When Miles Teller signed on to star in the “Divergent” franchise, he wasn’t a major star. He’d largely been in films like “Rabbit Hole,” “The Spectacular Now,” and “Project X,” but if you watched “Divergent” looking for more movies like “Project X,” you were likely to be pretty disappointed. Unlike those other three films, which are all about teenagers caught up in situations that might happen in the real world, “Divergent” is a dystopian franchise adapted from a YA book series by Veronica Roth, in which teenagers live in a world where they’re sorted into factions according to a mysterious destiny, determining the jobs they must hold for the rest of their lives.
Teller signed on to play Peter, a character who starts as an antagonist and gets in the way of various revolutionary plans set in action by Tris (Shailene Woodley), the series’ main character. Woodley and Teller had starred together in “The Spectacular Now,” but Teller was evidently pretty unhappy with how things went on “Divergent,” which was a bigger-budgeted production. “I didn’t have an interesting part, and I’d taken the film for business reasons,” he later confessed to W magazine. “It was the first movie I’d done that was going to have an international audience. I called my agent and said, ‘This sucks.'”
On that phone call, his agent told him about “Whiplash,” the film that would gain him some major critical respectability. Still, there were those pesky “Divergent” sequels to make.
The Divergent franchise petered out without concluding
By the time Miles Teller went back to film 2015’s “Insurgent,” he’d already given that interview revealing his true thoughts about his role; that was one of many warning signs that the franchise was in trouble. Clearly greenlit to compete with dystopian YA like “The Hunger Games,” everyone soon agreed that the “Divergent” movies were just not as good. The first “Hunger Games” racked up an impressive 84% “fresh” score on Rotten Tomatoes; “Divergent,” on the other hand, clocked in at only 41% and and was labeled “rotten.” Ouch.
“Insurgent” and “Allegiant” soon followed anyway. That third film limped to 11% on RT, and even though a fourth film — based on the second half of “Allegiant” — had been announced, it was obvious that there was no juice left. Lionsgate announced that the last movie would premiere on television and would lead into a show that would continue the story, but the cast revolted, much like their characters had. “Last I heard they were trying to make it into a television show,” Shailene Woodley told ScreenRant. “I didn’t sign up to be in a television show.” The project was entirely scrapped.
Yep, they split the last book into two movies and then never made the last film. We imagine Teller wasn’t too upset about that, but if you’d like to check out the trainwreck anyway, here’s the right way to watch the “Divergent” series in order. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.