Wow! Doesn't that just look so intense and exciting and wonderful??? Well, not really. Not in my opinion. I have a lot to say about this trailer so if you don't mind my rambling of being upset then read on! But if you don't care about Divergent at all and don't want to hear/read me venting, then feel free to browse my other blog posts. May I recommend My Top Ten Christmas Songs?
Also be warned, this post contains a fairly significant spoiler for Allegiant
. So I hate to spoil something like that to everyone so I'll warn you when it comes up. And honestly, if you haven't read it, please don't spoil this for yourself.Okay, I have two major problems with this trailer. The first is the story. If a movie is meant to be based on a book it should at least try to follow the story already written. However this trailer massively changes it.
While not in the trailer, I read months ago that they added a new character into Insurgent to create a love-triangle for Tris. When I read this I was so insanely irritated! The reason I loved the Divergent trilogy so much is because there was no love-triangle. Tris and Four only had each other, there weren't other prospects and they both knew that and they both loved each other. Yes, they fought frequently but the fact that they stayed with each other and didn't even think about other people was the greatest thing to come out of a young-adult novel.
Hunger Games and Twilight are the biggest offenders of the love-triangle and while I love both of those books (yes, I do like the Twilight books, just not the movies, although they are a wonderful joke that can be entertaining sometimes, but I will talk about that a bit later) it annoyed me that they had love-triangles. Bella said a billion times she wanted Edward so Jacob is pretty stupid for continuing to try and Bella is kind of the worst girlfriend ever, and possibly a slut, for leading Jacob on when she's in love with someone else. Katniss, in the books, never gave a second glace to Peeta or Gale and then she was suddenly forced to choose? Come on, you're like seventeen years old and you know you don't love either one so just forget about both of them until you grow up a bit. And in the books I felt she didn't deserve either one of them because she didn't love them, there was no point to have to choose. In the movies my feelings are different, they've done a good job at making her show that she really does care about Peeta and I love the relationship between them. I love the movies...
I'm totally straying from my point.
My point is, we already have too many love-triangles in books and movies and we don't need more! If you in real life have been in a love-triangle, you should let me know, because as far as I know it's not a common occurrence. And even when it does happen, people in real life seem to handle it a lot better than people in books. Real people aren't typically idiots. I had a friend who was sort of dating a guy but she liked someone else who liked her. And you know what she did? She broke off with the guy she didn't like because that's how people should do things. You don't drag out a fake romance because that only leads to broken hearts.
Tris and Four love each other. They don't need someone else. They don't need a love-triangle. And the fact that the writers of the Insurgent movie even considered it is a nightmare! If you're making a movie, whose biggest audience is teenage girls, shouldn't you show them what a real relationship looks like? Tris and Four care and protect for each other. They love each other. I personally think that they are a good role model of a healthy relationship, even if they did fight quite a bit in the book.
Why can't we promote healthy, confident relationships instead of loving vampires and having to make decisions? Maybe I'm crazy, but I believe that love isn't a choice. When you love someone you know. When I was in high school I thought I loved someone. I had strong feeling for them and to that point I hadn't felt that way before. I thought that was love. Then, years later after more fake love and heartbreaks, I met my husband and I knew. Love isn't a choice. Love is a feeling that you get, and you know when you have it.
(This is a direct quote from the book, so don't be throwing in any love-triangles!!)
Sorry, there is so much rambling going on in this post.
Back to the story. Here's what in the trailer that wasn't in the book.
- A box that seems fairly significant to the plot of the movie that was non-existent in the book.
- And testing Divergent's on the box? I guess...
- Tris's short hair, but I'll get to that later.
- Tris frequently holding and shooting guns. In the books, after killing her good friend Will in Divergent, she is no longer able to hold a gun without having an anxiety attack. In my opinion this is a fairly significant change. Again, I will talk more on this later.
- Four jumping in front of a train.
- The whole dream and/or simulation where her mother is in a burning house.
- Doc Ock type tentacle things that go into Tris's back.
- Umm... a naked makeout session...
Wait. Wasn't that basically everything in the trailer? Why yes, yes it was.
I just feel let down that they felt the need to change everything. The entire plot line is changed, from what I can tell. While Insurgent is not the greatest book in the world, couldn't they at least try to keep it?
I think a lot of this anger is based on the fact that I want to be a writer. I want to write books, I am writing books, and the idea of people taking my creations, my ideas and throwing them out the window and changing them entirely is fairly heartbreaking. I don't think I could allow that to happen and it makes me upset that writers do. Twilight was an okay book series. And then Stephanie Myers said, "Yeah, go ahead a make a movie of it with terrible acting and lines so strange they could only be considered a joke." And now Veronica Roth is saying "Yeah, I loved these characters and writing this books, but feel free to change them however you want to make lots of money." Why are these authors just selling out their creations for money? It's awful! If I ever write a book successful enough to become a movie, I honestly don't think I could let other people take it from me and do it. I would want to be a part of every step; writing, directing, casting, music, etc. Authors shouldn't let directors destroy their books, their creations. It's like Billy Ray Cyrus allowing Miley to sit naked on a wrecking ball all over again.
