“You can take the girl out of Abnegation, but you can’t take Abnegation out of the girl!” It’s not exactly a poster tagline. Here is the second whoppingly dull iteration of the Divergent movie series, based on the bestselling YA trilogy by Veronica Roth. Shailene Woodley returns as rebel Tris, her natural charisma smothered by an uninspired franchise that tastes like a stick of gum with the flavour chewed out. It features loads of unexciting shootouts, athletic running and sub-Nolanesque virtual reality with stuff exploding in a shower of risk-free pixels. We are back in post-apocalyptic Chicago, where society is divided into factions depending on people’s aptitude: Abnegation for the selfless, Dauntless for the brave, Amity for the peaceful, Candour for the honest, and Erudite for the intelligent – annoyingly pronounced “error – yew – dite”, but with a slight “l” sound between the second and third syllable, as if the word is mixed with Araldite.
Tris was originally from Abnegation, which partly accounts for her persistent honesty and conscience-pangs, but she is suppressed because she is a “divergent” – an unclassifiable free spirit. Her battle continues, but complicated by treachery from those she thought she could trust most. The movie comes alive when Kate Winslet appears, playing chilling Erudite leader Jeanine, a futurist Roman matron of tyranny. Her controlled calm is so similar to Tris’s that you might suspect some sort of intergenerational Darth Vader-ism. When the drama boils down to a duel between Jeanine and Tris, there’s a spark. Otherwise, it’s a plodding letdown.
