Divergent

ifeelbookish - *SPOILERS* (I didn't know whether to review the book or the movie, so I just reviewed both.) So let's start with the characters. Well, Uriah was going to be introduced in Insurgent, and Al killed himself five minutes after he was introduced. Ugh. Edward wasn't in the movie, and of course, there wasn't a butter knife stabbing. Those were my only problems with the characters. I really loved Ansel as Caleb, and Shailene was just perfection. Remember when Tris was about to shoot Peter in the arm near the end of the book? Well Peter was like, "You're not going to shoot me," and then Tris says "Why does everybody keep saying that?" That bit was hilarious. I couldn't really imagine Tris and Peter as enemies because I kept imagining them as Sutter and Amie. And I was shipping Caleb and Tris because they played Hazel and Gus in TFIOS. That's kind of weird that I'm shipping them, but, oh well. I didn't imagine Eric as this thirty-something year old guy with huge arms. He was great though. Zoe Kravitz was amazing as Christina. She captured Christina's feisty character, it felt that she was saying exactly what came to her mind. I had an extreme crush on Theo because he played Four so well, that I was just - ohmygod yes. In the beginning, there was inevitably a short monologue, but I was fine with it. I was on the edge of my seat for the whole movie, even though I would know what would happen next. The pacing was perfect, and the transitions from each fear in the fear landscape was perfect. I cried about three times during the movie. I think you know which scenes those were (Will, Tris' parents dying). When they were eating in the cafeteria for the first time, Tris asks Four if he's a transfer or not. Four says,"So you think you can just talk to me? Why do you think you can just talk to me?" And then Tris goes, "Well you're so approachable." Oh, and when Christina is like your name is Four, like the number 4? Four says the first thing that you have to learn here is to keep your mouth shut. I just loved how Christina spoke her mind. When Tris takes off her sweater when she's getting ready to jump off the building, Peter's like, "YEAH! TAKE IT OFF! Put it back on." Those lines were just hilarious. The fighting scenes were actually really hard to watch, especially when Molly was fighting. Christina hanging off the chasm didn't really make me worry for her, because she just hung off the chasm for, like, ten seconds or so. It didn't provoke much emotion. Four's introduction was just perfect, and it wasn't as cheesy as it was in the trailer. The green screen and the technology was absolutely amazing. When they entered Four's fear landscape together, I felt that those scenes were really powerful. When Marcus was about to whip Four, it was just awesome how Four punched him. The transitions, again, were perfect. The cinematography was breathtaking. The pacing was also very very good. When I imagined the scoreboard during the initiation, I imagined Four writing names on a chalkboard. I'm pretty sure that it was like that in the book, because instead of the chalkboard, there was an electronic scoreboard that looked all high-techy (if that's even a word). The factions were presented very accurately, and when Tris went to visit Caleb at the Erudite headquarters, the building looked distinctly modern. And compared to the Dauntless compound, which had concrete walls, the Erudite headquarters was all modern and everything had glass. The soundtrack was really good. I feel like Ellie Goulding is on every dystopian movie soundtrack, but I think her...

Starred review from February 21, 2011
In this edgy debut (definitely not for the fainthearted), first in a trilogy, promising author Roth tells the riveting and complex story of a teenage girl forced to choose, at age 16, between her routinized, selfless family and the adventurous, unrestrained future she longs for. Beatrice "Tris" Prior lives in crumbling dystopian Chicago, where citizens are divided into five factions—Candor, Abnegation, Dauntless, Amity, and
Erudite—depending on their beliefs, passions, and loyalties. When Tris forsakes her Abnegation family to become one of the wild, fearless Dauntless, she must confront her deepest fears, learn to trust her fellow initiates, and guard the ominous secret that she is actually a Divergent, with the strengths of multiple factions, and is therefore a target of dangerously controlling leaders. Roth's descriptions of Tris's initiation process are as spellbinding as they are violent, while the tremulous romance between Tris and her protective and demanding instructor, Four, unfurls with heart-stopping tenderness. For those who loved The Hunger Games and are willing to brave the sometimes sadistic tests of strength and courage Tris must endure, the reward is a memorable, unpredictable journey from which it is nearly impossible to turn away. Ages 14–up.