Scott: So what’s your favorite YA adaptation? Mine would have to be the one about the independent-minded young woman in a nonsensical future dystopia who rejects her predetermined destiny, fights the powers-that-be, and gets a little romance on the side. That narrows it down to two, The Hunger Games and now Divergent, and the Chosen One plot is owned by Harry Potter, and certain elements from this same formula feed into Twilight as well. Which raises two related questions: Is there something about being young in the 21st century that makes the teen-of-destiny-in-a-dystopia plot so appealing? And are we approaching a time when even its target audience might start rolling their eyes a bit? There have been rumblings lately that the YA-adaptation craze has run its course, mostly because all the big franchises have been tapped already, but creative stasis could become just as substantial a problem. 

Though I found things to like about Divergent—Shailene Woodley’s performance, the mostly crisp staging and sense of adventure, the near-annihilation of Navy Pier and the Trump Tower, a dashing hero named “Tobias”—The Hunger Games, particularly the superior sequel Catching Fire, provides a nice cudgel with which to beat Divergent over the head. Because no matter how swift the action gets in Divergent, there’s no getting around the fact that the world of the film is incredibly gimmicky and stupid, and has no historical or allegorical value whatsoever. The Hunger Games references totalitarian governments past and reality-television present—the Roman Empire meets Survivor, basically—but there’s no analog for Divergent and an absolute resistance to comment on anything. It’s all just a mechanism for our heroine to prove her multi-faceted mettle. What did you all think? 

Matt: As a recovering teenage nerd (who still relapses pretty regularly), I completely understand the appeal of YA novels and films like Divergent, because it’s the same appeal comic books had for me when I was in high school: stories about outsiders who are celebrated rather than ostracized for their uniqueness. All the stuff I loved about Spider-Man in the ‘90s—adventure, romance, heroism, dense mythology—is present in YA movies in the 2010s. Some of those comics weren’t (and, frankly, still aren’t) particularly welcoming of female readers, so I am glad to see this space opening up for teenage girls. That’s great.

What’s not so great is Divergent itself, which is maybe the silliest dystopia I’ve ever seen. The film’s premise—a future society built in the ruins of Chicago splits the population into five distinct “factions” based around personality traits like honesty, selflessness, and bravery—only makes sense in the abstract. Shailene Woodley’s heroine Tris, like a lot of real teenagers, refuses to conform or be categorized into one faction, and is demonized for her difference, but ultimately overcomes her enemies. That’s fine, but the whole apparatus of this world is ridiculous. Tris initially chooses to join the “Dauntless” faction, Chicago’s new police force, whom she’s idolized from afar for their wild, carefree spirit and love of climbing on things while dressing like Guess models. (Because that’s how you do police work, guys. You climb on things while wearing designer jeans.) And yet the training for this anarchic, disorderly brood involves brutal, militaristic hazing, fighting, and physical and psychological torture. Apparently your soul cannot be free to leap from rooftop to rooftop until it has been crushed beneath the bootheel of sneering Jai Courtney.

Divergent’s plot involves one faction trying to steal power from another, but it’s never made clear what either one hopes to gain; it’s not like those in control of the government are stealing money (because this society has no money) or hoarding resources (which are seemingly plentiful even though the entire world has collapsed). They’re just eeeeeeeeeevil. No wonder Divergent’s society begins to fall apart as the film begins. It’s so tenuous and arbitrary, it’s insane to believe it didn’t collapse the moment it was first installed. I haven’t read any of the Divergent novels, so maybe this stuff makes more sense on the page; perhaps the answers to my questions were left on the cutting-room floor. (Then again, the movie runs a bloated 140 minutes, so maybe not.) Can someone who’s read the books explain some of this stuff to me—and explain why it worked on the page but not on the screen?

Genevieve: I think I’m the only one here who’s read the book, so I’m afraid I have to be the one to break it to you that it doesn’t really make sense on the page, either. Divergent the movie, like all YA adaptations these days, is slavishly faithful to its source material, which means that everything that’s confusing about the movie is pretty confusing in the book as well. However, the book has the… I don’t want to say “benefit,” so let’s say excuse of being written from Tris’ first-person-present viewpoint (all modern YA novels must be written from in first-person-present tense, it’s the law), so certain logistical issues of this society can be glossed over in the name of evoking an in-the-moment personal experience. Maybe. If you’re feeling generous. But those holes become bigger and harder to ignore when blown up to big-screen proportions, which makes it clear that this world and the people in it are predicated on what’s essentially an academic exercise. 

