Insurgent Review

Starring: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Kate Winslet, Miles Teller, Naomi Watts, Ansel Elgort

The second movie in a series is always going to be the hardest to pull off. The first movie's job is to reel you in, and introduce you to the characters and plot. If the first movie fails, there isn't even a possibility of a sequel. The job of the sequel is to elevate the material. It needs to raise the stakes and flesh out the characters. Countless sequels have done this ans succeeded. But for every The Empire Strikes Back, Toy Story 2, and Catching Fire, there is a Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and sadly, an Insurgent. The director of this movie obviously thought elevating the story meant dropping it altogether, and replacing it with as many visual effects and cool explosions as humanly possible. I'm serious, this movie has the most cringe-worthy overuse of visual effects I've seen yet. They unfortunately take the place of the intriguing script. By the end of the movie, the whole thing is pretty much a colossal failure for the average moviegoer, but it does have a few inconsistent bright spots.

The bright spots are the actors and the world building. I believe that Divergent did a great job of really immersing the viewer into the universe, and it introduces you to all the characters. Insurgent unfortunately throws away much of what made the first succeed, but still builds upon a very interesting universe. I really enjoyed the opening, where Kate Winslet is projected onto the buildings delivering her evil message. Kate Winslet is amazing as Jeanine, the main antagonist. I liked her more than I did in Divergent, and she was a much more commanding presence. Winslet really brings prestige to the movie. Miles Teller is also charming as Peter, and I thought he was able to stay afloat even when the dialogue written was trying to bring him down. Theo James and Ansel Elgort are also good as Four and Caleb, but they don't have much to do. They don't elevate their book characters. Naomi Watts plays the resistance leader, and as menacing as she looks and carries herself, she actually doesn't really do much. Watts is a great actor, but save for Winslet, all the adult actors seem like wasted talent. Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer says maybe two lines in the whole movie.

I haven't said anything about Tris yet. That's because I found Shailene Woodley to be very bad in the role. I really commended her for her acting in Divergent, but she really disappointed me here. I've read the books, and Tris is a very unlikeable character. But Woodley was able to make her likeable in Divergent, and she's just so bad in this movie. I could blame the script, but she has some part in it as well. She's whiny, she's annoying, and she seems like she's not even on set acting with everyone. This movie's dialogue fails, but Shailene Woodley could look like she's actually trying. There's one scene where she has to fight a projection of herself in a simulation, and two of Tris was just too much. I'd also like to point out that while in the simulation, every single thing she touches explodes into a million pieces. Why? For 3D, and that's the only reason. The effects are so overused it's cheesy. Fight scenes seem forced, the dialogue seems forced, and only some of the actors seem like they actually are trying to give good performances. To say its effects are spectacular means nothing today, because movies have such huge budgets that they all have good effects. It's only when something groundbreaking is attempted, like in Gravity that it's actually praised with sincerity. There's none of that here. It just feels like your standard young-adult adaptation, with nothing new.

Insurgent was the first movie in a long, long time that I felt just truly wasted my time. I love to see Kate Winslet act, but she's good in just about everything, so there's a better use of my attention out there somewhere. And if I want a movie with over-the-top effects and cringe-worthy dialogue that's "so bad it's enjoyable" I'll watch the Transformers series again, because robots talking about intergalactic war with humans literally carries more weight than Shailene Woodley does in this movie.

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