MOVIE REVIEW : Insurgent

IN THEATERS : March 20, 2015

This past Monday, I was able to get into a special screening of Insurgent in IMAX 3D. Insurgent is the second book in the Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth. I was super excited and took my cousin along since we saw Divergent together too. I loved the book and I thought the film adaptation for Divergent was a good sign that Insurgent would be solid. Yeah. Not really the case here.

It saddens me to say that I was not at all pleased with the book to film version of Insurgent.

I know that no adaptation is perfect and 100% true to the book and that many things get lost in the process to make it possible. However, this was like an entirely different book all together! There were missing characters along with some completely new and botched storylines. During the viewing I could actually feel myself getting angrier by the second.

How could it go so wrong when they did Divergent so right?! Well first off, Insurgent is relying heavily on CGI. I'd say that about 60% of the movie is green screen.

Now onto the performances, which were the real make or break for me.

I personally don’t really care for Shailene Woodley as an actress, but I did enjoy her take on Tris in Divergent. I didn’t feel the same in Insurgent, which is funny because I didn’t really love Tris in the book version either. So maybe in that sense, it worked out.

Theo James as Four, was very much eye candy but I felt he was so dry and blah this time around. I didn’t feel the chemistry between him and Shai in this one either, unlike in Divergent where it seemed to come easy.

Ansel is Ansel, honestly he does absolutely nothing for me except bring me to tears with his running.

Kate Winslet, you can never go wrong. She is just a Queen.

The biggest surprise for me though is that Miles Teller steals this entire movie for me. He was just the perfect Peter. Complete asshole of a character but his humor and personality just come through and almost soften the edges.

Following biggest surprise has got to be biggest disappointment. That goes to the complete lack of Maggie Q as Tori. What a fail. This character had such a huge presence and purpose in the book and she is just tossed aside and forgotten in the movie.

The biggest concern of some fans of the Divergent series was about how Allegiant, the final book in the series would be changed when it was time to be filmed. Well, in my opinion, we should’ve been worried about Insurgent instead. Allegiant may be blessed with this extreme of a rewrite.

I’ll give Insurgent 2 stars, one each for Kate and Miles.

 
Insurgent at Fandango