I didn’t hate Divergent the movie; I actually think it improves on the book, which I actively disliked, by distracting from the story’s inherent ridiculousness with some good old fashioned cinematic panache. And Woodley is a tremendous asset, bringing life to a character who’s a pretty standard Mary Sue/Chosen One amalgam on the page. Tasha, pinging off of Matt’s point about YA being welcoming of female characters (and readers), where do you think Tris falls on the spectrum from Bella Swan to Katniss Everdeen? And how do you feel about Woodley’s interpretation of her?

Tasha: Her portrayal is the strongest part of the film, because she’s so effective at playing vulnerability. I wish she was more effective at playing the character’s stronger elements, and that the film let her play that confidence—or at least Tris pretending confidence—more often. One of my biggest frustrations with Divergent, second only to the silly, impossible faction system, is that it spends so much time on Tris’ fear, failure, and self-doubt. It’s necessary for pathos, and so the audience can relate, and so we can watch her growth, but given how Dauntless she’s supposed to be, and given how obviously the Dauntless training is meant to make people choose to cover their fears with daring and confidence, one of my bigger frustrations with the film was the way it focuses more on her weakness than her strength. Katniss is scared all the time too, and in Jennifer Lawrence’s portrayal, that comes through even when she’s pretending to be strongest. The script here could have had more confidence in Woodley by letting her play that kind of nuance earlier.

Speaking of that Dauntless training, Matt, I didn’t have as much difficulty as you did with the regimen: It’s clearly based on real-world military training, in the way it’s designed to break down individuality, foster training-class bonds, teach self-reliance and self-confidence, and train newbies to steamroller over their doubts and pretend bravery until they feel it. It’s also clearly been corrupted by all the bigger nonsense going on, and by someone giving Eric (that sneering Jai Courtney of yours) full license for his sadism and superiority. One of the big questions Divergent doesn’t address, though—the point where the plot falls apart—is where all the responsible adults are while the kids are beating on each other.

Tris is more capable than soppy, dependent Bella, and less damaged and desperate than Katniss. But that’s because she’s less cornered and terrified most of the time: She’s working on a simple, symbolic version of coming of age (which she does metaphorically first by choosing her own profession, then by losing her parents, then by surpassing and defeating or rescuing her mentors) rather than making any necessary sacrifices to survive. But because her story is so insular and self-focused, it feels emptier to me. Twilight and Hunger Games both acknowledge the adults in the larger world, either as complicit in the protagonists’ problems or helpless to deal with them. Divergent just pretends they don’t exist, apart from a couple of paper-thin villains and victims. Bella and Katniss (and Jonas in The Giver, and Ender in Ender’s Game, and Harry Potter in his series, and Melanie in The Host, and Clary in The Mortal Instruments) all have to contend with bigger worlds shaped by stronger people. The big flaw in Divergent for me isn’t just that the factions are silly, it’s that they’re written off. Where are the career police of Dauntless during all this? Where are the lawgivers of Candor and the, um, whoever the hell of Amity? Scott, you’re a big fan of Woodley’s. Would this film have benefited at all from less of her and more sense of the world she’s in?

Scott: Would Divergent have benefited from less of its biggest asset? I’m going to say “no” to that. Less Woodley and more dystopia explication would have made for a film that’s even less successful than the one we have—not because I disagree with you on the “written-off” factions, Tasha, but because I’m not convinced that learning more about them would be all that edifying. (I haven’t read any of the books, but it’s my understanding that a little more background gets sketched in.) And I wasn’t wondering where the grown-ups were, either, because like The Hunger Games, Divergent is about a society in which teenagers are forced into pre-determined roles by adults—they’re given over to a brutal system and asked to fend for themselves. 

