Here are just a few of the differences between the Insurgent book and movie. Spoiler warning!
Uriah and Marcus serve little purpose
The good news: Uriah is in Insurgent after being completely cut from Divergent.
The bad news: Uriah barely serves a purpose in the film, standing in the background during most sequences he appears in and only working with Tris during one brief action scene. By extension, Marlene and Lynn barely appear and aren’t connected to Uriah like they are in the book. Uriah’s older brother Zeke is nowhere to be found.
Speaking of reduced roles, Marcus appears at the beginning of Insurgent but has absolutely no role in the second half of the film despite appearing throughout the book. We suppose he’s only included in the beginning of this film so that viewers know he’s not a stranger when — maybe — his role is increased in the two-part Allegiant finale.
The mystery box
This is one change that you won’t be surprised by because it’s appeared in promotional material so many times. The hard drive in the Insurgent book, which contains the big message about the faction system, has been replaced by the mystery box. It can only be unlocked by certain Divergent who can pass five faction-related tests.
A good 40 minutes (by our estimation) of the movie depicts Tris and Jeanine in the “Who Can Unlock The Mystery Box?!” room. In other words, a significant portion of the film is spent on this set in an attempt to dramatically reduce the amount of plot required to tell the story. It’s such a big aspect that at times it didn’t feel like we were watching a story from the Insurgent book. The climax of the movie occurs as Tris fights herself in the final simulation/test to unlock the box.
The kicker: Once the mystery box is unlocked, the message about the purpose of the factions comes from a woman — but at no point is she identified as Edith Prior like she is in the book. This big twist would’ve been an easy thing to include, but for some reason was left out.
Jeanine’s death
In the book, Jeanine Matthews is stabbed by Tori to avenge her brother’s death while Tris still needs Jeanine’s help. In the movie, Evelyn kills her after the mystery box has been unlocked, and Jeanine gets to view the video. While we didn’t like that they changed the murderer of such an important character, we have to admit that it was nice to see the new leader take out the old.
The very end
One could argue that all of these changes are fine so long as they’re working towards the same ending in the book. But no, not even the very end is the same. In the movie, the gate at the edge of the city opens up and everyone heads for the door. Seriously, you’re led to believe it’s everyone: A sweeping camera shot (above) shows miles of residents all heading for the big gate at the border.
Readers know that nothing like this happens in the book. In fact, even in the first few chapters of Allegiant we see Evelyn preventing anyone from leaving the city. From Allegiant’s second chapter:
“Evelyn has the city under lockdown,” I say. “No one goes a step in any direction without her say-so. A few days ago she gave a speech about uniting against our oppressors, the people outside.”
“Evelyn and her followers don’t want to leave the city. They won’t thank you for showing that video.”
Those quotes are said by Four in the Allegiant book, the same character who decides to run the big video for the entire city at the end of the Insurgent movie.
Even by Allegiant chapter 8 they’re still figuring a way out of town without Evelyn knowing:
Johanna suggests we take Amity trucks from the end of the railroad tracks out of the city, and she volunteers to supply them to us.
Who’s this movie for?
We didn’t discuss all of the changes because we want to leave some aspects a surprise (and honestly, it would’ve been impossible to catalog all the differences). There are some differences between the Insurgent book and film that are good, but too many are questionable.
Back at the junket, Roth said her top priority was the characters. “Getting the characters right was what’s so important to me and their dynamic,” she said. “So the Tris and Four dynamic is really important to me. A lot of those things you just trust to our fantastic cast.”
Those characters, in our opinion, are still in tact. It’s fun to watch Tris and Four work against Jeanine, and the chemistry between Shailene Woodley and Theo James is as good as it was in Divergent. Miles Teller also shines in this film — the writers gave him fun dialogue to work with, which plays perfectly into the actor’s sense of humor. Newcomers including Octavia Spencer and Daniel Dae Kim are a delight as well.
It’s strange how the movie is so different from the book. Surely the purpose of this film is to please the readers of Veronica Roth’s trilogy — because they’re the ones coming to the theater — but how can a reader with an appreciation for the source material walk out of this and do anything but scratch their head?
No one expects an adaptation to be perfect, but Insurgent diverges too far.
It’ll be fascinating to see how Allegiant is adapted into two films. We already know that the first few chapters in the third book won’t be brought to the screen in the same way you read them on the page, as the sweeping camera shot of everyone leaving town seems to prove.
Insurgent opens Friday, March 20. We’ll have a standard review of the film that weekend.
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