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My TED Talk on the Hot Mess that is Divergent

By Anonymous
Let's all take a moment of silence for Veronica Roth's film adaptation of  the Divergent trilogy. So. Many. Plot. Holes. I loved the books in high school. It was right after I had finished The Hunger Games and ya girl was on a YA dystopian high. Thus enter Roth's works. I really enjoyed them. They had depth and a strong female lead, which is all 16 year-old Allyson really wanted to read. Tris, the protagonist, was an incredible narrator, and in the movie she is played by Shailene Woodley (swoon). I'm not going to give a play by play of the plot, but basically you're drafted into different factions based on traits, characteristics, and personality and then you live your life with people in the same faction you chose. Tris chose Dauntless, one that valued bravery, courage, and overall kick-assness. She came from Abnegation, which valued selflessness and living as simply as possible. Sounds simple, right? Easy enough to adapt? YOU WOULD THINK, BUT THEY DONE MESSED UP.

Basically, they took the trilogy, took the overall PURPOSE of the book and set it on fire. After said fire, they took what remained, yeeted it into the garbage, and then adapted it from sparknotes. But sparknotes that had been written by someone who did not read the book. Perhaps they didn't want Divergent to be compared so vigorously to The Hunger Games, maybe they wanted to stop while they're ahead with the Katniss vs Tris comparison charts, but they missed it by a lot. So much so, that the last book was split into 2  movies, and Shailene Woodley refused to do the second one. The second part was going to be a TV series, but she noped that one hard. The movie had so many plot holes it was no longer Divergent and you couldn't pay her enough to finish what she started.

 1. Where the heck is the explanation of how the factions came to be? The director just expects the audience to be cool with Chicago to look war torn and be A Ok with factions? The lack of backstory set the films up to be a disaster from the beginning. The backstory is what made the film what it was. So where is it, director dudes and screen writers? Riddle me that.

2. Why is Tris so boy crazy about Four (her love interest in the books)? Once again, no backstory to set up the audience for a wild relationship full of ups, downs, and sacrifice. Without the backstory and intimate moments beyond them making out all the time, the plot is empty.

3. All of a sudden, characters who stated they would never hurt a fly are shooting at kids in other factions and harming the factionless? Why write them in moments of disgust at violence and then in the next 2 films have them be mindless war drones WITH NO EXPLANATION? At least in the book it was crystal clear that it was simulation making them act out of character. In the film, you get nothing but hypocrisy and confusion.

TBH, I could go on and on about the tragedy that is this trilogy (incomplete, at that). If I hadn't read the books before I saw the movies, I would be horrifically confused about the amount of plot inconsistencies there are. Even as a fan of the books, I was like "What?" at the end of every film. It was truly an act of murder on the books, and one of the best examples of plot holes and sloppy writing that I could think of outside of Pretty Little Liars, but that's a different TED Talk for a different blog post.

In conclusion,
Divergent is a hot mess and I am still mad about it. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.


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