DIVERGENT MOVIE SADNESS

Greetings fellow earthlings! It's me, Unicorn. Before you think 'This is about the Divergent movie? Really? That was aaages ago," here's why I'm posting this now: Basically, a while ago I was thinking about great books where their movie adaptations just weren't great, and of course Divergent by Veronica Roth came to mind. (Before I start though, I am warning you that this has major spoilers that will ruin the book for you. Do not read this post if you haven't read the Divergent Series. You have been warned. But I absolutely encourage you to read the books, I'm sure you will love them just as much as I did. Which is a lot.) This is my favourite book of all time, and it made me love reading so much (though I did like reading before I read it.) There were just so many things that weren't included. Take these, for instance:

• The muffin shooting part
• The Dauntless initiate girl who fell when jumping from the train
• The part of the test where she's on the bus
• When Christina takes the flag in the game for herself
• When Four has to turn on the Ferris Wheel to get Tris down
• Edward and the butter knife (which I'm actually glad they didn't put)
• Drunk Four (which I also don't mind that they left out)

The reason I would have liked these scenes (except the last two) to be in the movie is because I feel like the book was built on many key scenes that show how life in Dauntless works on a daily basis. I loved all these scenes so much and thought they were what made the book so special and memorable for me. The movie included very few of them. I also found that other things weren't in the movie that were very important in the books:

• Marlene and Lynn weren't there at all
• Uriah was barely in the movie
• Christina and Will never really have a relationship (or at least, the movie barely ever shows them even talking to each other without Tris)
• Peter and Molly never interact, though in the books she was kind of his sidekick
• A few other characters were also missing
• None of the characters really interacted among themselves; most of the time they talked almost exclusively with Tris (and, if Tris was in the conversation too, then with her immediate friend group)

The characters in this movie made it so unique. I think that by taking away the characters, yes, they made the movie shorter, but they also took away one of the best parts, which was the different characters' relationships with each other. Tris has her immediate friend group of Will, Al, and Christina (later narrowed down to only Will and Christina, even later narrowed down to only Christina) and other than those people she never really talked to anyone. There was so little change in their relationships; there was rarely problems or tension with the people whom Tris was friends with. For instance, the capture the flag game in the book caused some tension between Tris and Christina because Christina took the win for herself. In the movie, that doesn't happen. I think it really helped define the characters that they didn't always perfectly get along and did things that the readers might not like them for. I think it added realism to the story. Nobody's ever perfect, and nobody's every completely evil. But the worst part was that the other, less important characters didn't ever interact among themselves. It was with Tris or not at all. But the ways that they had friends and enemies and acquaintances and all that was such an amazing part of the books. All the characters that were removed made the books special and enjoyable, but the movie took all of that out.

I had high expectations from this movie franchise, and I think they could have done really amazing things with it. The books were phenomenal and the movies really didn't live up to that. I think the reason the movies got so much attention and became so popular was because: a) All the readers had high hopes and had loved the books. b) The people who hadn't read the books thought they were great, most likely because they had no idea how much better the books were and how much the movies were missing.

But overall, this is an excellent example of why you shouldn't judge a book by its' movie. I think books are just usually better because there's much more time to describe people and their relationships with others, and I guess there just wasn't enough time to fit the complete story of Divergent into a movie, so a lot of key parts were removed. But honestly, a bunch of us Divergent fangirls honestly wouldn't mind sitting through a 3 hour movie if that meant it would be just as great as the book.

What did you think of the movies? Which did you like better; the movies or the books? Comment all your thoughts below! Thanks for reading!


~Unicorn