Insurgent movie review

I saw the Insurgent movie a couple of  weeks ago and I really enjoyed it. It's been on my to-blog list for way too long, but now, the time has come. So make yourself comfortable, because this is probably going to take a while.

Pre-movie experience

I saw the first teaser while I was reading Insurgent for the first time — or was I still working on Divergent? — and the trailer was cool gave me goose bumps all over my pretty little skin. At the time, I:

-had seen Divergent-had read — or nearly read — Divergent.-had read The Hunger Games series three times in a row before Divergent. (It was my first YA series and I was quite addicted and didn't have a TBR pile the size of the Eiffel Tower.)-was excitedly awaiting Mockingjay part 1.-had or would soon after watch The Maze Runner. (Good movie)-obviously had also already seen The Hunger Games and Catching Fire.

Book experience

Insurgent is actually my favorite book in the series. The plot is great, the action and conspiracies are very well done, and the characters are interesting. The romance I might have the most respect for. Tris and Tobias are cute together, but also very realistic. They fight, lie, are angry with each other for stupid reasons, and then make out again. I love that part of the book. They're not a fairytale, and they still love each other. Tris continues to be a bad-ass heroine and a very relatable and realistic person with some serious character development.

The movie-watching circumstances

As you may or may not know, I want to be a writer. But to be honest, my vocabulary isn’t nearly big enough to write a successful story, and I don’t feel like using Google Translate for the rest of my life. So I figured I could reread some books in this summer vacation and then write down all the words I didn’t know or wouldn’t necessarily use myself. I did this with the first two trilogies I had read: the Hunger Games and Divergent. At the time that I saw the movie, I was about one third into my Insurgent reread.

The movie itself (353 words into the review and now we’re talking about the ACTUAL movie. Way to go.):

Overall enjoyment

I had a good time watching the movie. It was interesting and fast, so especially considering the length of these adaptations, they did a good job on keeping me interested. I liked the way everything in the city looked and how the characters looked (except maybe Tris’ hairdo). The plot was a little too start-build-up-climax-ending to me, though. It was just, like, normal good-movie stuff.

World

The look of the world might be what makes this movie worth watching. The buildings in the city, for example. A little bit of an apocalyptic atmosphere with cool vines crawling around the concrete skyscrapers. Tris and Four walking through the wreckages of whatever it may be. They did an amazing job making Chicago come to life. The simulations are well-done, but the CGI is, to be honest, terrible in quite a few places. I liked how it looked, but those doll-like CGI people flying in the air always hit me as a little cheap. That's particularly bad in the Dauntless simulation. I did like the way the 'shattered world' has turned out.

Characters and acting

I don’t know movies or acting and stuff like that, but in my unprofessional opinion, the acting was good. Most of the time. There were a couple awkward parts, were I was like, “Okay... If you would have seen how that looks on screen, you wouldn’t have made that face.” At some point Tris takes Tobias’ on-the-verge-of-crying face in both her hands and it just looks stupid. The casting is nice. I really liked Johanna, and Marcus’ look matches how I pictured the character. We were, of course, all happy to see Uriah in all his cute-smiling glory. Tris’ hair should have been a tiny bit longer, to be very nit-picky, and it definitely contributed to some awkward-face moments. Character development and building... Ehm. Let’s just say that if I didn’t have the book as a backdrop, I would not feel any really personal attachment to anyone except for Tris. Oops? The actors do add something to the characters, though. Shailene Woodley plays Tris very well and really captures her trauma. Ansel Elgort plays a good Caleb, but I was most impressed with Miles Teller as Peter. He was an asshole, but I likable asshole.

Plot

Here comes my rant. Book to movie adaptation. That’s what this movie should have been. I looked forward to my favorite Divergent book to become a movie.
The following contains spoilers for the book and the movie. It will also contain one Allegiant spoiler I will warn you for once we get there.
The BOX. I have to admit that it made reading Insurgent after having seen the trailer a lot funnier. Can you just imagine me sitting on my bed with the book and just wondering for 525 pages, "Where the -F-bomb- is that stupid box?!"
The box was nothing. If the book is a history chapter you have a test about, the movie is the test of a drunk kid who briefly skipped through the pages and only looked at the pictures.
Example? Where do I start? Oh, well, let's begin with the complete ABSENCE of, like, 30% of the book. Teaming up with Marcus? Fernando? Cara? Gone. Tori's revenge? Gone. I loved those parts of the book, because they were so well executed and described. There was action and Tris had to team up with so many different people she normally considered enemies while she fought her allies.

