Nearly a decade after its release, The Divergent Series: Insurgent has come under scrutiny in the latest episode of Screen Rant's Pitch Meeting series. The 2015 sequel, based on Veronica Roth's YA book trilogy, follows Tris and her friends evading the Erudite leader Jeanine, who seeks to eliminate all Divergents. Despite grossing close to $300 million, the film received predominantly negative reviews from critics.
As the young adult genre continues to thrive on screen, Screen Rant's Pitch Meeting revisits The Divergent Series: Insurgent. The video humorously highlights plot inconsistencies in the sequel, particularly regarding Jeanine's intentions towards the Divergents and the established lore. It also playfully critiques the movie's final act, predominantly set in Tris' mind, and its cliffhanger ending.
While adaptations often deviate from their source material, the Divergent franchise is notorious for straying from Roth's books. The series' decline arguably began with Insurgent, which failed to learn from its predecessor's mistakes and leaned heavily into the formulaic YA tropes that had begun to lose favor with audiences.
The divergence between the Insurgent movie and the book is most evident in the core plot, where Jeanine pursues Divergents to unlock a mysterious box that was absent in the source material. Roth's book featured a hard drive revealing Chicago's faction system as an experiment, with a different fate for Jeanine compared to the film.
Subsequent deviations in Allegiant led to waning audience interest and a disappointing box office, resulting in the cancellation of the final movie and a planned TV spinoff. The tarnished reputation of The Divergent Series may hinder its return to the screen, despite the YA genre's recent resurgence with projects like Disney+'s Percy Jackson show and Lionsgate's upcoming Hunger Games installment.
Insurgent, the second installment in the Divergent series, follows Tris and Four as they evade Jeanine Matthews, the Erudite faction leader, in the aftermath of an uprising. Pursued by Jeanine, the duo races against time to uncover the secrets protected by Abnegation and the lengths to which Erudite leaders will go to stop them.
