Saturday, March 22, 2014

Three sentence movie reviews: Divergent

I found this movie to be more successful than the book, mostly due to the fact it was more fun to watch the Dauntless faction run through the streets and jump on and off trains than it was to read about it.  The story is thin, but it was well acted and the futuristic Chicago was fun to look at.  They did the Hollywood usual tamping back of the awesomeness of females, but not to the degree I've seen in other movies.*

Cost:  $5.00
Where watched:  St. Johns Cinema

poster from:  http://www.impawards.com/2014/divergent_ver8.html

*Still looking at you, Gone Baby Gone.
But let's discuss for a moment what they did, because I found it pretty egregious.  Not once did they show Triss winning a fight, which she does a few times in the book.**  Also, in the book, she was ranked first in the Dauntless initiates.  FIRST! It was a big deal, because ranking first is important, but also because her male counterpart, Four, had also ranked first when he went through training.  This was not mentioned at all in the movie, which I found particularly telling.  Furthermore, in the book, one of the fears that Triss must overcome in her thought landscape, is having sex with Four, knowing he only wants her for her body.  In the movie, they turned this into a quasi-rape scene which is not at all the same thing.  But why show some nuance in the female psyche, when you can head right back over to that reliable rape thing?  It makes me want to spit.

**This is annoying because she spends the second book in the traditional female role of having the men take care of her, which means that we never got to see her kick ass on screen.

ps.  Oh hell, let's just add in the poster of Mr. Pamuk, while we are at it.
poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2014/divergent_ver2.html

5 comments:

  1. I am home sick today. That is why. In case you were wondering.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey my other comment disappeared. That is lame. It spoke of Mr. Pamuk and my EW magazine.

    ReplyDelete
  3. My sick comment makes more sense if my other Pamuky comment is first. The gist: I had no idea that he was one in the same until EW told me. Also I queried as to the oddness of me having not actually read this book and thus not actually seeing this movie.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I haven't been interested in this book/movie series, although the fact that Shailene Woodley stars piqued my interest (loved her in The Spectacular Now). I'll probably give it a pass. Nearly every time I read your reviews, it reminds me why I sort of prefer to watch TV/movies without any female characters at all, because virtually no one seems to know how to write for women.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I sometimes feel the same way. I think a result of the oppressed minority thing. Like it's mostly guys who write women, because it's mostly guys who are in film. But even when women write women, it sometimes isn't so great. But maybe that's because we don't get to filter our story through our female filter, they have to go through the male filter. Do you notice that women are written differently in books, which is an industry that is much more open to women than TV/movies? It's a conundrum.

    ReplyDelete