By Leilani Neal
Feature Film Columnist
It wasn’t much of surprise that the sequel to the Divergent series, Insurgent, was going to sell out in box office nationwide, but that didn’t mean that it was going to be good. And sadly, it wasn’t. It was extremely slow and an unnecessary movie to make. The first film was a decent movie to watch, there were moments in the film that didn’t match the book, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the second installment. Insurgent captivated a terrible story line, horrible acting and an annoying box that the antagonist of the story wanted to open, but didn’t really get any further than that. It was pathetic.
Insurgent, like the book, immediately picks up from where Divergent ended. Tris, Four, Caleb along with Four’s abusive father are all running to Amity, a kind faction that hides them a couple of days from the evil Dauntless that was trying to kill them. After being discovered after only a day of hiding (according to the film), Tris and Four run away to have to fight for their lives on a train full of factionless people that want to kill them for no reason and after having to fight the factionless people, Four stops all the killing by merely saying his name… his real name causing the audience to find this complete fight scene a waste of time because first of all, it never happened in the book and second of all WHY DIDN’T HE SAY HIS NAME IN THE BEGINNING? Why let the fight happen when you could of stopped it immediately? It was clearly obvious that the fight scene was to waste time of the two-hour long film that ran slower than a turtle on crutches. But aside from the fact that the film was really slow (and nearly put me to sleep), there was a box that held a message that wasn’t there in the book and if it was… where was it?
The entire concept of the film was pointless, the sequel was only made because the first film did so well in box office. It seems to become more and more obvious that Hollywood is making films just to make money for them and not to truly to entertain their audience. This film had many things that could of made it as beautiful as the novel, but producers and screenwriters decided to veer in the complete opposite direction of the beauty. The beginning of the veered beauty started with the horrible acting. The performers in Insurgent are getting worn out and it was becoming obvious to the audience and the actors themselves. Energy level was so low in the film that it took an unnecessary amount of visual effects to keep the audiences’ attention. Leading actress and protagonist of the film, Shailene Woodley, shows throughout the film and this field of acting just isn’t for her. She pulled together a wonderful performance in The Fault in Our Stars with her co-star Ansel Elgort, (who also plays as Caleb Prior) who seems as though this isn’t the right field for him either. Though that rest of the cast members made up for their poor performances, they can’t take much of the bad acting blame for a bad script. The lack of character development that the actors had going for them was hard to witness on screen. Though, through lack of character development and bad acting, screenwriters try to redeem themselves by reviving a character that was removed from the first movie in the second film, but only made themselves look ridiculous as important scenes with that character and Tris had were rushed and overlooked.
But considering the horrible outcome of the film, the film did pretty well in box office making back $99.3 million out of a $110 million budget. But that was only believed to be true because of the popularity of the series. The film is rated PG-13 due to violence and major amounts of boredom.