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Divergent: Book To Movie Review

divergent

I loved it.
The book. The movie. I loved it.
So my review is going to be biased. And I say it that way because when I first read the book a year and half ago, I fell in love with this story. And when that happens, the falling in love with a story, it’s almost like it becomes a dear friend and loved one. (Don’t even get me started about that with Harry Potter).
I was nervous about this movie because I loved the book so much. My biggest fears were that it would be a Harry Potter 6, and compromise the integrity of the characters and the story, and that Shailene would ruin it for me like Kristen Stewart did for Twilight with really awful acting. I’m so happy that neither of these things were true for this movie!
I chose not to re-read the book right before seeing the movie. But to be honest, I know the book so well by now that it really wouldn’t have made a difference. I still noticed the discrepancies and I still think they would have bothered me about the same amount, mostly not at all.
This is one of the first movies that I wasn’t really bothered by the discrepancies that much. Ultimately, I feel like the book and the movie told the same story, the way they went about it was just a little different in places. I found myself finding new favorite parts of the story because of how they were portrayed in the movie. But it didn’t take away from my favorite parts of the story in the book.
Here are some of the discrepancies that did bother me a little bit (but didn’t distract me from the story):
— Shailene. Here size was just too big for my picture of her. Not that Shailene is big. Tris is just supposed to be tiny. But honestly, her acting made up for it. And just a personal side note, I didn’t love her voice. The hoarse raspy voice thing is just not my favorite. But there’s not much you can do about that and again, it was made up for by her acting.
— Amity color was orange…. I guess they decided to mix red and yellow and make orange? Or Amity is just a bunch of hippy UT fans? I don’t know. It wasn’t even bright orange. The reason I like red and yellow for their colors is that they are bright and sunny and deliriously happy. Like Amity.
— Jeanine is in charge of the choosing ceremony and what seems like the whole society from the beginning. I get it. It’s Kate Winslet. The only reason this bothers me a little bit is that is paints Marcus in a different light and doesn’t show quite the political control his character has.
— Eric’s hair… In the book, doesn’t he have longer, stringy, greasy hair? Or is that just how I pictured him. It doesn’t really matter. I still hated him from the beginning. I just thought he had gross hair in the book.
— Character development of Christina, Will, Al, and Uriah. Just wishing for more. If you didn’t read the book, you probably wouldn’t remember their names by the end of the movie. I don’t even know if Uriah’s name was mentioned in the movie. His character was so minor in the movie. He was barely more than an extra.
— There are only 2 levels of training, not 3. Because of this, the “simulation” and “fear landscapes” were combined into one thing in the movie. I get it. It’s a time thing. There just wasn’t enough of it. And because of this, they had to change some of the story about the fear landscape around. To where Four teaches Tris to hide her divergency by “thinking and acting like Dauntless” in her fear landscapes. It still supports the overall story, it’s just different than the book.
— Tris never wins a fight. It never shows her beating the stuffing out of Peter. And I really wanted to see that. Because it doesn’t show her winning a fight, it never really portrays the strength she does gain. On the same note, it doesn’t really show how beat up she did get from Molly. It showed some bruises but I pictured her a lot more bloody and beaten.
— Eric says Tris is “out” after Peter beats her up. This is just dumb to me. It doesn’t add anything to the story and it doesn’t help save time explaining anything. I guess it does make you hate Eric more. Maybe that’s the point. I just didn’t need any more help in that area.
— There is no Visiting Day. I loved this scene in the book. And they just avoided it by having Tris run into her mom at a loading dock? I guess it saved time.  (PS I loved Natalie Judd as her mom. It made me love her mom so much more.)
— The control room scene is completely different than the book. In the book, Four is alone at the controls. In the movie, there are a LOT of people in the room and Jeanine is running it. I didn’t not like the scene in the movie. It still told the story. It’s just really different.
Here’s the one thing that really bothered me. Only one:
— In the control room scene, when Tris is trying to convince Four that it’s her (which I thought her acting was beautiful in this scene)… she tells him that she loves him. And he hasn’t said it first. In the book, I LOVE the scene at the end when he tells her that he loves her. But he says he doesn’t want to frighten her. And she doesn’t tell him she loves him until Book 2. And in my opinion that’s a pretty big deal to her character.
Favorite Things From the Movie:
–The zipline scene. Is. Awesome. So cool.  I’m really afraid of heights, but it made me want to go ziplining. (Kyle if you are reading this, I’m not really serious).
— The line “you really overestimate my character” from Tris. I laughed out loud.
— The character development of Tris and Four and their relationship, as well as the development of Jeanine, Eric, and Peter I also thought were really nice. And by nice I mean I hate them and want to scratch their eyes out.
— The opening scene of destroyed Chicago is amazing.
— Veronica Roth’s quick cameo
— The soundtrack (minus the song playing when Tris and Four finally kiss)
Ultimately, I just loved it. Really. I did. I can’t wait to go see it again.

This is me meeting Veronica Roth at the Dallas Book Signing back in October
vroth


This is what I wore to the movie. All of the faction colors. And my shirt says “fourtris faction”.
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