NOTE: This is coming from someone who saw both films back to back.

If there’s one thing a trailer for any film should accomplish, it’s to give the audience necessary information about the film so that they can come into it knowing what to expect in terms of story and tone. Even the very worst films accomplish this. So you could understand my trepidation when I first saw the trailer to Divergent and came out knowing nothing more than I did before seeing it. One of my friends even put the film on a spot on their Top 10 Worst of 2014 list (and being that he works at a movie theater like myself, it’s safe to say he sees a lot of movies).

Hopes were not high coming in, and thankfully, I had a much firmer understanding of Divergent by the time it ended, but it still does not make for a stellar film. While the plot and the world created is interesting and admittedly well-conceived, the slapdash storytelling and extremely stock and interchangeable characters hamper the film incredibly. While performing well, Shailene Woodley’s Tris Prior morphs from a fish-out-of-water to a hardened action hero at the whim of the script. Along for the turbulent ride is Theo James as her romantic interest, Four, a no-nonsense, do-or-die instructor turned sympathetic, overly-helpful mentor. Miles Teller’s Peter is a typical jock bully dickhead whose only missing accessory is a black leather jacket or a letterman’s coat, harassing and schoolyard insulting his entire way through the film. Give the former three credit though, as they try their damndest with the high-school-sitcom level schlock they’ve been forced to work with. The greatest offender is Kate Winslet, who offers no interest to her equally uninteresting and obvious villain Jeanine. She’s already won an Oscar and she should very well be outclassing these kids.

The script jerks about between a conspiracy plot and training sequences as though the writer was trying to tie in two different films together. Dialogue also ranges from just serviceable at its best and groan-inducingly dumb at its worst. The main problem is that there’s very little going on with the former until the final half-hour of the film, in which characters that we didn’t hit it off with die off and everything feels like it’s throwing everything it can at the screen to make sure the audience doesn’t feel cheated. Otherwise, it’s a bland coming-of-age tale with confusing and needless-feeling sci-fi and political-thriller elements.

The city of Chicago is filmed and conceptualized well under its post-apocolyptic setting (which I can claim as a native Chicagoan). And the action is actually not overly terrible, despite how arbitrary it feels (since most of it relates to training). Regardless, the film barely held up too much interest thanks to the ho-hum story and characters, which all feel like husks of better YA-adaption fare, so essentially, The Hunger Games. It only made me question why I bothered to do the double feature when early reviews claimed it to be worse than the first. It’s a shame too, because most of the actors in here are all very talented, and they and I both know they’re capable of so much more. Damned shame.

Final Verdict:

After Divergent, I had no idea how much worse this film could be, but considering the same director of R.I.P.D and the writer of Winter’s Tale were attached, it only lowered my expectations. However, as if by some ironic miracle, it seemed making me lower the bar for this film only served to make me appreciate Insurgent even more.

While the first film suffered from bland, plot-device-like characters, Insurgent actually seems to flesh them out and stabilize them so that the plot revolves around their actions as opposed to the vice-versa approach Divergent had. Because of this, the performances, especially that from Shailene Woodley once again as Tris, are much stronger and have more gravitas. However, Mile’s Teller’s Peter manages to become even more irksome than he was in the first film, turning just flat out evil. While evil sounds like a pretty harsh word, it’s the only term I could find fitting for one whose opening scene involves him making fun of the main character over her recently slain parents, which almost gets him and the rest of their gang kicked out of their only sanctuary when she justifiably rages on him. At least the story was smart enough to make him a full-fledged villain in this shortly after.

Also, now that the plot has finally found its direction, there’s finally a straightforward and cohesive story that flows the audience from scene to scene with a steady tone. While the original story is to blame, the film does unfortunately fall into certain pitfalls with its writing, namely the Deus ex Machina that suddenly absolves our heroes of the false wrongdoing the villain Jeanine (Kate Winslet reprising her role with the same minimal energy from the first film) frames upon them, along with Tris becoming a full-on Mary Sue as she’s revealed to have super-ultra divergent powers that makes her the chosen one. It’s very silly, but considering all the fantastical elements that this series has introduced thus far, they come across as some of the most grounded and down-to-earth elements in the film.

The action here I feel is far better than the first one. No longer do any stakes feel arbitrary and out-of-the-blue; there’s a genuine feeling of life-and-death here that was missing from Divergent. The final half of the film, while shamelessly ripping off the Matrix (namely the third one), features some great scenes between Shailene, Winslet, and Teller, along with some really cool visuals and some surprising nuance, as evident as it may appear on screen to film snobs such as myself.

It’s certainly far from a perfect film, but I enjoyed Insurgent far more than Divergent, or even for that matter, Mockingjay Part 1. It’s a YA adaptation that undemanding audiences can like while more nitpicky viewers can at least enjoy. You can certainly call it a guilty pleasure of mine, but it was fine one-time viewing that I personally don’t have much remorse for liking.

Final Verdict: