Divergent By Neil Burger Of Veronica Roth

Movie adaptations on books tend to be very different from the original text. The director decides to either cut out some details, scenes, or even characters, which can change the pacing and the storytelling drastically. Divergent was no exception, as the movie adaptation by Neil Burger of Veronica Roth’s dystopian novel managed to keep the storyline decently intact, but removed a lot of important content.

The producers of Divergent’s film adaptation pictured the book similarly to how I did, with a broken down and destroyed environment. However, I imagined the environment to look somewhat monochromatic, depending as to which faction was present, of course with exceptions of colors that cannot be changed. The clothes’ colors of the different

The movie got Tris’s character somewhat similar to how the book conveyed her, which was very bland in the beginning but slowly showing her potential to being Dauntless. However, the movie never managed to show Tris’s dauntless side like the book did. Other character’s physical appearances were off, like Christina who was shorter in the movie but taller in the book, Peter didn’t look as buff and tough in the movie as the book described him, and Four was actually 6 years older in the movie. Other characters looked identical to the book’s descriptions, such as Al, Tris, and Molly. The movie did a good job portraying some of the book’s characters, but it didn’t even try including some of the others. Characters like Edward, Uriah, Myra, Drew, and many others were never present in the movie. The absence of said characters lead to some scenes being inaccurate, vague, improvised, or even cut off the

The scene where Peter stabs Edward’s eye with a butter knife presents Dauntless’s savageness in the dorm rooms, but this scene was not present in the film due to Edward’s absence. Other scenes that portrayed how dangerous Dauntless can be were removed and/or never mentioned, such as the fact that a female transfer did not reach the building when jumping the train and plummeted to her death, and that not all transfers jumped. As for rushed scenes, Al’s crush on Tris was never mentioned or even implied at all. Therefore, after Al and the gang attempt to assault Tris near the chasm, when he hangs himself it comes off as very inconclusive and the audience is left asking itself why he’d commit suicide after such an event. Also, the movie does not picture when Al and the other boys try to “feel her up” while assaulting her (probably to keep the movie to a PG-13 rating). Another very inaccurate scene of the film was when Tris is supposedly cut off from Dauntless and is now factionless, but after chasing the train for the Capture the Flag game, Eric accepts her. In the book, after losing her fight with Peter, she’s given a chance and not kicked out of Dauntless