What a bland, generic mess.
I miss the days where I could
praise Shailene Woodley for her exceptional performances. Remember when she costarred with Miles Teller
in The Spectacular Now—delivering a
startlingly outstanding performance as a high school teen? Or when she and Ansel Elgort starred in the
beautifully tragic romance The Fault in Our Stars? I bring these films up because the Divergent series constantly reminds me of them, having all three
actors appear as major characters. Yet
here there’s no enthusiastic praise, only utter disappointment towards their
minimal acting effort—though I hardly blame them with the script they’re given.
Allegiant
ends the Divergent series on a low point…except it doesn’t even do that
since—as my wife informed me when leaving the theater—there is, in fact, one
more film remaining (the producers renaming it Ascendant to avoid the generic Part 1/Part 2 titling which has plagued
young adult film finales). Allegiant is similar to The Scorch Trials had all the fun, adventure, and life been sucked
out of it. The film could have been
passable entertainment—much like Insurgent—had
there been a considerable amount of action; yet strangely enough, the film is dishearteningly low on action
sequences. Where it stands, Allegiant’s most enjoyable aspects are
Four’s (Theo James) facial expressions (his deadpan mugging really amuses me
for some reason) and Peter’s (Miles Teller) snarky comments. Peter really is a lovable scumbag, in fact,
he’s the most engaging character throughout the film. From its heroes, to villains, to Tris
(Shailene Woodley) herself, everyone has become entirely forgettable. Tris is even given reverse character
development, appearing more foolish and naïve than in previous installments.
It’s gotten to the point where I
don’t care who lives or dies, who succeeds or fails. I don’t care if Chicago falls, and I don’t
care if Tris saves the world—which is an honest shame since I really did
care when the series began. A supporting
ally of Tris dies in the film’s opening and I could not remember who she was (she
seemed like an important character, though I can’t recall if that’s true). Her death was entirely cliché as well,
getting shot just as she sees the outside world and Tris remarks, “We made
it!” Too be fair, everything in Allegiant
is clichéd: from its stereotypical, big bad leaders, to the “plot twists”, to
the big, damn speeches given, “You saved the city, help me save the
world.” The plot feels rushed despite
being a secret part-1, the manipulative, dystopian government does and says
everything possibly wrong to get Tris and crew to trust them, all
the leaders act like absolute imbeciles and make so many dumb, rash decisions, and
why the hell does the super-advanced, dystopian, “big brother is watching you”
government NOT have freaking security cameras!?
