Finished May 2019

The Sad Story of The Divergent Series

How an initially promising franchise of films imploded from the inside out

By Zac Langridge

Chapter Six: Reflection/Who’s to Blame?

As of writing this chapter, it’s been over five years since the release of the original Divergent and over three years since Allegiant’s failure. Now it’s time to reflect. The previous five chapters have pretty much summarized just what happened to the series; how an initially intriguing franchise crashed and burned due to many circumstances that ultimately set its penultimate installment to fail from the get-go.
And now it’s time for the more unpleasant side of things. It’s time to start pointing fingers.
The YA fatigue was pretty much uncontrollable, and no-one could’ve realistically prevented it from happening. But all the same, there were many fatal mistakes made from many people involved that ultimately helped doom the series. If said-mistakes had been avoided, then the eventual mess that the Divergent franchise found itself in could’ve also been avoided. Essentially, we need to nail down who’s to blame for the failure of The Divergent Series, and what future filmmakers/studios can learn from their missteps.

The invisible force in suits...

Truthfully there are multiple culprits, the first of which being the studio that distributed the films: Lionsgate.
The fashion in which Lionsgate and its underlier Summit Entertainment handled the series, frankly smacks of both arrogance and cockiness. It’s perfectly understandable to adapt a series of books to capitalize on a trend. Massive franchises are after all the bread-and-butter of Hollywood currently, and Lionsgate didn’t want to be left behind with no other tentpole films to attract big bucks that they’d experienced previously. However they handled it with such carelessness. It’s quite amazing to me that their film chiefs Rob Friedman and Patrick Wachsberger made the decision to split Allegiant into two parts directly after the release of the first film, without waiting to see if the second film grossed any better (as it was projected to). And even when it’s opening weekend was lower than expected they still decided to press on. There was no reason to split the final installment up other than money, and the fact that Lionsgate was (at the time) the only other studio besides Warner Bros. that had attempted the two-part maneuver before, made it really come off to onlookers as a greedy move on their part.
And then there’s the fact that the studio insisted on a one-movie-a-year schedule, effectively putting the franchise’s production team on a consistent scramble to get the movies finished in time. Once Divergent was out the door, there was no breathing room; a follow-up needed to be made within a year. After that, another, and then another again. An insider reported that “to make their date, they were just racing forward (....) The whole company is much more interested in delivering product than maintaining quality control (....) the whole thing is just, ‘Move it forward, move it forward, move it forward.’” It’s understandable that the studio would want to get a film out early, so that audience hype doesn’t dwindle, but surely it’s not such a bad idea to give the filmmakers at least 6 months of extra production. Otherwise, far less people will pay for tickets if the film turns out to be a rushed, poorly-received, corporate product.
And after the third film flopped, they decided to keep the TV movie plans hidden from the cast members. As a result, none of them knew what was going on, and the main star of the franchise found out about it when she was getting off a freaking plane! The lack of effort and respect that Lionsgate had for their series is astonishing to me, and it ended up utterly embarrassing them by exposing the studio as an assembly-line production that stifled creativity for the sake of making money, and forcing them to cancel the fourth movie in a series that only had one installment left to go. And with recent films of theirs like Power Rangers (2017) and Robin Hood (2018) also bombing and failing to start franchises, plus the tiny fact that the company's stock has fallen a whopping 44% in the last year alone, it only goes to prove how out of touch Lionsgate is when it comes to the shifting tides of mainstream Hollywood.

The exhausted artist...

The next culprit that could be blamed are the actual filmmakers themselves.
It’s very easy for people - fans especially - to place the blame on Insurgent and Allegiant director Robert Schwentke, as it was his flawed newer approach to the sequels that threw many people off. Regardless of what some may feel about the first film, director Neil Burger clearly put his soul into it, going so far as to shut down major streets in Chicago to film the movie, not to mention re-adding iconic scenes from the book that had initially been removed. Burger displayed a sense of pride in his film, as well as a level of passion/understanding for the fanbase - something which cannot be said for Schwentke. Unlike his predecessor, Schwentke rarely takes interviews and doesn’t talk much about the Divergent films, only occasionally appearing publicly to promote his work. It’s been a genuine struggle to actually find interviews of him where he talks about the series, and only recently has far more material surfaced. With all due respect to Schwentke, he has admitted that he doesn’t like being in the public eye (which I can absolutely understand), but that doesn’t change the fact that it just feels as though he signed onto the series to experiment and add a new genre to his catalogue, in contrast to Burger whom I feel actually was passionate about the books.
Even so, I don’t feel as though he’s entirely responsible for the series’ shortcomings, and it’s rather unfair to lay it all on him. Most of Insurgent’s flaws originated from its script, not its direction. Schwentke himself was not responsible for the stilted dialogue, plot-holes and degrading portrayal of secondary characters in that film - however he was responsible for some admittedly beautiful visuals, well executed action scenes, as well as Shailene Woodley’s best performance in the series by far. As for Allegiant, he was clearly burnt out and weighed down by Lionsgate’s impossible schedule, and apparently no longer had the energy in him to get out a decent film. And for all Allegiant’s flaws, he was still responsible for its stunning design and visuals. He also made the excellent decision to hire Joseph Trapanese as the new composer for the series, which resulted in phenomenal musical scores for both sequels.
Even so, it was his abundant focus on fancy visuals and action over the original themes and characters (integral to the books and first film), as well as his disregard for Burger’s original vision which angered and off-put the fanbase. It seemed as though he was far more passionate about creating a futuristic world than faithfully adapting from the novels, which translated into what the screenwriters wrote, regarding their deviations from the novels in terms of story and character.

