I was dragged to the movie last night. I've read the books, but didn't bother to see Divergent or Insurgent. I had low expectations, and it was even worse than I expected.
The first hour was fine (pretty good even), but the second hour was nonsensical. They changed literally everything and pulled from all parts of the book, making it very confusing to follow. Many of the characters were basically irrelevant, popping up once or twice and then disappearing for half an hour at a time. Like, Kristina was barely in the movie... wtf.
I'm not even a book purist (for this series) as I thought the books were very mediocre, but the changes they made didn't even make the story better. Like the whole "going to Providence thing..." lol. That was so pointless.
And the thing with the serum... Literally the one powerful moment in the books (besides the ending, obviously) is when Tobias has to decide whether to give the memory serum to his mother or father, and chooses to give it to his mother but not to force it on her and leave it as her choice... Now they've already wasted the memory serum so I assume that plot will be entirely eliminated from the next movie.
Absolutely tragic.
Shailene, Theo, Zoe, Octavia and Naomi were good but Miles and Ansel were absolutely tragic. I was cringing so hard at the very end of the movie when Miles was just screaming into the air demanding
the penthouse sweet... or just a bunkbed!
Overall, I'm not surprised this is tanking. The marketing was very poor, it seems like they forgot their target audience. The commercials tried to make it seem like an action movie (which, unfortunately, it was not). And I saw a few interviews trying to push the girlpower angle with Shailene, Zoe, Naomi, Octavia, and Maggie. So basically they tried to push it on straight guys (action) and older women (girlpower) forgetting the power and necessity of the teenage fangirls.
Those fangirls already hated the third book, and were probably very annoyed about it being split into two movies. A strong marketing campaign could have drawn them back in, but... lol.
To market Ascendant, Lionsgate needs to start spreading rumors that they might cancel its release entirely, and they need to do a sexy photoshoot with Theo, Miles and Ansel. There's nothing that fangirls love more than petitions and hot guys.
And @halcyonday, Theo has one shirtless scene and its dark. Don't waste your coins.
Like it's not bad enough to warrant that score but honestly I blame Veronica Roth for not writing a good enough ending to the series.