Yeah, I said it. Maybe I’m a little hard on the series because I’m a diehard Divergent fan. It’s my favorite Young Adult book series and when I finished it I felt like I lost a piece of my soul. When they changed minor details in Divergent I chucked it up to Hollywood trying to make more screen time for Kate Winslet. But when Insurgent started to derail off course I started to get upset. This book is fantastic and didn’t need any changes to make it easier for a viewer to digest. It has a strong female lead and they made her look weak in the movies. Like she needed others to help her make her decisions which is not the case.
The third installment of the blockbuster Divergent series franchise, ALLEGIANT takes Tris [Shailene Woodley] and Four [Theo James] into a new world, far more dangerous than ever before.
After the earth-shattering revelations of INSURGENT, Tris must escape with Four and go beyond the wall enclosing Chicago. For the first time ever, they will leave the only city and family they have ever known. Once outside, old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless with the revelation of shocking new truths. Tris and Four must quickly decide who they can trust as a ruthless battle ignites beyond the walls of Chicago which threatens all of humanity. In order to survive, Tris will be forced to make impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice and love.
They decided to break up the third book into two movies, and while I went into Allegiant with hopes of walking out like a sobbing mess, I’ll have to wait until June 2017 when The Divergent Series: Ascendant comes out for that. I’ll look a little something like this.
So here are some differences between the book and the movie. Keep in mind it has been awhile since I read the book but these are the things that stood out in my mind.
Serious spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then maybe you should…..
Tori – We don’t get storyline about Tori’s brother being Divergent. Tori thought he was killed because of it but we find out in Allegiant (Book) that he was actually removed from the city. This seems like a side story but in all reality this is a huge plot point. The whole point of the third book is to discover that Chicago is one giant experiment to fix the DNA of people by putting them into the faction system. While Tori not making it to the outside is part of the movie, her brother being on the outside waiting for her is not. I think this would have helped the storyline about the experiment.
The Bureau – I didn’t picture the Bureau as being so futuristic and sci-fi-ish. There was the division of Pure vs Damaged but it was as if there were 3 pure people in the whole bureau instead of a team of scientists.
Amity and Abnegation – Amity’s role in protecting the perimeter and Abnegation using the memory serum is gone in the movie. Amity is in charge of administering the memory serum to anyone that tries to leave Chicago.
Edward – In the movie he becomes Evelyn’s right-hand man. Angry and scary, but in the book he dies at the beginning when he fights with an Erudite man.
Damaged Rebels / Nita – In the book Nita was apart of a group of rebels that wanted to blur the lines between damaged and pure genetics. She showed Four this by taking him to the Fridge on a secret mission. In the movie her character doesn’t put off the vibe that she even cares about this division. In fact, the only rebel ends up being Four, and a glimmer of Christina.
Marcus – Marcus is banished from Chicago by Evelyn but ends up joining forces with Johanna Reyes (Amity) to form the Allegiant. In the movie, he is given the memory serum as a ginea pig. 
Death serum – Book – Evelyn discovers the ‘Death Serum’ in Erudite headquarters and plans to use it in the fight against the Allegiant. David offers to do a mass reset in Chicago to fix the experiment. Movie – They substiture the death serum with the memory serum to wipe everyones memories and start Chicago out fresh as a factionless community.
The Reset – Book – The group that escaped from Chicago plans to stop the mass reset of their friends and family back in Chicago by setting off the serum at the Bureau before they can release it and reseting their memories to cleanse their minds of the pure vs damaged mentality. Movie – David sends Peter back to Chicago to get Evelyn to release the memory serum into to air to reset everyone except her and Peter locked in the vault. Except it does enter the vault as well. Tris, Four, Christina, and Caleb fly back to Chicago to stop the memory serum. The movie ends with them stopping the serum and blowing a whole in the outside wall. 
We are left with a storyline that veered off course and a whole new movie to make something up for. I can only assume that they will make the final movie about bringing down the Bureau of Genetic Welfare by going back out to the airport in a tactical manner. Either way, I’ll still get to watch Theo James *swoon* on the big screen. And from a sci-fi- lovers perspective it is a good movie. It just isn’t the story Veronica Roth wrote. 
