Mother Jones
The people who made Divergent desperately want it to be the next The Hunger Games, with all the piles of money that come with a franchise of the kind. The new sci-fi movie (released on Friday) is based on the Veronica Roth young-adult novel of the same name, set in an isolated, dystopian Chicago. Much like The Hunger Games books and movies, Divergent depicts young, good-looking people fighting totalitarianism in a war-ravaged future. (In Divergent, the youthful heroine is Beatrice “Tris” Prior, played by the talented Shailene Woodley.)
There is plenty wrong with Divergent, including that it’s a drowsy action flick (first in a planned trilogy) that reeks of studio executives’ cynical attempts to cash in on the international commercial success of a similarly themed series. Whereas the villains in The Hunger Games make up a totalitarian regime that resembles North Korea but with superior reality TV, the bad guys in Divergent resemble grown-up college nerds who are black-out drunk on political power.
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Kate Winslet’s “Divergent” Character Is Like a Brainy, Science-Driven Hitler
