TOW #25: Divergent Movie Review

Yet another Dystopian movie was recently released a few weeks ago, featuring a girl and her journey in a society where everyone is told who they are. "Divergent", which was a novel in a trilogy before in was shown in the movie theaters, was written by Veronica Roth. In a movie review written by a New York Times publisher named Manohla Dargis, "Divergent" is just another dystopian movie that will never amount to assisting women in their breakthrough of strong and adventurous roles in movies. Through the use of comparison and negative word choices to imply that writers and directors have been attempting to put women warriors on the pedestal and use a female as the strong lead role, but "Divergent" doesn't help this cause at all.

Throughout his article, Dargis consistently juxtaposes Roth's "Divergent" with Suzanne Collins's "The Hunger Games". While they are both set in a dystopian society, the plots are very different; Collins's book is much more violent, while Dargis argues that "divergent" was rather "anticlimactic" (Dargis 1), which didn't allow the true nature of Tris's (the female lead) courage to shine. Additionally, the female lead in "The Hunger Games" doesn't really have much time for romance, as claimed by Dargis, but the fact that Tris keeps wondering why her male instructor pays attention to her really puts the stereotypical teenage girl right back in her place. Using this juxtaposition allows the audience to make comparisons in their minds, and better understand where Dargis comes from.

Dargis also uses a method of negative word choices. For example, he uses "ill-served", "uncomfortable", and "anticlimactic" when describing the plot, characters, and movie itself. Each of these words clearly carries a negative connotation, which makes the audience think worse of the movie.   Because the amount of negative words compared to positive is such a high ratio, the positive ones are barely noticed, and the negativity is retained. Not only did he negatively describe the plot, but he did so with the characters, including the female lead. By doing this, he underscores the ineffectiveness of Tris as the main character, which completely takes away from the writer's goal of creating this new era of female warriors in movies and books.

Although I thought this movie was very good, maybe a little bit long, I must agree with Dargis in that Tris was not a good representation of female warriors of the 21st century. Through the use of comparison and negative connotations, Dargis attempts to inform his readers of the flaws within "Divergent", and convince them that it does not effectively display the breakthrough of women's lead roles in action/adventure movies.