Movie vs Book: Divergent and Group Discussion

Hi again, my dear readers!

One of the things that tends to happen (not only in YA literature) is that a book will become a best seller and then be made into a movie.  Sometimes it happens the other way around - the book will be made into a movie, the movie becomes popular, and suddenly the book is a best seller.  Either way, books and movies based upon them seem to go hand in hand.  Sometimes the movie is better than the book; more often than not, the book is better than the movie.  It depends on the reader, the viewer, and the overall experience.

For this class, I needed to read a book and then watch the movie.  I chose Divergent by Veronica Roth.  (The trailer for the film is here if you haven't seen or heard of it.)  Divergent follows the pretty standard post apocalyptic YA novel format: everyone is split into factions in the society, a girl goes to get sorted and doesn't fit into just one category, she ends up becoming part of the warring faction, the girl is special, war breaks out, and there's romance.

(That sounds cynical, but go look at these dystopian books and you'll see what I mean.)

The movie is very similar, except that the actors and actresses are all incredibly good looking (which is a ploy to get people of the opposite gender to come see the film), the romance was toned down a bit, and the action was overplayed.  Impactful lines and scenes got cut or altered as the director saw fit, all in an attempt to bring in box office revenue.  And it worked.

In group discussion, we talked about how these dystopian films and books are so incredibly popular among teens.  Film makers and authors seem to be piggybacking off each other and so more and more of YA lit and films are going the way of dystopian.  We all agreed that it can't last forever.  Eventually the market is going to be so saturated with things like Divergent that it won't be able to hold anymore and other genres are going to break through again.

We also talked about how the film ran compared to the book.  The film is much faster paced, making it harder to absorb what is going on; the book, however, is slower and allows the reader to digest what's happening before moving on to the next scene or event.  The film is good in that it allows visuals cues and images to be given, but it sacrifices some of the material from the book in order to do that.  One idea was that if Divergent could be serialized like Game of Thrones is, that maybe it would work better.

As for me, I didn't really care for the book or the movie.  I think I've had enough of the dystopian genre, though, so don't let that opinion stop you if you want to read Divergent or watch the film.  If you decide to, though, I recommend you read the book first.

~Meaghan