But while we’re on the subject of Woodley and the same-y quality of YA adaptations, I wanted to ask the group about John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars, which is due to come out later this year as a movie starring Woodley in the lead role. I was moved by Green’s book, a beautifully written tearjerker about a romance between two teens who meet at a cancer support group. I appreciated Green’s conception of the heroine, who is witty and tough-willed but also vulnerable, someone who has come to terms with the fact that she’s a “grenade,” destined to hurt the people who love her but wanting some of that love for herself. Reading it, I worried that a film adaptation could go soppy, like Love Story or A Walk To Remember, but I’m cheered by the idea that a “downer” drama could stoke just as much anticipation among the young as the sci-fi or supernatural spectacles we’ve been getting. Are you all similarly hopeful for it?

Tasha: Looks like I’m the only one in this Conversation who’s also read it, and yes, I’m looking forward to it. I’m dubious about whether it’ll make a good film, but she’s a terrific pick as the star, and I’m looking forward to seeing her really given time to explore a character with emotional depth, one that isn’t sidelined halfway through the film (as she is in Spectacular Now) or forced to keep sweating out her fears and playing them broadly, as she is here. Tris doesn’t really find her courage and her identity until the end of Divergent, but at that point, she becomes a somewhat generic action-movie ass-kicker, at least until the big confrontation with Four, where she’s back to the vulnerability she does so well—just with less of a sense of being a scared kid, and more a sense of being a justly scared woman. The Fault In Our Stars could give Woodley a chance to show more sides of her personality, but so could Insurgent and Allegiant, the already-in-progress Divergent film sequels. I’m hoping that with the film-long training montage finally over, she can be a tough, more adult character—and that the world around her will grow up a little as well. Is there anything in particular you guys are hoping to see as the series continues? 

Genevieve: You put your finger on what I want to see out of the Divergent sequels, Tasha. (I'm just going to go ahead and assume Matt doesn’t want to see any Divergent sequels, period.) Now that Tris and Four have—spoiler alert, if you care—pretty much blown up this weird, nonsensical world, I’m hoping that will lead to further exploration of this world that will hopefully make it seem a little less weird and nonsensical. I couldn't bring myself to read beyond the first book in the series, so I’m speculating as much as anyone here, but I really hope the story moves beyond that damn wall and explains what’s out there that’s necessitated this societal restructuring. I’ve heard murmurs that Divergent’s Christian themes become stronger the series progresses—another reason I’ve avoided moving ahead with the series—which I am decidedly not looking forward to, but I expect any Hollywood interpretation of such will buff it out as much as possible.

But should we be so quick to presume those sequels? Granted, the film has been tracking huge, and as we write this, it looks primed for a good-to-great opening weekend. But compared to the buzz around the Hunger Games or Twilight movies when they first came out, Divergent mania feels decidedly subdued. And let us not forget, the last year or so has seen its share of YA-adaptation flops, including Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones (which had to scuttle its already-in-progress sequel), Vampire Academy, Beautiful Creatures, and The Host. The Divergent book series is a little more of a world-beater than any of those franchises were, but it still has a whiff of the B-team about it. Has the wave crested? Or will it continue to ripple out forever? Don’t forget, we have the O.G. of dystopian YA, The Giver, hitting theaters in a few short months. Will it arrive too late for the trend it spawned?

Matt: I think YA adaptations are, like comic-book movies, in it for the long haul in Hollywood. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire was the highest-grossing movie of 2013, and I suspect Divergent will be one of the more popular films of 2014. Just last week, Lionsgate announced it’s developing a new film series with Reese Witherspoon, based on a young-adult novel that hasn’t even been published yet. True, there have been a fair number of YA flops. But there have been some comic-book movie stinkers, too (Elektra, we hardly knew ye), and that’s done little to stem the tide. Clearly, the upside is too big for the studios to ignore.

The one other YA-adaptation flop I’ve seen, which Genevieve left off her list, was last year’s Ender’s Game, which only made about $110 million worldwide. That film shares one of my main frustrations with Divergent: The vast majority of both of their runtimes are devoted to meaningless training exercises and combat simulations. Tris and Ender aren’t fighting for their lives; they’re learning how to fight for their lives. It’s like a Rocky movie with a 45-minute training montage and a five-minute fight at the end.

If anything unites the bad YA adaptations I’ve seen, that’s it: a complete lack of stakes. They’re too focused on worldbuilding and faithfulness to source material to tell a great story. The Hunger Games also spends a lot of time on its heroes’ training, but at least the Games themselves have legitimate life-or-death stakes. On the other hand, Divergent’s dark, scary future is more theoretical than anything else, at least until the last couple of scenes. 

