Pegacorn Paperbacks Book Blog: Allegiant Movie Review

For those who don't know, Allegiant is the third book in the Divergent trilogy, and is now a movie! I watched it recently, and have mixed feelings. There were lots of good things and bad ones as well. I'll tell you the non-spoiler things first, so you can know a bit about my thoughts before you watch the movie. Firstly, the actors are amazing (of course). We've seen them in the previous two movies and they always do an exceptional job. Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort, and the rest of the actors do so well at portraying the role they're given. Peter also gets the most hilarious lines;

"I have to work here? With... Caleb?"

"This is fun. I'm glad we did this."

"Great, now the sky's bleeding."

(Those will only make sense if you've seen the movie, but they're really funny.) Peter is so, so hilarious and gets the greatest lines! I really loved that. The characters have well developed personalities and and the actors do an amazing job showing that in this movie. I think Allegiant is worth the watch. Now, spoilers! Scroll down to see my rating out of 5 stars if you don't want to read the spoilery part. :)

Alright! There were a lot of strange things about this movie that didn't follow the plot line of the book. Not much of it did, but the rough outline is there. If I hadn't read the book, I would probably have thought of it as very good. But there were lots of separate things I found strange.

First: Outside the wall looks like Mars! What?? It actually looks like they're on another planet.
Anyways, the four of them are running through the Mars landscape, and the people come and save them and they say "Our bubbles will shield you from the radiation!" So Tris, Four, Caleb, and Peter each get these weird orange bubbles and float alongside of a ship (dare I mention how fake the floating looked). But when they arrive at their destination, nobody else is wearing a protective bubble. And they're outside. What happened to the radiation?? Plus, how did the *wall* around Chicago protect the citizens from radiation? Really? A wall doesn't keep out radiation. Radiation can literally just go over the wall. It's not even a consistent thick stone wall, it has gaps in it big enough for multiple people to stand inside. I am not convinced, movie.

Now, shower time! Tris is asked to go into this hallway where orange goop falls from the ceiling and engulfs her. The camera holds on squishy goopy alien-Tris and she looks like a fake, cartoon bug. A+ for special effects! *cough, cough*
The action sequences were very suspenseful and well put together, though. I did like the movie, it just didn't really follow the book much.

Side note: I'm in a cafe right now. There's a super cute husky here. Awwwww...

Later on in the movie, when they turn off the machine that emits orange toxic gas (everything these people have and make is orange??) the gas goes back into the vents. Not one bit goes into the air and everybody's fine and completely safe. Because: movie logic! There's no: "Please remain inside. A toxic gas has gotten into the air!" Nope, the toxic gas has been completely removed from the atmosphere. Um, what?

Of course, as always, during the fighting scenes, all guards/soldiers have been trained to fight, right? Nope, they miss 99% of their shots. Of course. Tris and company never miss, because plot.

Also, the 'pure' and 'damaged' was quite confusing. I don't even remember if that was mentioned in the book or not. And the whole thing with 'The Fringe' was also confusing. Lots and lots of confusing things. "We're here to save you! Hold on, I'm just going to shoot your dad and wipe your memory!" If I hadn't read the books, I would have been even more confused than I already was (which would have been a lot).

Another thing; Tris knows very well that you can't trust many people. But then David comes and tells her she's completely safe with him and she's all: "Oh, okay, of course, whatever you say goes!" She doesn't even trust Four anymore. Really? Tris, out of all people, you should know better.

There were more things I didn't like specifically, but I want to talk about the fact that Allegiant (the book) is being broken into two films; Allegiant and Ascendant. I guess they're partly doing it because the story is too long, but mostly because of the money. All the fans who have read the books want to know (spoiler alert if you haven't read the books!) if Tris will die. In this movie, she doesn't, so of course all of us fangirls need to see Ascendant. (We would watch it anyways, since there is still that one bit of hope we're holding onto that it will be good and accurate to the books.)

All the people who haven't read the books will come back anyways. They've seen nothing but greatness from this movie franchise, after all... :( So, overall, I think they'll still have success with this last movie.

I think, though, the fangirls cannot be made happy. (SPOILER ALERT if you haven't read the books!) If Tris dies, we'll all be very upset, because we hated that it happened in the books. But if she lives, we'll dislike that Ascendant is so inaccurate to the books. 'Tis a hard life for movie directors...

Anyways, the overall rating I would have given the movie directly after watching it is 3.5 stars. Now that I've thought about it, I'm lowering that to 2.5 stars. It wasn't accurate to the books, and it was confusing, but the actors were fantastic, of course, and the movie overall was still enjoyable. I would say it's still worth the watch.