"Allegiant" was advertised to be “the best of the Divergent series." I thoroughly disagree. The only enjoyable part of this movie was the small amount of comic relief supplied by Miles Teller, but even that was barely present. So much was wrong with this movie, and all it wrapped up to is an utter failure.
For starters, "Allegiant" was incredibly predictable. One could argue that all young adult series are predictable and follow a particular formula. The Divergent series is no exception, however it followed that formula so blatantly that there was nothing particularly exciting about any aspect of the movie. Even during the scenes that were clearly meant to be an intense moment in the story, the parts where I should have been on the edge of my seat, it was just too obvious how things would play out. They would play out the same way they have for the first two movies: Triss and Four are unstoppable and will knock out all the bad guys without a ton of effort, and every issue they try to solve they will succeed no problem. Instead of being gripped by these scenes and rooting for the characters I found myself sitting there waiting for them to go through the motions of the fight or the task and move on with the movie.
There were also a lot of inconsistencies in the movie that go unexplained. At least with other young adult series such as "Hunger Games," all of the cool tech and imaginative inventions have some scientific explanation that could make it possible. In "Allegiant", there is none of that. The audience is just supposed to except that these things exist. One of the most prominent examples is the surveillance system, and the “cameras” on everyone and everything in the city but the cameras don’t actually exist. Having no idea how that could be possible made it far less cool to watch and more like it was randomly imagined for the sake of the bad guys having an eye on everything.
The other huge inconsistency was the amnesia gas. Naomi Watts’ character, Evelyn, decides she’s going to use the gas on just the Allegiant soldiers and not her own. How she figured the gas would have no effect on her soldiers who were all mixed in with the Allegiant during the battle I have no idea. The gas itself also made no sense. In every other place the gas acted like gas and expanded through the air as a cloud-like mist – but not in the hero’s room. Where the main good guys were the gas stayed nice and low to the floor, not rising or spreading too fast in order to give them a good long time to get their final task completed to save the day. This is one of the parts that should have had me glued to the screen, and yet I was once again just counting the minutes until they beat the bad guy like they always do. A closer call would have made for a much more suspenseful final fight scene.
Lastly, the ending was the worst I have ever seen. There was no musical cue or big like to signal the end of the film. All of the sudden the credits just started rolling. The movie wasn’t advertised as “Allegiant: Part 1” as so many film adaptations of trilogies have taken to doing with the third part of the story. But this ending made the story seem awkwardly unfinished, as though there may be another sequel. It was thoroughly confusing and made for a very weak ending.
It turns out there is in fact another Divergent film coming to theaters in 2017. Originally titled "Allegiant: Part 1", "Ascendant" will be the final film in the series. Not having read the books, I can only assume it will depict the second half of Allegiant the novel, and not turn out to be a sequel that the movie makers decided to make up simply to pump out another film for the profit. Regardless, "Allegiant" was both unexciting and disappointing to witness.