Do you guys agree? And what else do you think separates the good YA adaptations from the bad ones?

Genevieve: As someone who generally likes a lot of worldbuilding in both my movies and my YA lit—particularly those that fall in the fantasy/science-fiction realms, which is most of them—I can’t completely sign off on that, Matt, though I agree that being overly faithful to the source material is often the biggest issue with these films (and I said as much in my Divergent review). As Scott alluded to, the general plot structure of these books is often pretty samey, so a lot of the appeal lies in the particular world that’s being escaped to. The Hunger Games and Harry Potter series may have been bogged down by their allegiance to depicting those worlds in as much detail as  their inflated runtimes would allow, but at least they showed worlds that are fun to visit, and make some sense beyond the “what-if” theoretical statements. 

Scott: As I said before, I’m skeptical that learning more about the world of Divergent will help deepen the experience in any way, shape, or form. What works in this first film is the chemistry between its two stars and the stretches of breathlessly paced derring-do that made me forget the hows and whys for a moment. In that sense, Divergent leaves in a good place, with Tris and Four together and heading into the great unknown, toward whatever the next adventure might be. But generally speaking, I’m inclined to believe it and future YA franchises have a solid chance of success, provided that studios invest in them properly. Summit and Lionsgate both got away with penny-pinching on the first entries of the Twilight and Hunger Games movies, respectively, but those books were such juggernauts that the subpar production values didn’t make much difference. But the lesson of The Mortal Instruments or Percy Jackson And The Olympians (which, granted, got a bomb of a sequel off very modest gains from the first film) is that studios are likely to get out of YA adaptations what they put into them—in terms of both money and talent. Handing the guy who made Agent Cody Banks and The Pink Panther 2 a scant (in blockbuster terms, anyway) $60 million to make a hit of The Mortal Instruments is the kind of hedge-betting half-measure that’s going to smother a potential teen phenomenon. 

Tasha: Whoooof, that comes perilously close to saying that the bigger a movie’s budget is, the better and more successful it’s likely to be. I know you don’t believe that, Scott, so I won’t argue the point, but I will say that the biggest-budget YA films seem to wind up looking pretty much the same, with a CGI-assisted visual polish and digital crispness that can look equally shallow and unreal whether it’s filling the frame with piles of dusty books and relics in The Mortal Instruments, or with gleaming, spartan surfaces in The Host. And lately the supernatural effects-heavy films have been bombing anyway, while small YA adaptations set in the familiar modern world, like the $2.5 million Spectacular Now, the $13 million Perks Of Being A Wallflower, and the $19 million The Book Thief have all reaped sizable rewards on their investments. I know Hollywood prefers $200 million tentpoles that might possibly triple their value over $2 million projects that might do the same, but with so many YA adaptations failing, surely the money-wasting well will eventually run dry. I’m betting those “on the cheap” $60 million YA films are an attempt to preserve resources.

So while I agree with Matt that stakes are part of the problem, I don’t think the answer is necessarily bigger, shinier, blockbuster-ier stories that are constantly threatening to kill off the protagonists in more dramatic and expensive ways: I suspect the difference is more in finding protagonists that are actually unique, instead of YA-unique. I went on a YA-reading hiatus last year after a column I was doing landed me dozens of new YA books, and I noticed that every one of them had, as a plot point, the female teen protagonist learning that she was unique and special in some never-before-seen-in-her-world way: She was built in a lab! She’s the first angel/human crossbreed! She’s the first jinn-human crossbreed! She’s one of the aliens attacking humanity, but she’s nothing like them for some reason! At some point, “I’m the most special” stops seeming special, and it’s time to find other things to make a story stand out.

And part of that is finding heroes who are relatable for reasons other than their magicalness. One of Divergent’s strengths is that Tris isn’t unique, she’s just rare, which means she gets to take lessons away from the horrible ways her society treats other people like herself. The story becomes not just how she’s special, but what she has to do to conform, while still turning her abilities into an asset. That, at least, feels a little more exciting, and different, than “I’m dating a broody, controlling vampire.” It also feels more relatable. So much YA fiction is about emotion, experience, and metaphor, and it seems like the most successful adaptations are the ones that hit all three points in convincing ways. Divergent isn’t entirely convincing, but at least, like Tris, it’s trying to be more than one thing.