Better than I expected

Rating: 7/10 (29 July 2014)

Im coming from the perspective of not having read the books, although considering reading them now. I was quite impressed with this movie! Im surprised actually. I've recently watched Vampire Academy which is probably the most shameful and horrific adaptation of a damn good book I have ever seen. Anyway, so I wasn't holding up much hope for this film. But instead I come out of surprised and having enjoyed my experience in the Divergent world. Obviously in the books you get a deeper back story and deeper insight into their lives, so I understand that in the film there is going to be some lacking of both, it's pretty understandable as you cant get everything in. The acting was great, I saw a few familiar faces in Shailene and Theo, as well as a fellow TFIOS actor Ansel. The main cast were fantastic. I'd never seen Shailene before and wow she blew me away, she was great. Its not as testing as her role in TFIOS for obvious reasons but perhaps it test her in different ways (physically). She was pretty badass in this. As for Theo I've seen him in a few others and I think in this he really impressed me, as he did in A Passionate Woman. A lot of people are saying he's not right for the role but seeing as I haven't read the books I have no idea what he was meant to be like, so I'm reviewing his performance in this rather than in comparison to how he should be. Emotion wise this film built up to that and it was emotional at times. I liked that they didn't focus too much on the relationship (come on guys it's pretty obvious it was gonna happen). I have a few downsides however. The CG wasn't very good, not realistic enough. I felt like I was in a game like Beyond Two Souls or The Last of Us. It wasn't very real, you could tell it was CG. In the beginning with all the people walking into the city was just ridiculously bad, like I was playing Sims 3. And the other issue I had was with the story line, which isn't the fault of the movie writers but of the author. I saw too many obvious similarities to books like The Hunger Games and The Vampire Academy. I'll giver her this, it's difficult to be original nowadays but there were some things so obviously the same as stories before hers. But other than that, fantastic film and worth a watch.