Following up on the recently released first look preview of Divergent comes a behind-the-scenes look at the production of the film, including a few insights about the setting and plot from the cast, along with Divergent author Veronica Roth. Among the highlights of the video include Shailene Woodley's daring drop from the side of a building, glimpses of the various factions, Tris getting 'tanked' for her simulation, and some thrilling train-related moments.
It's explained in the video, which comes courtesy of Fandango, that Divergent is set in a society where the people are divided into five factions, which determine their way of life. People are expected to serve their faction, which means there's a fair amount of training involved for young initiates once they make their choice. In this story, Tris (Woodley) is a teen who chooses to leave her family's faction and join the fearless Dauntless, the faction described as "almost like an armed force," by Jai Courtney, who plays Dauntless faction leader Eric.
Theo James, who plays Tris' trainer, Four, in the film, says that this is a story about choice and how you define yourself. Of course, Tris isn't as easily defined as some other characters in this story, as we learn early on that she's Divergent, which means she won't fit into any one faction. And as Maggie Q mentions in the video, being Divergent can cost you your life. That's a bit of information Q's character Tori shares with Tris early on in the book.
Fans of Veronica Roth's book will likely be happy to hear Ashley Judd, who plays Tris' mother in the film, say that the movie stays true to Roth's story. From the trailer and this video, not to mention what we saw at Comic-Con last month, a lot of the book's exciting moments, including the building drop, the train jump, the knife throwing, the ferris wheel climb, and some of the other action have made it into the movie. And that's just some of the thrilling moments we'll hopefully see in the adaptation. If you've read the book, you know there's a pretty big scene involving the Hancock Tower. (Spoiler alert if you haven't read the book!) We haven't seen any of that in the footage that's been released just yet, but when we spoke with director Neil Burger about the film last month, he talked about filming that particular scene:
Let’s talk about the stunts then, since you brought that up. Now, we have the zip-lining thing, which I think people are really anticipating and that’s something we haven’t really seen So, how was it filming that?Burger - Filming the zip line was amazing. We did it over the course of about three or four days and it’s all done in different pieces, but we strung a thousand foot zip line through the streets of Chicago and did it for real and even through the zip-lining itself probably would be longer than that going from the Hancock tower, would probably be almost a mile long or something like that. We have virtually a quarter of a mile of zip-lining where we did it and they got going so fast through this alley, just a few feet to spare with fire escapes on either side. It’s crazy, but we did it, so…
Divergent arrives in theaters March 21, so there's still plenty of time to wait for a look at that scene, and that may be something Summit's planning on holding on to until closer to the film's release, if they aren't keeping that stunt under wraps entirely, so fans can see it for the first time on the big screen. I bet that one will look particularly amazing on IMAX, come to think of it…
Check out the previously released Divergent trailer below:
