Friday, March 18, 2016

Allegiant

Last night I saw an advance screening of Allegiant with a fun and rowdy crowd.  With Jeanine dead, Evelyn (Naomi Watts) has become the leader of Chicago and sets out to publicly try and execute all members of the Erudite faction who followed Jeanine.  Realizing that they have merely traded one totalitarian regime for another, Tris (Shailene Woodley), Four (Theo James), Caleb (Ansel Elgort), Christina (Zoe Kravitz), and Peter (Miles Teller) escape and scale the wall surrounding Chicago to find out what is on the other side.  What they find is a post-apocalyptic world scarred by the effects of a nuclear annihilation.  They are soon rescued by the Bureau of Genetic Welfare and its leader, David (Jeff Daniels), who tells Tris that the faction system has been an elaborate experiment and that they have been under surveillance for years.  David reveals that genetic engineering is what lead to the nuclear war and that the Bureau is seeking to return the genetic code to its former purity.  He further reveals that Tris is the only person who is genetically pure and he wants to replicate her DNA.  Meanwhile, in Chicago, Johanna (Octavia Spencer) forms a group called the Allegiant to oppose Evelyn and David encourages the development of this new faction system by sending the slimy, albeit entertaining, Peter to help Evelyn to destroy them.  Tris finally realizes that David has been manipulating her and returns to save the inhabitants of Chicago.  I am not a fan of dividing the original source material into two films because the first film inevitably feels like a long preview for the final one.  This tactic is especially tiresome in Allegiant because there is an incredible amount of exposition, most of which is extremely confusing (it has been a while since I've read the book), the characters are very static (and a bit boring) without any new development, and there are way too many scenes of Tris parading around in one white outfit after another and of Four brooding while breathing deeply through his nose.  It gets old very quickly.  Granted, the action sequences are exciting, especially when they scale the wall, and the special effects are pretty amazing, especially when they use the drones and the surveillance equipment.  However, these scenes are few and far between.  Even the final battle seems a bit anticlimactic and that fun and rowdy crowd was pretty subdued by the time the credits rolled.  As someone who has enjoyed this franchise, I am a bit disappointed and I hope Ascendant can provide a satisfactory resolution to the story.

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