Anna Bowman is a senior English and telecommunications major and writes 'Film Annalysis' for the Daily News. Her views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper. Write to Anna at aabowman@bsu.edu.
I want to start off with an apology to anyone who thought "Allegiant" would be good. I’m so sorry you thought that. Coming after two unremarkable other films in the "Divergent" series, the only surprise I had was that it could be even worse than the last. From the opening shot to the last line, it made me physically uncomfortable and infuriated that anyone thought it was ready to come out. If you ask me, it was a rough draft, at best.
First, I'd like to discuss the chemistry, or complete lack thereof, between Shailene Woodley and Theo James. Watching them together was like watching the courtship between Anakin Skywalker and Princess Amidala. Nothing but evil could come from this relationship. The kissing scenes would have been better between anyone else in the movie. Especially considering Woodley has kissed both Miles Teller and Ansel Elgort in other movies.
When you find yourself cringing every time a character opens their mouth, you know the dialogue has reached a new low. There was so much exposition in the conversations that the movie could have been a radio drama instead. Did they spend so much of their budget on CGI that they couldn’t hire competent writers? How bad can the dialogue get before an actor just flat-out refuses to say the lines? These are the questions you have to look forward to if you decide to waste your money on this movie.
What makes this issue even worse was the pacing. It was horrific. Every scene felt like the second sneeze fake-out. You know, when you sneeze and think another one is coming, so you sit there and wait for it to come and nothing happens. Each line of dialogue, each scene transition, each point of action lasted a bit too long, and I was left feeling unsatisfied. This was mostly due to lazy editing, which should have tightened up the poorly written scenes, but instead dragged them out to a slow, painful death.
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If the pacing was horrible, the green screen was ungodly — I felt like I was watching a video game or "The Hobbit: Part 4." And there was so much CGI; it was like George Lucas directed it. Not only was it awful, but a lot of it was completely unnecessary. The Fringe could have easily been shot in the desert somewhere, but instead, it was constructed from scratch for absolutely no reason. It makes me wonder if the movie was actually trying to be ridiculous.
This film, which unfortunately isn’t even the end of the series ("Ascendant" is due to come out next year), exceeded my expectations, but in the worst way possible. I know the point of "Allegiant" was to show the triumph of the “damaged” characters, but that doesn’t mean the actual movie should look damaged too.
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