I've been asking myself this as I've looked for a way to talk about this movie. Allegiant is the third film in the Divergent Series and it doesn't seem like anyone cares anymore.
I'm definitely of the opinion that there are too many movies like this and I only have myself to blame for seeing them all. There's a template that each series follows and any casual fan can be forgiven for confusing plot points from all of them.
Leaving off where Insurgent left off, Allegiant begins with the city of Chicago under mob rule. Jeanine is gone, so control of the city is left to a loose alliance between Evelyn (Naomi Watts) and Johanna (Octavia Spencer). Tensions are rising. Tris (Shailene Woodley) isn't interested in any of that. She wants to go outside the city walls. So, she manages to pick up all the actors worth mentioning - Four (Theo James), Christina (Zoe Kravitz), Peter (Miles Teller), Tori (Maggie Q) and Caleb (Ansel Elgort) - and escapes the city with only one fatality (hint: The only actor born before the Reagan administration). They quickly learn that a war decimated the outside world and that there's a futuristic society that has been watching all of them for their entire lives. Chicago is just one big experiment, testing for pure specimens. Tris is the first pure result ever, which means...something. This settlement is led by David (Jeff Daniels). Immediately, it's clear to everyone but Tris that something isn't right with him. I'll let you figure out the beats from there, because it isn't very hard. You've seen this movie or read this book before. You're either going to be drawn into this story or you're not. Nothing I can say about it will change your mind.
And, as much as I may gripe about the familiarity of the story, it's not what I had issue with. Here's my issue: No one is trying any more.
The dialogue is bad. Either someone pulled too much of the dialogue from the book without accounting for how it sounds out loud or the writing is just bad. I can't figure out which. There's one scene with all the characters in the rain. Every single line sounds like a competition to see who can say the most stereotypical thing before the scene ends. For god's sake, someone says "Gadzooks" and I don't think it was as a joke.
On a technical level, I think the ambition was greater than the budget. There's a lot of effects in this. A lot. There's a whole future world they had to make in this and none of it looks practical. Everything was designed thinking "what would look cool?" rather than "what would make sense?". Even that would be fine if it wasn't so obvious at times that they were standing in front of green screens. Without the dream sequences and virtual reality challenges from the first two movies, maybe I'm just noticing all that more and it's been like that all along. It was distracting though.
I'm burying the lead a little. The most alarming thing about this movie is that they took it away from Shailene Woodley. She's still technically the lead. Barely. I'd argue that this transitions to making Four the actual main character of the movie. He sure is the POV character a lot more. So, way to go. Now it's just another super-soldier action movie with a dreamy lead. Woodley spends half the movie showing up to kiss Theo James or be talked down to by Jeff Daniels. Such a waste. Speaking of wastes, Miles Teller is way too good for the role he's been given. He almost makes Peter seem like a fleshed out character, which is impressive given how little is on the page for him to do. I feel like the only direction that Ansel Elgort had for the entire movie was, "act like you're a broken person". And Zoe Kravitz. Another complete waste. I sure hope that character is more important in the books, because she could've been erased from all of her scenes and it would've made no difference. Kravitz is better than that.
I realize that I'm not reviewing Allegiant in any constructive way. I'm ok with that. This movie only exists because it's hard to fight inertia. One of the problems with these book series adaptations is that they are designed to tell one story over several movies. As long as the first movie does well enough, several more will be made. It's great when it's The Hunger Games. The first movie was a big hit. The second was an even bigger hit. The last two movies had drop offs, but there was enough momentum to finish with strength. Divergent has been declining since the first movie. If this was an original film series, Summit probably wouldn't've bothered with a third movie after the drop off in the second. Instead, it's going to limp through four movies, because 1-3 weren't made to stand alone at all. It's clear that by Allegiant, no one's heart is in it. It must suck to be trapped in a movie that isn't creatively or commercially successful. It's literally just a waste of time at this point.
So, yeah. See this movie because you might as well, or you like the cast, or for completism. Don't see it expecting it to get better.
Verdict (?): Strongly Don't Recommend
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