Jeanine (Kate Winslet) needs to find a divergent in order to open the mysterious box she has in her glass cubicle world, and in order to maintain world order. (okay, whatever.) Enter our beloved Tris (Shailene Woodley) full of moxie and gusto, but missing the charm and nuance of the first film Divergent. In this, she’s already kicking butt with her boys, Caleb (Ansel Elgort) and Peter (Miles Teller, now better known as the underdog drummer boy from Oscar nominated Whiplash.)
The sequel – as with all action sequels – is more dark and violent. But worse than that, it uses the crutch of 3D glasses.
The story also focuses on the crutch of dead-mother-love…Tris missing her mother (Ashley Judd) and feeling the guilt and responsibility for her death, as well as her alliance and love to Four (Theo James) her boyfriend, who has his own mama issues with his mother (Naomi Watts). Watts wears a brunette wig and calling Four by his birth name, ‘Tobias.’
There are suggestions that the teaming up of the ‘factions’ – might be a good thing, since factionless and dauntless seem to have the most in common, not conforming to either of the other groups. There’s the ending message on humanity. And that makes no sense. The film opens with Winslet declaring “Extreme times call for extreme measures.” Is violence the answer?Why can’t we take a cue from the film’s newcomer, Octavia Spencer, who basically says ‘let’s all farm and get along.’ Either way, in the end, the film is soulless. It lacks the bewilderment and charm that won us over with Tris’s underdog journey of ‘this is my new life’ and we must run, walk, run, and hide.
Perhaps it’s time for our young heroines to leave their bows and arrows behind, because if you think being kissed by Prince Charming is nonsense, so is a teenage rebel who uses violence for actions in a ridiculously impossible futuristic world. With this film, not only is chivalry dead, but it makes the 60s feminists seem more like Rapunzel. Sorry, but I’ll be a girly-girl and take my glass slipper any day. ♕ ♚ 1/2