Hacker Cinema
Divergent
2014 · Film · 140 min
Part of Divergent Collection
Directed by Neil Burger
ActionAdventureScience Fiction
In a world divided into factions based on personality types, Tris learns that she's been classified as Divergent and won't fit in. When she discovers a plot to destroy Divergents, Tris and the mysterious Four must find out what makes Divergents dangerous before it's too late.
1 negative10 neutralfrom 11 commenters
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11 comments on Hacker News
Gibson was obviously very inspired by Japan. The Matrix was also in part directly inspired by Ghost in the Shell, even creating The Animatrix at the same time. But Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner was told from the inside. It is about the authorities chasing down rouge elements. Neuromancer and The Matrix is from the perspective of the outsiders.
Like someone else said in the comments here, cyberpunk is counterculture. It is in the name. Gibson moved to Canada to avoid getting drafted into the Vietnam war. Japan never really did counter-culture as mainstream as the US does. Considering the overlap between cyberpunk and anime, I would actually say that Japan is sometime given too much credit by being treated as the superior original with deeper meaning. When it is Western media that have explored more advanced and diverse interpretations.
A similar thing happened with Battle Royale. A niche movie. The same concept became a cultural phenomenon with The Hunger Games, and later Maze Runner and Divergent series. And then video games. Now made from the outspoken perspective of the teenagers.
So you should absolutely credit the US counterculture and environment for a large part of cyberpunk and dystopian, but also more utopian science fiction. I don't even like Hollywood much, but it still has a far wider catalog than anyone else. Who else could make Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare or even Star Trek: Voyager? Disney made Andor by the way.
One thing i find interesting is how rarely labour struggles are depicted in mainstream tv/movies.
We have every type of revolutionary tv shows, including some fairly rediculous ones (e.g. divergent) but almost never strikes. The only exception i can really think of is that one episode of battlestar galactica (maybe give star trek ds9 half a point because they treated it in such a silly fashion).
I started watching the movie "Divergent" and it's reused to be the security fence (https://divergent.fandom.com/wiki/The_Fence)
>They all present societies which have solved social and material problems through progress, or which are still solving them, critiquing an image of the Western world in the 20th century. None of them nab at any kind of biting truth relevant to young readers today.
What are some examples of scifi you're referring to there? Because the noteworthy scifi stories I can think of, ones which drew enough attention to be televised at least, are stories like the hunger games (dystopian), divergent (dystopian), the new star trek series (which I haven't seen but I understand shoehorned scarcity back into the startrekverse), Foundation (fall of a golden age), The Expanse (dystopian) etc. I think the only optimistic scifi I've read in the last twenty years or so was Anathem, and there's no way that's getting a miniseries.
Maybe it's a function of the authors I follow, but I just don't see this optimistic contemporary scifi you speak of, naive or otherwise.
I feel like some of the examples you list are a poor choice to illustrate your point.
Both Harry Potter (books so more than films, but in the films too) and Aang have plenty of flaws, and there's arcs and events that help them grow/develop.
It's been a while, but Katniss does have plenty of flaws and growth (and even some things she never overcomes about her self). Although, it's been a few years since I've read Hunger Games, I feel like she doesn't belong in the same category as Bella (which feels like a placeholder character intentionally). Tris from Divergent might be a good example though, but even there there's some growth.
Regarding some of the super heroes: they're all kinda "super" and very mary-sue-ish, I agree. But they still face challenges and difficulties they need to overcome, or the stories they're part of (rather than the character themselves) are otherwise interesting.
Most of the modern "strong female leads" are just boring (and this comes from a gay boy who LOVES strong women, my favourite characters are women: Sydney Bristol, almost every one from ATLA & Korra, Willow & Buffy, Halliwell sisters, Xena, Lara Croft, Jade from BG&E, women from Harry Potter, Aya from Parasite Eve games, an uncountable plethora of amazing female characters in Anime and manga, and I could go on and on and on, it's not like it can't be done, or hasn't been done, it has been done MANY times). The only challenge these modern Disney SFLs face is not believing in themselves (and as someone who struggles on and off with self esteem issues, I realise how difficult those can be, but also it's not "enough" to base a whole character around just that), usually with a sprinkle of "blame the patriarchy" in there too.
All this misandry and trying to portray any masculinity as toxic is just lame. It's very similar to Disney's queer coding of villains. I remember in my teens, while being a sexually confused and closed queer how sensitive I was to that bullshit and how awful and ashamed it made me feel. It's ludicrous how it's being done again, just the aggressor and targeted demographics are different now. I can't tell if that's just Disney's Modus Operandi, or of this is some type of bitter revenge writing. It sucked then and it sucks now, and it will continue to suck. We need to do better.
People mentioned elsewhere in threads that people complain about too many POCs. I've not seen much of this (maybe a few low quality posts online, but that's just racist drivel of a few small minced idiots, and rarely anyone cares about it). What people dislike is their liked characters' identities getting twisted to fit "modern audiences" (often it's MORE than just race). And the irony is, not even this mythological modern audience likes it because it usually ends up being a shallow self insert, so then down the line the audience gets blamed and called names). There's plenty of original PoC characters that are loved (of Disney: Mulan, Pocahontas, Aladdin/Jasmine, Moana, Lilo, Encanto cast). The whole "well why does it matter" argument is also a bit of a bad faith bait. If it didn't matter, why so bullishly insist on changing it?
If it's analogy against "young adult" books you have to consider what the market for "young adults" books really is.
"Young adults" don't buy "Young adult" books, rather public librarians buy "Young adult" books and shelf them in a special section because they believe a collection of "Young adult" books will attract "Young adults" to the library and encourage lifelong reading.
Once a highly prolific author gets labeled a "Young adult" author they are certain to sell a number of profitable hardcovers to libraries and their publisher is likely to handcuff them to the grindstone, the way they did to Piers Anthony. (It is so agonizing to hear Anthony write about he's forced to write those cringeworthy Xanth books.)
It was discovered at some point that "Young adult" books can be turned to gold at the cinema multiplex, so you get movies like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_Games
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_5th_Wave_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergent_(film)
Unfortunately for Anthony those Xanth books are so
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=squicky
that any effort to turn them into film and TV gets stuck in development hell.
Few public libraries collect video games so there is no market for "Young Adult" games marketed to libraries. I suppose you could turn "Young Adult" books into video games but turning books and movies into video games is a much less reliable way to make cash than turning books and video games into movies.
Yeah, I think that was it. Thanks. Pretty sad that I remember nothing about the movie except this minor thing.
https://www.tumblr.com/search/divergent%20locations
I think you're thinking of the movie "Divergent"
White was traditionally about defense, purity, and positiveness. Kind of like holy energy in WoW, or Diablo 3, or ...
I'm kind of reminded by the book/movie Divergent as well.
You can also see it (albeit roughly) back in all kind of new age subculture.
>> but I just couldn't bear the thought of there being nothing left.
As I exited my 20's and entered my 30's, I had to deal with several deaths in the family and having to finally deal with my own mortality, this has affected me in profound ways.
I've done the same thing you have, albeit with several movie trilogies. I skipped the last Matrix movie, I refused to go see the last LOTR movie (even though I read the books when I was in my teens and knew what was going to happen), and the same thing in the Divergent series.
It's practically become a common theme in my life - some sort of psychological avoidance to have to deal with the ending of a story, the emotions and the emptiness of something I pursued for so long, now at an end.
You mean like in the movie, Divergent?