Divergent: movie diverged too far from book

By: Alyssa Ballard

   Based on the best-selling novel “Divergent” by Veronica Roth, the movie came to theatres on March 26.

   The story is about a 16 year old Beatrice Prior or “Tris” (Shailene Woodley,) and her struggles in a life where society is divided into five factions: Dauntless, Erudite, Amity, Abnegation, and Candor, based on human virtues. Other characters include “Four”/Tobias Eaton (Theo James), also known as the love interest and sidekick of Tris. Other key characters include Jeanine Matthews (Kate Winslet ) the antagonist. Eric (Jai Courtney) a traitor to his faction, Caleb Prior (Ansel Elgort) who plays the brother of the protagonist.

    I’m torn about the film. As usual, someone who reads a book and watches the movie always find the differences and knit picks the likes and dislikes.

   The book was absolutely fantastic, actually the whole series was, but there were some things in the film that filled me with angst. The director left out some very serious pieces of the book in the film.

   I’ll start with the good. Neil Burger, the director, did an overall really good job with the film with the music, actors, and screenplay. However, it makes me very mad that he left out some really important parts of the book in the film such as characters and scenes. The casting crew, Venus Kanani and Mary Venieu also did a quality job, I think a giant factor that makes the movie pretty good  is the chemistry between not only Theo and Shailene, but the whole cast over all.

   Now for the bad.  There were chunks left out of the movie such as the time where Beatrice is almost thrown over the chasm, a river in her headquarters. A character they failed to mention in the movie is Edward, who is a semi-important character in the first and second books because he Tris meets him first thing first in the second book of the series.

   I would recommend seeing the movie, and reading the book, but a fair warning, they have their differences. Even though the movie isn’t all that I was hoping it would be, it was still a very good movie, and I definitely recommend seeing it.

   Overall I would give it about a 7.0 out of 10.0 which is around what a lot of online reviews gave it.