Divergent? More Like "Why-Vergent"

[Charles Phipps]

The "His Dark Materials" (As in the Golden Compass) series is good. It isn't one of the new breed of YA novels but it shares all of the hallmarks of what a YA novel SHOULD be. There are some irritating atheist overtones in some of it (we get it, you don't like god) but overall it is a very well realized universe. Great series of novels for any teenager.

The film was shit but don't let that put you off.

Eh, it was Pullman's attempt to do the Anti-Narnia so the atheist overtones were the point. The first book was entertaining but the second and third ones went completely off the rails and ruined what could have been a good series. Lewis did the same, ironically, with his series' last two.

So I suppose Pullman DID create the anti-Narnia.

 

[person427]

-snip-

The "Hunger Games" aside wasn't about quality though, it was about the originality of it's concepts. And you have to look at both sides of the statement, not just the one. The concepts of the Hunger Games weren't really that original, most of what it did had been done before. But ok, fine, let's say you can make a case for it's originality. It's still being compared to Cloud Atlas, which was far different from anything done before, so the comparison still works.

 

[PuckFuppet]

Well, if Jim_Callahan is to be believed, the books are apparently decently written, they just don't make for a very good PG13 movie... and after reading his summary, I agree. HOLY FUCK!

So what you're saying is that the film IS divergent?

 

[Zen Bard]

Bob misspelled Erudite. Euridites sounds like a Greek playwright.

...or extremely cultured Europeans.

On topic...

"MOVIE: "Have you ever felt like you didn't fit exactly into the adult world's expectations of you and that society was just so much crushing conformity and phoniness that you can totally see right through and want no part of? Because if so, that means you're actually The Chosen One!"

AUDIENCE: "Why, yes! Because what you just described is called being a teenager - OMG! This story... is about meeeeeeeee and how my self-centered, hormone-driven sense of angst and isolation is actually what makes me The Most Specialest Person Ever!!!!!""

Most Specialest Favoritest MovieBob Quote Ever!

Seriously, doesn't every young adult novel just pander to the younger generation's collective ego by framing their common adolescent awkwardness as some kind of Superpower?

A more accurate depiction of what happens when the kids are in charge would be "Lord of the Flies" and "Battle Royal".

Honorable mention goes "Logan's Run" (the book) which asks; just what WOULD happen if the Youth Revolution of the 60's succeeded.

 

[Mangod]

Well, if Jim_Callahan is to be believed, the books are apparently decently written, they just don't make for a very good PG13 movie... and after reading his summary, I agree. HOLY FUCK!

So what you're saying is that the film IS divergent?

...

...

...

Never, ever make a pun that bad again. Thank you.

But yes, from the looks of things, the biggest downfall of the movie seems to be that it removed the really dark elements that made it at least somewhat unique in favor of imitating the Hunger Games. Granted, I don't think a straight adaptation would have gone over well with the PG13/YA crowd... but then again, this sounds like a great premise for a dystopian future/post-apocalyptic/urban horror story, and I'm not entirely convinced that crowd isn't relatively untapped at the moment.

 

[PuckFuppet]

I'll pun as I please!

Perhaps you're correct but, based on having eaten the books in the last few hours, there wasn't much to work with in the first place. I admit I went in with an existing expectation as to what I was going to get, something that I thoroughly avoid when possible if I'm dealing with something new regardless of genre, and to give the book its credit it delivered on my expectations.

That said I had an immediate impression about the whole thing, both while reading and after considering the books themselves. All plot elements, characterisation and setting considered the books were tonally dead. I didn't actually feel a significant sense of adventure when I was reading them, it felt like so much dry pretension trying to appeal, all the tension ruined by the just... mediocre presentation.

There is a moment towards the end of the first book where I genuinely felt like I was about to see why people seemed to think so highly of them, completely ruined by what I can only describe as some serious character recursion (wherein the main character effectively negates the actual significant choice of the entire novel by regressing to the norms expected of her from society determined by her caste rather than be divergent).

Don't even get me started on the eye-rolling bad "factionless" arc in the second book.

 

[rayen020]

Okay i'm going to kinda side against you on this one bob. My wife dragged me to this movie after seeing the trailer and reading 2 1\2 of the book trilogy. For the first i'm going to say 30 minutes, i was bored out of my skull, it's bland, cheap, cliche and boring. I don't know if just my taking a break and sitting on the toilet until triss was at dauntless training helped, but when i came back and they were jumping off the train i came back to a fairly enjoyable (if low budget) sci-fi movie.

Also the name "Triss" made me think of the redwall books so that might have helped as well. It was fun to imagine the main characters as chaotic Good otters.

 

[sarkeizen]

Eh, the divergent system makes significantly more sense than the Hunger Games system. Tons of historical societies have had caste systems with limited trans-caste mobility restricted in illogical ways,

Caste systems usually were about social stratification. Divergence isn't one. The Abnegations are "in charge" but at least in the first book (which is all I have the stomach for) they gain no social benefits for doing so. It's not just that the factions are illogical, they are pretty much impossible. While it's likely that you will be more brave than honest, studious, peaceful or selfless. You will probably be pretty close in all of them, things regress to a mean. Divergence is the norm.

but _no_ historical society has ever based its entire master plan on _intentionally_ starving most of its population without immediately failing no matter how much of a technology advantage the ruling class had. Bread and circuses, man.

Please. a) It's 75 years. That's not a long time to oppress a people especially when you have machine guns and they have sticks and b) The idea appears to be to keep the people weak enough that it's difficult to rebel. What's more unbelievable is that nobody in whatever number of districts there were realized that the system is tragically easy to cheat. Suzanne Collins world seems to be devoid of people who took first year statistics.

Bob's confusion over why the divergent people are immune to brainwashing, for instance, makes a lot of sense -- the book explanation is that simulations are how people train new skills and work out their psychological issues in a safe environment (they're post-apocalyptic so traditional resource-intensive power struggles are a bad plan), and the divergent are _literally clinically insane_ so they can't actually ever work out those issues.

Except that's not what "clinically insane" means. Generally speaking someone who has a clinically diagnosed disorder means their ability to actually function in society - any society not just the moronic divergent one -is significant. You could argue that divergence (ignoring for the moment that people *should* generally test as divergent) is some trait that develops into insanity. However then you lose the ability to claim that insanity is somehow stopping people from controlling your mind because until your ability to function is impaired you are not insane.

And unlike Twilight, the author can at least string together a complete sentence without having some sort of weird grammatical seizure, so minimum standards achieved.

Assuming plotting isn't important. Then yeah. While Stephanie Meyer is a horrible writer. Veronica is only better because her sentence structure isn't that of an ten year old. It's still plotted like one.

 

[Grimrider6]

I haven't actually read it, but I've heard good things about Cory Doctorow's "Little Brother"... I wonder if that'd make a good YA movie?