Excitement Hits the Big Screen – Divergent Movie Review

Divergent – one of the best selling young adult thrillers opened it’s movie version this past Friday. The first installment of a three book series kicked off excitement from fans everywhere. Personally, I have not read the book series. I know. For shame. But to my credit, I probably haven’t read any book in at least a year due to a crazy thing called life. So when the opportunity arose to attend the premiere and share a Divergent Movie Review I looked for some help.

photo credit to imdb.com

Lazily browsing my Instagram feed a few weeks ago, I saw a friend share a photo filled with an assortment of Divergent fangirl stuff she bought for her daughter. Obviously her daughter was hooked on Divergent, so I thought what better person to offer a review of the movie than a mom and daughter immersed in the excitement. So here is Erin Walker from Feelingalittlelunchy.com to share her thoughts on the Divergent Movie Premiere.

What a treat to be offered a chance to go see the movie premier, a full three days before it’s released to the public. My little 13 year old fangirl was thrilled! She ran around and told all her friends…definitely bragging that she got to go. We donned some nice clothes and headed out to the Regal Cinemas at Atlantic Station here in Atlanta. We’ve never been there before and spent quite a bit of time circling the parking lot! But rather than bore you with that story, on to what we thought of the film!

Divergent is a distopian story of the love and trials that comes from a world torn apart by war. The war they vaguely allude to happened 200 years prior. If you’ve read the books, the movie will make a lot of sense to you. If you haven’t, like me, it’s a little hard to comprehend just exactly what’s going on and what lead to the events in the movie. My daughter has read all of the books in the series and she was great at answering all of my questions. Basically, the people of Chicago have been forced to divide themselves into 5 factions, or groups, based on their personality traits.

The main character, Tris, is divergent in that she does not fit nicely into any of the categories set by society, and therefore is viewed as a threat to the peace of the community. Of course there is a lot of action and violence, so if your children aren’t ready for that, don’t take them. Tris decides to leave her faction and move into the more wild and violent group of soldier protectors called Dauntless. She is not to tell anyone of her divergent tendencies because of the threat it is perceived to pose. She meets another member of the Dauntless group named Four, who she quickly falls in love with and ties her fate to.

This movie smacked of the Hunger Games, which I loved! It was good, however, after hearing so much about Divergent streaming from the mouth of my 13 year old, I did expect it to be better…more epic. As it stands alone, within a series, I will say I was left with a lot of questions. How did the society come to be as it was? What was the war that happened 200 years before about? How did the people become who they were? Turns out, if I had only read the books, I may have been privy to all of that information and would have thoroughly enjoyed the film.

I am looking forward to seeing the sequels and believe that if the series were presented to me in it’s entirety, I would be hooked. Guess I will have to wait for the sequels now. My daughter maintains that only a few things from the books were left out, and that due to the nature of books vs. films, she understands why. Being 38 years old, and not a huge fan of the teenage romance books/movies like Twilight, I might have sat this one out. But, the time that I got to spend with my daughter and to see how enthralled she is with the whole series was well worth the two hours at the theater.

What book to movie release does someone in your house share a fun fan-obsessed relationship?