Those who aren't a fan of personality quizzes should consider themselves lucky not to be born in the world of Veronica Roth's young adult novel series, Divergent. In this dystopian vision of Chicago, every teen is given an aptitude test to decide which of five factions (Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless and Erudite) they belong to and will join upon reaching adulthood.
If you thought that being both brave and intelligent in equal measure would be considered positive, however, then a nasty shock awaits. Divergent's protagonist, Tris, is found to show equal aptitude for three different virtues, and as such is categorized as being "divergent" - a fact that, if anyone discovers it, could lead to her becoming an outcast or even being killed. Can anyone else sense some subtext about social homogenization?
In Neil Burger's big screen adaptation of Divergent, Shailene Woodley (The Descendants) plays Tris, and the cast also includes Theo James (Underworld: Awakening) as her love interest, Four, and Maggie Q (Mission: Impossible III) as Tris' friend, Tori. Kate Winslet also stars as the film's main antagonist, and all of these actors are featured in the new trailer preview for Divergent, which can be seen above. For those who aren't familiar with this promotional technique, trailer previews are a trailer for the trailer, so the video is a mere twelve seconds long. It means, however, that the full trailer is likely to arrive fairly soon.
Cinema Blend also has a teaser image to go with the trailer preview, showing Tris and Four climbing an enormous ferris wheel, with the warning (or promise) that "something BIG is coming." For those who are unfamiliar with the books or film, this image unfortunately isn't all that eye-catching, but for Divergent fans it's probably going to inspire quite a bit of excitement.
As we observed when a handful of promotional stills for Divergent were released, the movie seems to have a lot in common with other young adult novel adaptations like The Hunger Games, Ender's Game and The Maze Runner, and given the popularity of that particular genre at the moment there's a good chance that Divergent could end up attracting a lot of new fans to the book series, which is soon to be expanded with the final installment in the trilogy, a bonus eBook and four eShorts. The only danger is that the market might become oversaturated with all of these sci-fi coming-of-age tales vying for attention, and one of them may end up losing out on its potential audience.
Based on these teasers, do you think that Divergent has what it takes to compete in the arena of young adult sci-fi novel adaptations?
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Divergent is out in theaters on March 21, 2014.
Source: Cinema Blend