Story. I hate that it's changed. It's not hard to follow the book. Moving on.
The second biggest problem I have is Tris's character. Now, in the books I really do like Tris as a character. She's very real. Just read the ending of Allegient, she's as real as they come, but I'll talk more about that at the very end of this post.
Tris is a sixteen year old girl who is supposed to have shoulder length blonde hair, be small, but fairly strong, confident, gets herself into trouble because she's too confident in her abilities, is unable to hold a gun because of the intense guilt she feels, has a bullet wound in her shoulder, knows her weaknesses, loves Four, and wants to find a very significant piece of information hidden in the Erudite compound that will tell them about what's outside the fence.
Just from the trailer, Tris seems invincible.
Now I realize that in many parts of the trailer Tris is or could possibly be in a simulation. So what appeared to be invincibility was not real. However, there are equally as many parts in the trailer that lead me to believe Tris is being portrayed as a strong young woman who will save the day, instead of a sixteen year old girl.
"She's the perfect subject." Said Eric in the trailer, as if giving her this "chosen one" persona. Even the captioning on the trailer says "What sets her apart will set the world free." Why is she so special? I repeat, SHE IS A SIXTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL. She's Divergent, yes, but so is Four, so is Uriah, so is Tori, why does she have to be so special? This is something that bothered my husband in the books, he didn't understand why she had to be so special. In my mind, I like to pretend Uriah and Tori and Four are capable of her level of Divergence and, if the circumstances were different, they could have the same series of events happen to them. But this trailer blatantly says that she is the chosen one, and as a wounded, sixteen year old girl who can't hold a gun without having a panic attack, I don't think she deserves that title.
It bothers me that Shailene Woodley wouldn't wear extensions or a wig. I know that it's weird for me to be so concerned about her hair, but come on, there are so many actors who have done crazy things with their hair for roles. Actors dye their hair, cut their hair, grow beards, etc. because that's what the character needs. Jennifer Lawrence cut her hair short but didn't say "Katniss is going to have short hair now." No! Because that's not who Katniss is! Katniss is meant to have longer brown hair in a braid, Just like Tris is meant to have shoulder length blonde hair. Jennifer Lawrence cut her hair for herself, to be herself, but she knew that she was playing a character that didn't look like her and she knew she had to make her hair look like her character.
It bothers me that Shailene Woodley said she wouldn't wear extensions. She should already know this! She cut her hair specifically for a role! She is not Tris and it's not fair for her to decide how her character's hair should be when the character was already written ahead of time without Shailene Woodley even being planned to portray her. I'm not saying her hair looks bad, I'm only saying she should not have the right to change a character already written. That's like an actor saying, "I'll play Santa Claus but I want blond hair and to be skinny." You just don't mess with characters already set!! Do you remember how many people were upset Harry Potter's eyes weren't green. His eyes! You barely even get close enough to see his eyes! This is a fairly significant change for the character and I just don't like it.
Tris should not be holding a gun. In the books, the fact that she couldn't hold a gun made her vulnerable, made her real. I don't like this continual idea that Tris is invincible. There's a scene in the trailer where Tris runs through a door, closes it behind her and leans forward as bullets hit the door. Come on! Not one of those hit her? She's really that smart? That invincible? And I know it has to be a dream or simulation when she's "saving?" her mother from a burning... and flying... building, but she's much too strong, trained, and invincible in those clips. That's not what a sixteen year old girl who grew up in Abnegation should be like.
Okay... naked scene. If you follow me on Twitter, which you should cause I can be funny sometimes, you know that I personally believe Shailene Woodley won't sign onto a movie unless she can get naked and have a sex scene. Her last four movies (I think) had sex scenes and she was in Secret Life of the American Teenager where in the first episode she found out she was pregnant and sixteen. She loves sex scenes apparently. But Tris and Four aren't supposed to be like that. I will say it again, TRIS IS SIXTEEN YEARS OLD!!! I don't care that the actors who play Tris and Four are not, stop making teenagers act like adults!!! Goodness!!
Those are my two main issues. The story and Tris. Other reasons the trailer makes me upset: everything is just wrong, too much action, the fact that there is a naked makeout session, Evelyn looks younger than Four, Tris's mother is supposed to be dead yet she is in this trailer a lot, where was Marcus, he has a fairly significant role in this book, and again EVERYTHING IS WRONG.
I'm so close to a Taylor Swift freakout...
That's it. Unless you've read Allegiant and I have one last thing to say. Sorry this post was ridiculously long. I honestly didn't intend it to be. Let me know what you thought of the Insurgent trailer in the comments and if you've read Allegiant, feel free to keep reading.
SPOILERS BELOW!! SPOILERS BELOW!! SPOILERS BELOW!!
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