I actually liked it better than I liked the book.
That almost never happens with me, with the movies of Lord of the Ring being probably my ultimate video triumph (honestly, I got bogged down in all the Middle Earth history and world-building and such, and characters had such similar names that I couldn’t keep them straight when I was reading the books). I had much the same experience with Divergent. They streamlined both the plot and the number of characters, but I thought it helped keep things on track. I thought the biggest weakness of the book was that the characters were a little flat, and since they all had the same dominant characteristic and lifestyle (and there were so many of them), I couldn’t remember which was which. Some female name would come up, and I would have to go back and look it up….was that so-and-so’s girlfriend? the girl from the fight? the girl from the tattoo place? But in the movie, I could recognize them visually, so I knew who was who all the time.
But I also thought the movie benefitted other ways by being able to show, not tell. I had a much better feel for the different factions, their different ways and energy, in the movie than I did from the book. I also think the movie did a better job of conveying Tris’ emotional journey visually compared to the text of the book. I don’t want to say anything more and give things away for those of you who haven’t seen it, but there were several scenes in the movie I found to be very powerful and that moved me in a way the book hadn’t.
The cast, on the whole, is really good. Shailene Woodley makes as good of an action hero as she does a cancer patient, and really, her characters are pretty similar–strong, independent, brave, honest young women. Much more shocking is Ansel Elgort’s transformation. In TFIOS, his performance is so exuberant, but then he is so withheld as Tris’ straight-laced brother. That’s true to the character, so it isn’t a criticism–it’s just that I like the character of Gus much more than I like Caleb. But then, I like all the characters in TFIOS better than I like the ones in Divergent.
My bottom line is that I recommend the movie to fans of the book as well as to those who haven’t read it. It’s not a great story, but it is an interesting one, and I think the visual component makes it a more emotional one as well. And it certainly raises some of the issues that are important to adolescents. Where do I belong? Who is my tribe? How much should I follow my family’s ways and how much should I be on my own path? Do I trust authority figures or my own intuition? These questions all play out in a very dramatic way, and should at least make teens feel better that their decisions about these questions tend to be a little less irreversible.