If this is a franchise about fighting for equality, why is its heroine’s specialness all about the way she was born?
Theo James and Shailene Woodley in Insurgent
Andrew Cooper / Lionsgate
Like most dystopian YA protagonists, Tris Prior (Shailene Woodley), the heroine of the Divergent film franchise, is fighting to save her world.
It's a world that, as outlined out in Veronica Roth's trilogy of books on which the movies are based, is highly regimented but conceptually fuzzy. Everyone has been divvied up into five factions — Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless, and Erudite — based on their personality types, but also maybe on biological factors as well? Children are shuffled off for testing to determine their faction/personality type when they turn 16, though they're allowed to pick whichever faction most appeals to them at the big Choosing Ceremony — it's a huge decision, given that factional allegiance takes precedent over family ties. And by the sequel, Insurgent, which is now in theaters, people are able to whip out a scanner to read someone's makeup, which makes you wonder about the point of the whole simulation/ceremony aspect to begin with.
So the faction system, despite helping maintain peace, clearly sucks, placing the surviving members of society into one of five improbable virtuous boxes, with the remnants consigned to the outcast Factionless. Divergent and Insurgent have revolution on their mind, though it bubbles up indirectly, as Tris and her boyfriend Four (Theo James) discover a scheme in which some evil Erudites try to overthrow Abnegation in order to take control of the government. In Insurgent, Tris, now on the run, is initially only focused on revenge, though it's clear there are larger changes in the works. Meeting with Evelyn (Naomi Watts), the Factionless head (and Four's estranged mother), Tris is entreated to help "put an end to a system that says one group is more deserving than another."
Andrew Cooper / Lionsgate
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