And then you go to me, "But they only had 2,5 hours to do it."
Let's not fool ourselves. We know that Hollywood, and Lionsgate in particular, has a simple solution for 'too little screentime'. "If 2,5 hours won't do, split the story into two!" or, as some would rather say, "More movies, more money!"
Allegiant might have many pages, but way less happens. I can see it become a 2 hour movie without any trouble. But since it's the last book, we can't do that.
Insurgent is short in pages, but there's a lot of stuff going on. But we can't split it because it's the second book.
What the actual?!
This movie would have been way better if it had been, like, four or five hours long.
The part that actually is there feels very rushed. It's not really a story. I can just hear the director screaming that those parts of the book still have to be squeezed in and we don't have time for smooth bridges between them.
As I mentioned earlier, I liked the relation problems in Insurgent a lot. What relation problems? In the movie, everything is fine and cute and good between Four and Tris. Wow. Really? You cut out the part that might have actually been able to give you some credit from the critics?
That the box isn't the biggest problem doesn't mean it's not a problem. It's even multiple problems:
1. Tris isn't a '100%' Divergent. She has no aptitude for Candor nor Amity.
2. The box isn't supposed to be there in the first place. It literally doesn't exist. Jeanine experiments on Tris on her own account and puts whatever she wants in the simulations. That's one of the reasons Caleb's betrayal is so brutal: he tells Jeanine to put their mom in the simulation.
3. The fight against Other Tris is cool, but it just doesn't match the book in any way.
4. The science part is gone. Now, I'm not interested in science, don't get me wrong. I just liked how it was worked into the story and how Jeanine is puzzling to find out what makes the Divergent this way.
5. Back to Caleb. In the book, Tris will eventually face certain execution, and he knows that. Still he doesn't help her. In the movie, I just didn't really want to choke him the way I wanted to in the book, because Tris was so obviously going to survive.
6. No certain execution, no Peter rescue.
7. There is no fear serum, so the Erudite don't have a serum.
Speaking of missing serums, neither does Amity.
Speaking of plot holes for the next movie, let's dig into those.

Allegiant spoilers ahead!

Come back when the coast is clear again.

The weird colors are my attempt at making it easier to scroll through it without being able to still accidentally read it.
1. Since a lot of factions now don't have their own serums, we can't really say Abnegation has one.
2. We can't use fear serum to scar David for life.
3. We can't have a reason to have Tris' dad leave Erudite, because the fear serum again can't be used to scar people for life.
4. We can't use peace serum to knock out guards.
5. Tris dies. Ha ha. Now you wish you hadn't ignored my spoiler warning.
6. Lynn's still alive.
7. We can't save Caleb from jail, because he's not sent to jail. Neither is Tris, by the way.
8. Why would Johanna even bother to start the Allegiant? In the movie she's still Amity, which means she's still non-violent and can't handle independently from the Amity since she's still their kind-of-leader.

Scenes I really liked

There were, despite some annoying bits, still parts that I fairly enjoyed. And again, I will make a list.

1. The scary everyone-I-love-dies hallucination dream. I was especially impressed by how zombie-like they had made Tris' parents.

2. Tris' truth serum testimony. This part is just very well acted. It was kind of menacing to watch her squeak and cry and twist and turn.

3. When Tris puts a gun against her head threatening to kill herself so Jeanine can't open the box. (What terrible scenes I've chosen.)

4. Tobias pushing the little kid on the swing. (This is were you switch from thinking I'm a serial killer back to a 'normal' fangirl.)

5. All the dauntless coming down the stairs of Candor headquarters.

6. Tobias thinks Tris is dead when Peter brings her to him. (Back to serial killer.)

7. The simulations of the box were nice. That's one advantage of the box: it's way more exciting than the bus drive with her mom.

8. The ending where Jeanine is staring out of the window and Evelyn stands behind her and she's like, "Well, I guess we're done with this part. Now die, bitch."

9. The moment I realized there were more than eight points I liked.

My hopes for Allegiant part 1

I just really don't want to worry about that until the trailer comes out.

I'm sorry for the white markings. Blogger kind of sucks.