“Can we please stop with this trend of extending YA series on film by splitting the last book into two movies? It made sense for Harry Potter. That final book was really dense, and there was a logical split to make. It hasn’t made any sense since. Divergent is most often compared to the Hunger Games, and for me, the third books suffer the exact same problems.
Reading the Divergent series, I loved Divergent and Insurgent. But it all fell apart for me reading Allegiant. It could just have been a side effect of reading all three in rapid succession, but this was the point where I realized how poorly written it was. Some of the repeated phrases were starting to grate on me. After two books that were first person from Tris’ perspective, we now were bouncing back and fourth between Tris and Four, and author Veronica Roth could not create distinct voices for the two. And, like with the Hunger Games, I was far more interested in the early stories, describing the status quo of this world, and less interested in its undoing. Yet Hollywood powers that be still decided to split this one out. Ugh.
It actually didn’t turn out to be so bad, which could just be a matter of low expectations or the fact that I blocked out most of the book so it all felt new to me. Yes, it felt a little thin, and I’m pretty sure the final installment will be even thinner, but I was able to go with it. We do have a stellar cast here (as we lose Kate Winslett, Jeff Daniels steps in, and Naomi Watts steps up), and some new parts of the story opened up an opportunity for a lot of really cool visual effects.
I’m not completely forgiving it. It was still a little cheesy and self righteous, and didn’t do a good job of explaining reasons for things. But it worked well enough, for what it was. Although I’d hope that it’s underperformance at the box office will finally put an end to this split-the-last-book trend. That would at least be one positive to come out of it
Allegiant – \m/ \m/ \m/”