What sets young adult novel adaptation “Divergent” apart from box office juggernaut “Twilight”? According to Shailene Woodley: healthy relationships.
“‘Twilight,’ I’m sorry, is about a very unhealthy, toxic relationship. She falls in love with this guy and the second he leaves her, her life is over and she’s going to kill herself,” Woodley told Teen Vogue for the April issue’s cover story. “What message are we sending to young people? That is not going to help this world evolve.”
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The 22-year-old actress takes the lead in the movie from Lionsgate (the same studio that released “Twilight”) as Tris Prior, a teenager who learns she does not fit into any of the five virtue-based factions that the futuristic, society dreamed up by author Veronica Roth, is divided into. Since she is a “divergent,” her life is in danger and she must fight alongside a fellow divergent named Four to get to the bottom of the conspiracy hatched by the leader of another faction.
The expected blockbuster is “so metaphorical to today’s society,” Woodley told the Daily Beast, and she hopes it will start a conversation between audiences about our own issues.
“One of the most beautiful quotes in the book is when Tris says, ‘Back in the day, my mom had a choice between eating naturally-irrigated food and genetically-engineered foods. Now, there is no choice. That’s all we have,’” Woodley said. “I thought that was so powerful because we’re getting to a point where all agriculture is going to depend on seeds that were created in a lab–which is so counterintuitive to the way Mother Nature meant it to be. There’s the issue of a tyrant taking over and genocide–someone going in, choosing a particular class of people, and murdering them by brainwashing other people. And there’s the issue of spying on other people and this whole drone situation going on now.”
Audiences who haven’t read the book will discover the many metaphors — like how or why the city of Chicago would be divided into five factions in the future — on March 21.
