forsaking their familial ties.

During her test Tris discovers that she actually has at least four dominant traits making her a Divergent. Divergents are considered a threat and are being systematically eliminated throughout the first and second instalments. In ‘Divergent’, Tris chooses Dauntless and learns to be strong while discovering her own unique bravery. She works desperately to not only prove herself to the faction leaders, but also to keep her divergence a secret for fear of being killed. Everything comes to a head when the leader of the Erudite faction makes a power play and begins actively seeking out Divergents.

‘Insurgent’ picks up pretty well straight after ‘Divergent’. Tris, her boyfriend Four and a couple of others have taken sanctuary in the Amity camp. In this instalment you meet the factionless and discover a lot more about them as well as getting to see the inner workings of Candor, which was previously undiscovered territory in the first instalment. Erudite has taken control of the city and are hunting down Divergents. She has made Tris and her group public enemy number one and they now need to find a way to stop her and clear their names.

Now I’ve rambled enough about the plot I guess I should get into the review part of this review.

I have a warning to those who have read the book and have not yet seen the movie. It has some major plot differences from the book. In fact the main Erudite mission in the movie is completely different from the book. In the movie Jeanine and her Erudite and Dauntless followers are trying to open a box found in Tris’ parents’ house in Abnegation. She needs a strong Divergent to accomplish this. I won’t go into too much detail because I don’t want to have to add *Spoiler Alert* at the top of this review. As those who have read the book would already know, the box isn’t in the book and the thing that is inside it is something Jeanine is already aware of and desperate to keep hidden. Her mission in the book is to create serums that work on Divergents like the ones each faction as created for their own people. That’s just one of the many changes that the moviemakers made to the story.

Now you’ve been warned I can tell you how much I actually really liked the movie. I spent a better part of the movie not being sure about whether I liked it or not because of all the noticeable differences from the book. The second book was definitely my favourite of the three and it was a little shocking to see it so picked apart and changed. Honestly, it really wasn’t even until after it was over and we were driving home that I began to feel some sort of appreciation for it. On the way home I was talking about it with my sister and cousin, who I’d gone to see it with and I found that the more I talked about it the more I liked it.

It’s been a few days of mulling it over now and I have to say that I really, really like it now. I’m not going to go as far yet as to say that it was better or even as good as the first one, I think that will take at least one more viewing, but it definitely has grown on me. I think I was unsure about it initially because of all the changes. There were characters left out and even a main character who remained nameless throughout the movie and only played a small role. I mean, at least he was in this one since he wasn’t in the first one but was in the books from the start. Also, if I think about it too much it kind of feels like the major plot change only happened in order to give Kate Winslet a bigger role. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing more with giving her character more screen time, it adds drama plus she’s awesome (Winslet, not Jeanine. Jeanine’s kind of a bitch). The thing I wonder is that if that was a defining part of the decision to change the plot why couldn’t they have just played around with the original plot to give Jeanine more story time?

I think this movie follows on really well from the first. It doesn’t feel disjointed from it, which would have been hard to avoid with all the changes they made. Nothing feels incomplete except the end obviously, because there’s two more movies to come. If you haven’t read the books you won’t notice anything odd about the flow of the story at all, which I think is a definite plus. There are so many movies out there that alter book stories so much they become unrecognisable and they are just poorly executed. I’m really happy to report that this is not one of those cases.

The movie is definitely not devoid of action, which is awesome. There’s a lot of battle-type scenes both in reality and the serum simulations just as with the first movie. Despite the fact that the whole mystery box plotline didn’t happen in the book, it’s actually a really good plotline. It brings about a reason for Tris to face the serum simulations again and this time they are even better than before.

I’d better wrap this up before I make it five pages long. Overall I really did end up liking this movie. Yes it’s very, very different from the book, which sucks a bit, but the movie people made up for it a bit by making the new stuff really interesting. If you feel pretty adamant about movies that change the book too much I might suggest giving this a miss, but if you can keep an open mind about it I would definitely spend the money to go and see this on the big screen. It’s truly a good movie and really the only thing that has let it down a bit for me is the difference from the book. For this movie though, I’m willing to suck up my pride and give it my praise.