However….

Someone higher up allowed and apparently encouraged Schwentke to make the changes that he did. And that all can be placed on the producers for The Divergent Series: Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher.

The tragic culprits...

I would like to be clear here when I say I truly believe that Wick and Fisher had good intentions from the very beginning. As I’ve described previously, these two were clearly incredibly passionate about Veronica Roth’s books, and had enormous respect for the source material and the author’s vision. They’d made it clear that they were making the films for the fans, whom they clearly had an understanding with (like Neil Burger did). And they’d both mentioned numerous times in interviews that if the fans remained happy and satisfied, then the series should be a success, as the fans are the core audience that will actively pay to see the movies over critics and general audiences. By all means, I truly feel that Wick and Fisher were (and still are) very caring and wonderful people who wanted to make the series the best they could.
Unfortunately, despite their efforts, this didn’t happen. The series declined in quality rapidly, and I feel as though they both are largely to blame. The two producers both seemed to really like Schwentke’s special effects-heavy vision for the sequels, and they cite it as one of the main reasons they hired him in the first place. Instead of requesting him to stick to the template previously established in the first film, they granted him free creative control to expand and re-imagine Burger’s original vision. They too, working with author Veronica Roth, also had the opportunity to course-correct after Insurgent proved divisive with fans and critics. Instead of doing so, they doubled down, which only further alienated the fans.
I also can’t fathom why Wick and Fisher would allow the screenwriters to divert from the original plot of the books so severely. They clearly have a lot of respect for the source material, so I cannot wrap my head around how they were okay with so many essential character elements being basically disregarded in the sequels. A great example of this would be how Four’s fear of heights completely disappears in the Allegiant film, despite him being shown in locations very high off the ground, and despite how this fear is still so very prominent in the original book. Why would the two producers let the filmmakers actively do this? Did they not understand that this apparent disregard for the source material would anger the handcore fans? It certainly seems as though they got carried away as they got further into the series, and lost sight of what really mattered. As if they assumed that since the first film had been a success, they didn’t need to put the same level of attention-to-detail in the others. I can’t be sure, but if this is the case, they were mistaken.
And the truly gut-wrenching thing, is that Wick and Fisher’s unintentional betrayal of the fanbase was what contributed to the ultimate failure of the series. It’s such a difficult thing to stomach because the producers clearly didn’t mean for this to happen, and they obviously put their blood, sweat and tears into the films. One can almost imagine their devastation when they finally found out that there would be no big finale, that the ending would have to be cancelled entirely. I have nothing but sympathy for them, and just imagining how they would’ve reacted when they found out about Ascendant’s cancellation is quite heartbreaking on its own.

Please note that I’m not trying to personally attack or belittle any of these people I’ve just mentioned. I do, however, feel the need to point out the mistakes they made in the making of the series, so we can understand some of the core elements as to where the Divergent films went wrong.

Overall here are the main mistakes The Divergent Series made:

• Splitting the final film into two parts; it was done purely for financial gain, and onlookers knew it.
• Diverting from the source material too much; never a good plan, as it alienates the fanbase and turns supporters against the brand.
• Abandoning the original vision for the sake of visual panache; it felt disrespectful towards the first film and completely turned attention away from the series’ soul.
• Really poor timing; the YA craze had faded by the time the third film came around, and no-one cared anymore.
• YA oversaturation; contributed to the point above.
• Rushing the films to hit release dates; quality is more important than quantity….unless your Lionsgate, of course.

James and Woodley in a still from the original Divergent

As of May 2019, it’s safe to say that The Divergent Series is officially dead, and so is the YA post-apocalyptic genre, with much of our current entertainment saturated by superhero franchises in the likes of Marvel and DC.
The final YA franchise to close its doors was Fox’s The Maze Runner, which finished in early 2018 with the release of The Death Cure. Unlike The Divergent Series, the filmmakers made a smart decision and decided not to split the final film into two parts. The final film was also delayed for about two years, due to its star Dylan O’Brien having to recover from a horrific onset accident during shooting. As awful as it sounds, this delay from the 2016 release to a 2018 release was actually somewhat of a good thing, as it ended up saving the movie in my opinion. Because in 2016, a year where audiences were fed up with those sorts of films, I feel The Death Cure might have easily been a flop too. Fortunately, the two year hiatus allowed fatigued audiences a break, and the final Maze Runner film was a box-office success, albeit to mixed critical reviews.

Ever since then, the YA post-apocalyptic genre hasn’t resurfaced and the obsession Hollywood had with those sorts of films, plus the act of splitting a finale into two parts, are practically extinct.
Thank goodness they learned from Divergent!

THE END