The Divergent Series: Allegiant, starring<italic> </italic>(L to R) Zoe Kravitz, Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Theo James, Miles Teller and Maggie Q, is based on the book series of the same name.
'Let's say that a critic is a person whose interest can help to activate the interest of others," writes film critic A.O. Scott in his new book, Better Living Through Criticism. That sounds about right, and yet a more blunt truth is that the film critic sees the movies you won't want to. The latest case in point is The Divergent Series: Allegiant. Try as I might, I cannot activate your interest in this bloated excuse for a movie.
That may be because my own interest was in no way, shape, or form activated by director Robert Schwentke's cloying parable of heroism at the end of the world. Schwentke has now directed back-to-back Divergent movies after taking over the director's seat from Neil Burger, who helmed the first instalment (maybe needing some time to reflect on his sins, Schwentke has opted out of the next and final film in the series, Ascendant, which will be directed by Lee Toland Krieger).
The dystopian Allegiant was written by Noah Oppenheim, Adam Cooper and Bill Collage and is based on the young adult book series of the same name by Veronica Roth. It stars Shailene Woodley (The Descendants, The Fault in Our Stars), who reprises her role as doe-eyed heroine Beatrice (Tris) Prior, and her bae, Tobias (Four) Eaton (Theo James). The film opens with the two lovers scaling the crumbling remains of a skyscraper. They look out over what was once the city of Chicago, and the large wall that now traps them within it. Following the uprisings of previous Divergent movies, the city is fractious and drunk on a mob mentality.
Together with pals Christine (Zoe Kravitz), Peter (Miles Teller), Tori (Maggie Q), and Tris's brother Caleb (Ansel Elgort), the squad breaches the wall and discovers another city far more advanced and futuristic than their shabby and soon-to-be-rioting Chicago. There they meet the leader, David, who is played by a stiff and dad-like Jeff Daniels.
In its envisioning of a technically superior and integrated future, the movie desperately wants a sleek and goth-inspired aesthetic in the spirit of Rick Owens. What it ends up with is more of an unfortunate Anne Klein-meets-The Jetsons reality.
Dystopia as a genre is about critiquing the faults of humankind and considering what went wrong where. Sorry teens, but that's not found here. The obvious parallel of the Divergent series is to that other young-adult, novel-based dystopia franchise: The Hunger Games. And yet, The Hunger Games is interesting. Whereas Jennifer Lawrence and her revolutionary comrades are mostly successful in mounting a critique of capitalism and class struggle, Allegiant offers insight into nothing. (Let's be honest, Hunger Games aside, how successful could a top-grossing franchise ever really be at depicting the disenfranchised?)
Well, that's not exactly right: Allegiant does offer insight into its protagonist's apple-pie humanism. The clunky moral of this story is that it's high time that everyone start accepting each other. Tris's kumbaya philosophy is trite at best. At worst, it's offensive. That's because throughout Allegiant there are myriad images of and allegories to Nazi Germany that are so unsubtle, and so devoid of nuance, that Tris's call for everyone to "all get along" is not only insipid and naive – it's also ethically irresponsible. Gassing, child abduction and cultural genocide are not tropes: they have a real and not-so-distant history that shouldn't be thrown around aimlessly for the sake of a middling franchise.
Teens deserve more.