Allegiant
Year: 2016
Director: Robert Schwentke
Starring: Jeff Daniels, Ansel Elgort, Theo James, Zoe Kravitz, Miles Teller, Naomi Watts & Shailene Woodley
Runtime: 121 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 13/12/23
Director: Robert Schwentke
Starring: Jeff Daniels, Ansel Elgort, Theo James, Zoe Kravitz, Miles Teller, Naomi Watts & Shailene Woodley
Runtime: 121 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 13/12/23
The Divergent Series was in a sorry state following Insurgent. Despite the film faring about as well as the original, it only just made a profit for Lionsgate and so production on the third film, Allegiant, started off a little rocky. There’s not an awful lot known about Allegiant’s production, but what is known that Veronica Roth’s book had always been intended to be adapted into two films, following the two-part finale trend of many YA adaptations at the time, and that both films had a title change during productions (from Allegiant Parts 1&2, to Allegiant and Ascendant). It’s also well documented now that a lot of the major stars had lost faith in the project, most prolifically Shailene Woodley and Zoe Kravitz, who felt as that since the first film there had been a significant shift of focus away from the story and characters, with more emphasis placed on the special effects and action. All of this came to a head with the release of Allegiant in March 2016 when the film was panned by audiences and critics alike, resulting in a box office bomb. All of this combined led Lionsgate to cancel the final film, ending the franchise on a cliffhanger, and effectively killing off the dystopian YA genre until this year with The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. So where did Allegiant go so wrong, and now that the dust has settled, was it really as bad as people made it out to be?
Following Tris’ (Shailene Woodley) discovery of life beyond the wall surrounding Chicago, Four’s (Theo James) mother Evelyn (Naomi Watts) and her Factionless have taken control of the city. With the help of the factions of Candor and Dauntless, Erudite members are being rounded up and put on trial for their crimes, with Evelyn staging public executions. Members of Amity and Abnegation do not agree with this and form a splinter group, Allegiant, that live in the outer regions of the city. Evelyn believes that they are an enemy and should be vanquished, Allegiant are prepared to fight for their protection.
Meanwhile Tris, Four, Caleb (Ansel Elgort), and Peter (Miles Teller) venture beyond the wall against Evelyn’s wishes to find the rest of humanity. What they find provides them with all the answers they could ever need, but also poses a new threat to Chicago.
There’s a whole lot going on in Allegiant and it’s easy to see why it was split into two films, but it also begs the question as to whether anything could have been trimmed down, then extend the film by about thirty minutes to fit the final act in. The reason being is that it feels a lot longer than two hours, and there’s just so much happening. I feel like for the book this would have been fine, but it doesn’t translate to the screen very well and it ends up just being exhausting. The film opens with what is essentially the ending to Insurgent and just keeps building from there and after maybe an hour or so I was ready for things to wrap up, but it just kept going, and it kind of seemed aimless.
Following Tris’ (Shailene Woodley) discovery of life beyond the wall surrounding Chicago, Four’s (Theo James) mother Evelyn (Naomi Watts) and her Factionless have taken control of the city. With the help of the factions of Candor and Dauntless, Erudite members are being rounded up and put on trial for their crimes, with Evelyn staging public executions. Members of Amity and Abnegation do not agree with this and form a splinter group, Allegiant, that live in the outer regions of the city. Evelyn believes that they are an enemy and should be vanquished, Allegiant are prepared to fight for their protection.
Meanwhile Tris, Four, Caleb (Ansel Elgort), and Peter (Miles Teller) venture beyond the wall against Evelyn’s wishes to find the rest of humanity. What they find provides them with all the answers they could ever need, but also poses a new threat to Chicago.
There’s a whole lot going on in Allegiant and it’s easy to see why it was split into two films, but it also begs the question as to whether anything could have been trimmed down, then extend the film by about thirty minutes to fit the final act in. The reason being is that it feels a lot longer than two hours, and there’s just so much happening. I feel like for the book this would have been fine, but it doesn’t translate to the screen very well and it ends up just being exhausting. The film opens with what is essentially the ending to Insurgent and just keeps building from there and after maybe an hour or so I was ready for things to wrap up, but it just kept going, and it kind of seemed aimless.
