Why 'Allegiant' should not be two films

Allegiant , the third part to the Divergent series, will be split into two films, as TheCelebrityCafe.com recently reported.

Divergent was a hit at the box-office, so it’s not surprising that the rest of the series was green-lighted for production. Insurgent , the second film in the series, has a release date of March 20, 2015. Allegiant Part One will be released on March 18, 2016 and part two is set to debut on March 24, 2017.

When Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows received a two-part finale, it was revolutionary and it felt right. After all, fans had spent nearly a decade watching Harry, Ron, and Hermione on screen. The last book was nearly 800 pages in length, and had to wrap up the plot lines for the many characters that readers had fallen in love with. A two-part finale was indulgent, but it was purely for the fans -- a way to stretch out that last goodbye. The Harry Potter series was a major moneymaker for Warner Bros, but the decision never felt purely money-based. The last book was rich and deep enough to warrant two movies.

Lionsgate, not to be outdone, announced that Twilight’s finale film would also be getting a two-part finale. This felt like milking a mega cash cow – the series didn’t really need to be expanded any further. The Hunger Games finale, Mockingjay , will also be getting two films. At least Mockingjay is heavy with plans and plots, and with Katniss depressed or passed out for much of the book, the film will be able to expand on the behind-the-scenes events that lead up to the big finale. It might work.

It comes as no surprise then that Allegiant will also be broken up into two films, but the final book really doesn’t have enough depth and plot to support one film, let alone two. Allegiant felt rushed, as if Veronica Roth had simply run out of ideas and decided that the best course of action would be to slap together a few sloppy plot lines and call it a day. There are plenty of action scenes, of course, which can be shown in one 3-minute montage. There’s also a bit of science talk, but once the “big secret” is revealed, not much else happens. A final fight scene, and it’s over. The bare-bones plot could easily be summed up in a single 140 minute movie.

It’s time for the trend to die.

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