Allegiant

It’s a shame the route that YA movies are taking. They have completely lost the ambition and creativity that defined their great success. We’ve seen their decline with Maze Runner, Twilight, and the end of The Hunger Games saga. Divergentwas the first film in a new saga that seemed like a meld of Percy Jackson and The Hunger Games, it had incredible promise with young stars that were breaking big. However, with its subsequent films the series has been downgraded into a bitter disappointment. The third film, Allegiant, confirms this poor series’ demise.

Allegiant is the third film in the Divergent series, and it finds Tris (Shailene Woodley) and her friends Four (Theo James) and Christina (Zoë Kravitz) facing the chaotic power vacuum that their home is facing after the defeat of Jeanine (Kate Winslet) in the previous film. Four’s mother Evelyn (Naomi Watts) is trying Jeanine’s subjects with incredible ruthlessness, this upsets Johanna (Octavia Spencer) who would go about things more peacefully. Tris’ brother Caleb (Ansel Elgort), is bound to be tried for having helped Jeanine, as is the wisecracking Peter (Miles Teller). So Tris frees her brother and takes Peter, Four, Christina along as she flees over the wall that has enclosed her all these years. Over the wall they meet a group of people called the Bureau led by a man named David (Jeff Daniels), who seem almost too good to be true.

The main problem with this film can be routed with the problem in the previous installment: Insurgent. After Divergentdirector Neil Burger parted ways and a new director (Robert Schwentke) and writing team was brought in for the rest of the series. The change of the creative team caused a deflation for the character development and the storyline as a whole. The story seems to be guiding itself with an outline rather than a script, and all of the characters seem to be stagnated from where they were left off with Burger’s team.

As for the acting, the young stars now seem to be stagnated; you get the feeling that this franchise is now holding them back. Woodley and the rest of her mates give low-energy performances, both in dialogue and action sequences. You come to the conclusion that it’s probably because, just like the audience, they’ve lost faith in the franchise. The only actor who seems to be trying is Miles Teller, who brightens up any scene he’s in; you can almost tell that the majority of his lines are improvised.

The studio tried to distract us with a bigger budget and a splatter of CGI, but really the ineptitude of the creative team can’t be hidden. It truly is a shame to see a series with so much potential become so dull and mediocre.

4.7/10