None of the cast deliver where it counts, and that’s a shame as Woodley in particular had been perhaps the only reason to stick with the franchise in the first place. But she’s just going through the motions here. Once again, I feel that Octavia Spencer could have been great if she was actually given something to do, but just like in Insurgent she has a handful of lines and the plot only brings her up occasionally, weird considering her character is the leader of the title faction.
I feel like Allegiant could have had a great villain with David if Jeff Daniels did more than mumble his lines and look bored. I was also growing increasingly tired with Peter constantly stabbing Tris & co in the back after they forgive him, and I think Miles Teller was too.
Honestly, it’s easy to see why the performances are so underwhelming when there was only a couple of scenes that I think were filmed on actual sets with everything else being done on a green screen stage. Whilst a lot of action movies are guilty of doing this, I feel like a lot of films since the mid-2010’s have been able to get away with it provided that the special effects are good enough and the actors are comfortable acting like that. Here with Allegiant everything looks incredibly fake, and nobody seems to believe in what they’re supposed to be doing.
There were a number of times where the characters looked like they were floating because of how the CGI background had been designed, plus there were a few times where I just laughed out loud because everyone was walking perfectly in-sync which was obviously a treadmill. There’s also the use of a surveillance system primarily by Caleb which is only distinguished in its use by having the environment flicker a bit and it’s so ugly to look at. This is one of the worst looking big budget Hollywood films of its era and I really don’t know where the CGI budget went, assuming enough was even allocated to the VFX department for what was needed.
On the one hand it’s a shame that Ascendant will never see the light of day but on the other it’s so clear that basically everyone who worked on the Divergent films was sick of them by the time Allegiant was being made. This feels like it was made out of contractual obligation rather than because anyone actually wanted to, and that’s the biggest reason why the film fails. Nothing meshes well together, the story’s a mess, the performances are lifeless, and the overused visual effects are rubbish.
There is some good parts of Allegiant, but they’re buried under so much bad stuff that it seems pointless to even try to go looking for it. To add insult to injury the film of course ends on a cliffhanger to which there will never be a resolution. Allegiant may have killed its franchise and put the genre on ice, but perhaps the Divergent books were never big screen material in the first place.
I feel like Allegiant could have had a great villain with David if Jeff Daniels did more than mumble his lines and look bored. I was also growing increasingly tired with Peter constantly stabbing Tris & co in the back after they forgive him, and I think Miles Teller was too.
Honestly, it’s easy to see why the performances are so underwhelming when there was only a couple of scenes that I think were filmed on actual sets with everything else being done on a green screen stage. Whilst a lot of action movies are guilty of doing this, I feel like a lot of films since the mid-2010’s have been able to get away with it provided that the special effects are good enough and the actors are comfortable acting like that. Here with Allegiant everything looks incredibly fake, and nobody seems to believe in what they’re supposed to be doing.
There were a number of times where the characters looked like they were floating because of how the CGI background had been designed, plus there were a few times where I just laughed out loud because everyone was walking perfectly in-sync which was obviously a treadmill. There’s also the use of a surveillance system primarily by Caleb which is only distinguished in its use by having the environment flicker a bit and it’s so ugly to look at. This is one of the worst looking big budget Hollywood films of its era and I really don’t know where the CGI budget went, assuming enough was even allocated to the VFX department for what was needed.
On the one hand it’s a shame that Ascendant will never see the light of day but on the other it’s so clear that basically everyone who worked on the Divergent films was sick of them by the time Allegiant was being made. This feels like it was made out of contractual obligation rather than because anyone actually wanted to, and that’s the biggest reason why the film fails. Nothing meshes well together, the story’s a mess, the performances are lifeless, and the overused visual effects are rubbish.
There is some good parts of Allegiant, but they’re buried under so much bad stuff that it seems pointless to even try to go looking for it. To add insult to injury the film of course ends on a cliffhanger to which there will never be a resolution. Allegiant may have killed its franchise and put the genre on ice, but perhaps the Divergent books were never big screen material in the first place.