Book To Film

I was hoping I would never have to say this but for my film this week I watched Allegiant. As a disclaimer I really didn't want to see this movie but I got outvoted. I went in expecting this movie to be absolutely horrible, but I was pleasantly surprised by the first few scenes, which presented a really interesting and surprisingly intelligent message on retribution, show trials, and repeating other people's mistakes. I found myself really engaged and thinking to myself that maybe all the reviews were wrong, and maybe this would be a pretty good film, and then everything hit the fan. It was at this moment that everything simply stopped making much sense. The protagonists resolve to leave the city, which is apparently forbidden on pain of death for lord knows why. They then break Tris' brother out of jail in broad daylight with everyone there, and when confronted by the guards, Four just shoves him into a ditch and pretends to shoot him, and the guards suddenly lose all suspicion and just keep on walking. Then Caleb pops up, they produce official travel papers that they somehow managed to procure, and just waltz on out until someone finally figures it out and tries to stop them. After attempting to cut through a very clearly electrified fence and one of them nearly dying, Tris runs down and blows up the power generator(that they paid no mind to five minutes earlier) in a cheesy slow motion explosion that gave me painful Michael Bay flashbacks. Then they climb back up, one of the protagonists dies, but its the most unemotional death scene of all time and I'm not entirely sure why I'm supposed to care since I'm not emotionally invested in that character at all. They wander aimlessly through the void, and it seems like there's no one until they very predictably run into super advanced people who save them from the dictator lady's goons(I still have no idea why they care so much about stopping these guys other than as a way the filmmakers could create tension). Then they go to some crazy wonderland where Tris completely sells herself on following this shady guy who everyone seems to hate and won't divulge his motives or even speak to anyone but Tris(spoiler alert, he turns out to be a bad guy). And this sequence really highlights the two painfully glaring issues in what I will loosely define as a plot. Everybody in this movie is so stupid and gullible, and every single betrayal and "plot" twist can be seen coming from miles away. So Tris is very easily fooled by this guy who's abducting children and wants to (I think) release a forgetting serum on the whole of Chicago. And this brings me to point number two, the motives of the bad guys in this movie don't make any sense at all. I cannot for the life of me explain why on earth the main bad guy wants to make everyone in Chicago forget everything. By the same token I have no idea why some of his followers help the protagonist(or why he is so blind as to not figure it out). And in all of this the political story of a power struggle and trying to avoid the mistakes of the past, the only coherent, intelligent, and captivating plot line in the whole film, is completely left aside until it's almost over and is still only serving to support the utterly ridiculous main plot line(as the dictator lady is very obviously manipulated and betrayed by a guy serving the main bad guy David on an obviously fake promise of reward). Ultimately, Tris defeats the main threat of the movie but shooting a machine and stopping the gas(which apparently has not done anything in the 10 minutes or so its been in the air), and David just sits in his all seeing chair from where he can control everything, and the movie just ends. Ultimately nothing has been accomplished and there in as much danger as ever. The shots in this movie are actually pretty good, as were the special effects, but the plot was so utterly incoherent that all of the movie's positive aspects are essentially null in void. I would give this film a 3 out of 10 and would not watch it again.