Divergent

Review: 'Divergent' Isn't Different Enough

Thumbnail: Divergent will play to the converted and please the fan base. But despite Shailene Woodley’s terrific performance, its generic story renders much of its mythology irrelevant.

The Box Office:

Here’s the most important thing to be aware of when discussing Divergent: The Lionsgate release cost around $85 million, which means if its opening weekend is anywhere near the alleged $65m it’s tracking at, it frankly doesn’t matter if A) the film is any good or B) the film branches out beyond those who are already eagerly awaiting the picture. At $85 million, the film will basically be breaking even for at around $150 million domestic, with profit starting to show (even accounting for marketing around $40m in America) at around $200 million worldwide. But that’s not counting the foreign pre-licensing, which covered much of the production budget. Point being, even if the opening is closer to $40m than $65m, this should be an easy win for the House that Jigsaw Built with profits after the film hits $100m domestic.

Now of course the real question, and frankly the only one that matters in the long run, is whether or not the film will please the fans. But somewhat over/under $65 million on opening weekend is your starting point, then you have plenty of room to fall the next time around if the casual fans don’t come back and plenty of room to grow if the general audiences or tag-alongs like what they see. But as long as the fans are happy and are happily anticipating the sequel, then you’ve basically got a franchise for the next two or three installments, however long this specific film series might go on for (there are three books). With a franchise like this, you’re relatively home free if you can open the picture.

Unless the first film is terrible or the budget skyrockets in between installments, a franchise is safe for the long haul, as fans will show up for the sequel and will surely show up for the finale. So all of this is a long way of saying that Divergent is, barring fan revolt, critic proof. And thanks to its reasonable budget, it’s almost word-of-mouth proof. It’s as much a predestined hit as a Transformers sequel, although we’re dealing with smaller numbers all around. The work was done in the marketing department, with Lionsgate securing the hype and mainstream attention that guaranteed that Divergent didn’t suffer the same fate as Beautiful Creatures or The Mortal Instruments. Barring a fluke in the tracking guestimates and/or Last Airbender-level word of mouth (review spoiler – it’s better than The Last Airbender), we’ve got the next big young-adult literary adaptation franchise on our hands.

The Review:

For too much of its 143-minute running time, Divergent tells a story mostly independent of its exhaustive world-building. The picture takes pains to explicitly set up the rules of its universe with the notion that said rules will play a large role in the narrative. But much of the core story takes place outside the rules and expectations of its mythology, with much of the details and deviations becoming merely distractions for the relatively generic story. Disconnected from the expectations of its sub-genre and the weight of its advance publicity, Divergent is a sporadically entertaining coming-of-age action film that nonetheless works best as metaphor.

To adequately explain the world in which Divergent takes place would take copious paragraphs, so here’s the short version. The world is divided up into five factions, with citizens organized by their innate skills (agriculture, law enforcement, education, politics, etc.); although kids can choose which faction they wish to enter. Our heroine  ”Tris” (Shailene Woodley, quite good as usual) finds herself being pegged as a “divergent”, which means she has strengths in more than one area and is thus dangerous to those in power. After she arbitrarily chooses to enter the “Dauntless” clan (IE – cops and soldiers), she begins her training to prove that she is good enough to be among the elite. And that’s pretty much it for the vast majority of the film.

Despite all of the world building and metaphors for leaving your family behind and/or free will versus society’s decree,Divergent basically ends up being “Tris goes to boot camp and struggles to not get cut”. The film makes her into something of an underdog, which leads to bonding with various teammates, harsh rivalries (Woodley and Miles Teller should really just stay away from each other in general), and eventually a forbidden, but not-really, romance with an older instructor (Theo James, who is fine and suitably dreamy). You know this one by heart, and you keep waiting for some kind of actual conflict to present itself. Now you could say the same of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which stumbled upon a plot only in its last half hour, but the characters were colorful and enjoyable. The would-be soldiers of the future and their hard-ass instructors are pretty stock characters and thus Woodley’s struggles provide only token engagement.

Divergent looks fine, especially when it steps out of its training catacombs and gets some sunlight. I enjoyed the bits involving an incredibly fun drop onto a large net (Fun!) and a zip line that seems to span the entire city (Please be a theme park ride!). The film wins bonus points for A) having Tris improve via hard work and practice instead of inane gifts or magic and B) allowing Tris to not look like a fully-made up super model at every moment. But there is next to no real action until the very end, akin to Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, and when the big conflict is revealed it makes much of the rest of the movie retroactively illogical. Yes, evildoers aren’t always master planners, but their overall scheme seems to negate much of what has transpired in ways I frankly can’t explain without film-ruining spoilers. For this first film at least, much of the fantastical elements feels as much like window dressing as the post-apocalyptic material in After Earth. 

To its credit, the film goes to some dark places in its finale and is genuinely unflinching in both the idea of a female action hero and the moral sacrifices that come with picking up a weapon and doing bad. What happens in the end isn’t “empowering” and it isn’t “sexy”. Tris truly gets her hands bloody for survival and for the greater good in a way that Katniss Everdeen has thus far avoided in the first two Hunger Games films. But once again we have a franchise opener that is mostly set-up for the real adventures to come, as the vast majority of this 2.25 hour picture is basically about establishing a new status quo while barely providing a “first adventure” for our heroes. Considering there are only three books in the series, spending nearly a full film on what amounts to an origin story is a little frustrating. In that sense, it’s less Batman Begins and more Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood.

Divergent features a terrific lead performance by Shailene Woodley in a narrative that is oddly generic for most of its running time. It’s mostly a “kid goes to police academy” type drama, and it’s nearly over before the “world building” laid out in its opening moments to really matter.  The film mostly works as a metaphor for today’s competitive job market/education system, one which the sheer cost of academic or economic failure and the sheer difficulty of mere day-to-day financial survival are so severe as to squelch dissent and/or active participation in the democratic process. Think a sci-fi parable for Daniel Brook’s The Trap. But as the next great fantasy adventure, it falters by telling a generic story that has little requirement of its world building/fantasy elements.  It’s a somewhat disappointing film with a few interesting ideas. In the end, Divergent doesn’t diverge enough from the formula in which it exists. But that will mean little to those who are already planning on seeing it.

Inti penting yang saya dapat di film ini adalah

"Tiap manusia pasti ada rasa takut/phobia tertentu,namun ketika rasa takut itu mampu kita lawan maka kita adalah orang yang tidak mudah dipengaruhi oleh apapun"