I have a little rule that I don’t always keep. If a film is based on a book, I will try to read the book before I see the movie. I did this for several films that I have seen, and Divergent is a film that I saw a day or so after I finished the book.

The biggest issue that I have with Divergent is it seems part of a genre among young adult fiction that has grown immensely popular for some reason or another. That would be dystopian teen fiction, and I just couldn’t help comparing this work to The Hunger Games.

The two works are similar, as the action centers around a teenage girl protagonist who is about to become a major figure in a worldwide revolution. In the case of the main character Tris Prior, she isn’t about to face a Hunger Games, but something just like it.

The film begins with a voiceover explaining how the world in Divergent works. Apparently, this world is broken off into factions, and each of these factions are groups that behave in a certain way and play a role in their society.

For example, Amity are farmers who value friendship. Erudites value knowledge and do a lot of smart jobs. Candor is honest and are lawayers, maybe? Abnegation are selfless and do governmental things. Then there are the Dauntless, staunch militant people who defend the city.

Precisely what they defend the city from isn’t revealed, at least not in this book or film, and probably is more detailed in the sequels. Presumably, there was probably a great war of some kind, and this city of Chicago was the only one left, and the only way to survive was to deliberately cut society into these parts. There is a serious Brave New World vibe from this odd caste system, but at least in this work, humans pick which faction they want.

The book begins differently, with a lot of showing and not telling. Tris has grown up in an Abnegation house, and it is time for her to officially choose her faction. She has to take a test that will “help” her choose, but the final decision is still hers and hers alone.

Now, it is this test that I have a problem with. Since Divergent takes place in a future world, it is understandable that they have more advanced technology. This society has the ability to download dream-like scenarios into your brain, but most of the tech seems to be exactly what we have now, but with a post-apocalyptic twist. I don’t really see these two types of tech working together.

I have no idea how or why these factions developed, but you apparently have to be one of them. If not, you will be factionless, which is essentially being homeless. I’m guessing that the big metaphorical statement of this work is that teenagers feel like they have to conform to some clique, and this will affect them for the rest of their lives. There are the jocks, the nerds, etc.

From here, it seems that Tris experiences what happens in these dystopian teen books. That is, the main character works really hard and becomes the best. It happened to Katniss Everdeen, and it happens to Tris. There are spoilers ahead, so I’ll just go ahead and put a jump here.

The movie is pretty accurate to events in the book. The issue is that this film feels long, and yet it has cut out some things in the book that added to the action. There is a scene where Tris can’t hit a target in training, and someone says: “you think that the odds are you would have just hit that target, at least by accident”. In the book, Tris does hit the target, and the next line is the other character saying how much he is right. That last section was curtailed in the film, which makes me wonder why the first part is in there.

Then there is added parts in this film that don’t make a lot of sense, but I would have to spoil it to tell you. Let me just tell you that when the characters inject Kate Winslet to make her do what they tell her to do, that wasn’t in the book. Even in the context of the movie, that doesn’t even make sense.

But I’m getting ahead of myself,and I had better explain. So after the scenes where Tris trains and becomes the top of her class, she faces a Hunger Games of her own. The Dauntless have this chip in them that they are told will track them, but in the end controls their minds. The Erudite want to use this hypnotized army of Dauntless to destroy the Abnegation because…they believe that the Abnegation aren’t doing a good job of ruling and they want a chance. That sounds about right.

Tris and her boyfriend Four (that is his name) have to stop the leader of the Erudites, so they inject her with some mind-control serum to make her stop. However, it was pretty well-established that this mind-control was for and would only work on the Dauntless. So I’m calling foul on that changed ending from the book to the movie.

I wish I could stop comparing Divergent to The Hunger Games. The books were published three years apart, so it is possible that it is just coincidence. I’m having an issue with a popular teen book that is similar to a book that I have written, but there will be more on that later.

In short, I will have to say that I didn’t find Divergent to be the page-turner that The Hunger Games was, but I didn’t quit reading it. I could have just given up and watched the movie, but I didn’t.