Divergent

In March of 2014 a new movie series got started out with a movie named Divergent. Divergent was directed by Neil Burger and had an $85 million budget. This movie is based off a book by Veronica Roth which was also titled Divergent.

Divergent is based in a future post-apocalyptic society that is very different from our society today. They population of the future society is split up into five different faction. These factions each had different jobs and different characteristics. The 5 groups were split by the characteristics: selfless, peaceful, honest, brave, and intelligent. When children get to an old enough age they get to choose which faction they want to join. They can choose whatever faction they want but they get to have an aptitude test that tells the kids which faction they would be best fit in.

Divergent is about a girl named Beatrice who is just getting to the age that she has to choose which faction she wants. However when she takes the test, the test tells her three different factions. Beatrice then finds out that some people get multiple factions and their test and that it is called Divergent. She also finds out that it is dangerous being Divergent because the government can’t control them so the government see them as threats. Beatrice then decides to join the brave faction and starts to train with them. She has to train really hard because the people at the bottom of the group get kicked out of the faction and have to live on the streets. She manages to make it into the faction but then discovers that many of the higher ups are corrupt. She also discovers that there is a plot made up by the intelligent to rebel against the government, kill lots of people, and take over control.

When I first watched this movie I had no idea what I was going to go see. As I am not a big reader, I had not even heard of the books. I never saw the trailer for the movie so I had no idea what the movie was about. The only thing that I knew about this movie was that many people were excited to see it. I think that not knowing anything about the movie before seeing it, made the movie even better. I think that if I had been told what the movie was about beforehand I would have gotten my own ideas of what the movie would have looked like. Then I would be kind of disappointed since the movie isn’t exactly like what was in my head. Having no preconceived notations the movie made the whole movie a surprise and a very good one too.

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier

                In April of 2014 the sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger came out. This movie was called Captain America: The Winter Soldier. This movie was produced by Kevin Feige and had a $170 million dollar budget. This movie was produced by Marvel Studios and was the ninth movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

                The story of this movie takes place a few years after the Avengers took place. Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, is working for the agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury, Shield’s director, starts to get suspicious of Shield after he is unable to find out information about Project Insight. Project Insight was the plan to launch three airships that would be able to eliminate terrorists. Nick Fury gets attacked by a group of assailants but is able to escape to Roger’s apartment. Fury tells Rogers that Shield is compromised but then gets killed by an assassin called the Winter Soldier. Shield starts to hunt down Rogers but he finds Black Widow and they go to a secret Shield bunker. There they find out that Shield was full of spies from a group named Hydra. They also find out that Shield is planning to kill millions of people who they think might someday be a threat to them. Captain America and Black Widow get Falcon to join them as they work together to take out the three airships that Hydra was launching.

                I enjoyed this movie as much if not more than I did the first one. One thing that I liked about this movie more than the first one was that this movie took place in the modern era. The first movie took place during WWII which was cool but I like the modern theme of the sequel better. Another thing that I liked about this movie was all the references to other Marvel movies. There were many mentions of the other Avengers and of what happened in the Avengers movie. They also brought in other Marvel characters to be a part of the movie. Captain America found Black Widow and she helped him throughout the entire movie. Another character that helps Captain America is Falcon who is a superhero from the Marvel Comic Books.

                One thing that I didn’t really like about this movie was that the story was kind of hard to understand. The first time I watched the movie I had a hard time following the story. I got really confused at the beginning when Nick Fury got attacked. I didn’t even understand where he was going and then next thing I know he is being attacked by a group of police. This really confused me the first time I watched the movie.

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