Allegiant (2016)
Directed by Robert Schwentke
Beatrice Prior and Tobias Eaton venture into the world outside of the fence and are taken into protective custody by a mysterious agency known as the Bureau of Genetic Welfare.
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5 films that influenced Allegiant
What critics say influenced Allegiant
This series has tried its hardest to escape the shadow of the “The Hunger Games,” but between the originally unclear source material in the form of Veronica Roth’s increasingly disappointing novels and the changes made for each film, this story isn’t particularly direct or engaging.
The stories are so similar to "The Hunger Games" that author Suzanne Collins should sue Roth for grand theft.
As such, it shares common themes with Big Sister The Hunger Games and Big Brother The Maze Runner .
The first installment based on Veronica Roth's dystopian young-adult book series, "Divergent," came off as a pale imitation of "The Hunger Games," heavy in exposition and short on action.
It's not quite a blockbuster like, say, "The Hunger Games" or "Twilight", but it isn't a disaster either.
While many readers have enjoyed the book trilogy as much as The Hunger Games , the same isn't true of the film adaptations.
As such, it shares common themes with Big Sister The Hunger Games and Big Brother The Maze Runner .
There’s also remarkably little room for ambiguity, or even characterisation, in the script from series newcomers Noah Oppenheim (The Maze Runner), Adam Cooper, and Bill Collage (both of TV’s Of Gods and Prophets).
Then there’s a trek through a desolate wasteland that serves up blood-red rain, which comes across like a retread of the desert sequence from “The Scorch Trials” section of “The Maze Runner.”
Jennifer Lawrence carries “The Hunger Games” series with a throaty raw intensity of performance, and even “The Maze Runner” films have a zip of sweaty adrenaline going for them, but “Divergent,” “Insurgent,” and now “Allegiant” are a trio of interestingly designed snoozes.
This confusing and sometimes unintentioinally laughable franchise isn’t much different from “The Maze Runner,” “The Fifth Wave” and other young-adult tales of dystopia.
On the plus side, unlike most of this ilk — like The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner — you really don’t need to see Divergent and Insurgent to like or enjoy it, and if you don’t see part two, this one is plenty satisfying.
Splitting the final book in a film adaptation started with “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2,” but the same move made by this franchise, which is so contradictory in its world-building and so aimless in its storytelling, is undeniably egregious.
And as luck would have it she’s already penned two follow-ups, Insurgent and Allegiant.
Rising star Woodley (who picked up a Golden Globe nomination playing George Clooney's daughter in The Descendants) gives it some welly in the lead role, more than holding her own again Kate Winslet's sinister uber-matriarch Jeanine, but Tris is no Katniss Everdeen, at least not yet – inevitably, this is the first instalment in a trilogy, with Insurgent and Allegiant to follow.
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This means it endlessly recombines Screen Gems action aesthetics and the worst bits of The Matrix Reloaded , minus the R ratings.