Book-to-movie adaptations are either a hit or miss. But some are extremely well executed adaptations, such as the Hunger Games Trilogy, the Harry Potter Franchise, and the Hobbit. There are also horrendous adaptations like the Percy Jackson movies, The City of Bones, and The Host. Rarely any book-to-movie adaptations are just okay, but Divergent was an exception.

Divergent is about a girl named Tris in post-apocalyptic Chicago in which she takes a test to find out which “faction” she should belong in. The choices are Abnegation the selfless, Dauntless the brave,  Amity the kind, Erudite the smart, and Candor the honest. Tris takes the test and gets a rare result–Divergent. She got three of the five factions, but she has to hide it because she is deemed as a threat to society. She ends up picking Dauntless, and with that, she tries to hide her different way of thinking or else her and her family might get killed. The book is fantastic, with the side-characters being the most interesting, and the story is one told in an interesting way.

The movie, did a pretty good job following the book. Most of the characters, except for Four (Theo James), looked almost perfect as Veronica Roth described them. Shailene Woodley as Tris looked and acted as the part, making an almost exact portrayal for Tris.

When it came to character development there was none except for Tris and Four. In the book, the side characters are some of the most interesting and mentally developed characters, while in the movie, the side characters are not developed at all. You barely know their names, and if you have not read the book, you would not know their names whatsoever. It is disappointing because you feel you cannot connect to any other characters other thanTris and Four, and when someone dies, you feel indifferent about it because you never really knew who they were.

A lot of key incident in the book were left out of the movie, and though the movie was decent enough if you did not read the book, reading the book recently definitely makes you more disappointed in the movie.

Divergent was a teen fiction phenomenon, and if you liked the Hunger Games book, you will definitely like this one. The movie was just okay, though it is worth the watch if you read the book. I would not go and see it again, but there are worse book-to-movie adaptations. Critics were also neutral about the movie, as MetaCritic gave it a 48 out of 100. The movie was decent, and I would recommend it as long as you don’t have your hopes set too high because you might get disappointed.