Skip to main content

The Hunger Games: Insurgent

The last time I watched Divergent, I thought it was Summit Entertainment trying to cash-in on the success of big-brother parent company Lions Gate's The Hunger Games series, as well as the film borrowing from other respectable films and young-adult novels such as Harry Potter, Ender's Game and The Giver, without a hint of originality of it's own. But since the film made $288 million worldwide on an $88 million budget, a sequel was green-lit, and so we have the big followup in Insurgent, the second installment in the series. Maybe they'll finally get around to explaining how the existence of "Divergents" threaten the system. Perhaps we'll see star Shaileen Woodley unleash her inner Black Widow and do some serious damage on the bad guys. Or maybe they'll start borrowing from The Matrix films as well as Inception!


You know, I was joking when I commented that the second installment would start borrowing from Lana & Andy Wachowski and Christopher Nolan; I didn't think they were going to actually do it! Anyway, Kate Winslet is back as the main antagonist, and after her plot to kill off the Candor faction goes tits up, she has in her possession an ancient glowing box (and now we're borrowing the "tesseract" MacGuffin from Marvel's Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers) that can only be opened by another Divergent. Or something that has to with Tris (Woodley). Which begs the question: why did Jeanine try to have Tris killed in the first movie, assuming she and her militant Erudite faction had this object from the start? But hey, let's ignore that plot hole and look at how Tris is being plugged into the Matrix...uh, I mean going under the dream realm that Ariadne made for Cobb to pull off another elaborate heist...actually, I don't know, and we'll figure this all out on Friday, March 20th. I hope.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Cowardice

I was looking forward to watching the James Franco/Seth Rogen comedy The Interview  on Christmas Day, even more so than Angelina Jolie's WWII drama Unbroken , or Rob Marshall's Into the Woods . I like what the writing and directing duo of Rogen and his pal Evan Goldberg have done with comedies like Superbad , Pineapple Express and their debut feature, This Is the End . In light of Sony being hacked (which now appears to be North Korea's doing) and threats of attacking theaters that carry the comedy, three things happened today: 1.) Every major theater chain - AMC, Regal, Cinemark, Arclight, etc, had decided to pull out from showing The Interview  on its scheduled release date. 2.)  This prompted Sony Pictures to basically cancel the release date of the film amid threats of blowing up theaters. 3.)  Both Sony and the theater chains basically caved into the demands of cyber terrorism from North Korea. Are you fucking kidding me? We just caved into terrorist d

I'm Dreaming of a White Oscars

What does Stephen Hawking, the godfather of computer science, a hotel manager breaking out from prison during the first World War, a young boy and his family growing up through 12 years and the battle of wills between a aspiring musician and his near-abusive professor have in common? On the surface, these are different films ranging in different subjects. But when you look at the people who stared, wrote and directed these various movies, A few patterns begin to emerge: 1. The cast is predominately white. 2. The story mostly centers on a male protagonist. 3. The filmmakers behind the project are white and male. And all of those films I've mentioned:  The Theory of Everything , The Imitation Game , The Grand Budapest Hotel , Boyhood  and Whiplash  - have all been nominated for Best Picture for this year's 87th annual Academy Awards. Before I go any further, I just want to say that this is not an attack on the films themselves. Most of the films mentioned I really enjoy

Mad Max and the Awards Season Or: Let It Go, Let It Go...

And so, the Oscar race has officially begun, with the Nation Board of Review's annual best of list, applauding and honoring the creme de la creme in film for 2015. I definitely didn't expect to see films like Sicario  and Straight Outta Compton  to be on their list of the 10 best movies of the year, so big brownie points to them for their inclusion. Drew Goddard winning Best Adapted Screenplay was a shock, and well-deserved for taking the source material and creating a funny, exciting script where Matt Damon "has to science the shit" out of being stuck on an unforgiving planet like Mars after being marooned by mistake by his fellow astronauts. I think The Martian  is easily Ridley Scott's best and most enjoyable film in years (yes, I'm taking into account that I liked Prometheus ) , and it's fun to see the director this playful, though I think Damon winning Best Actor and Scott taking Best Director is a bit of a stretch. But then came the pick for Bes