Event report- DIVERGENT PREMIERE

So, a week and a bit ago, I got invited to the premiere of Divergent. Needless to say, I accepted!

The premiere was last Sunday, and I took one of my friends from school. We got to Leicester Square which had been transformed into a Fan Experience area, so there were lots of things for people to do. There were lots of Erudite and Dauntless faction members running around, doing tattoos, initiations, aptitude tests and more.

I met and got to run around with Rita, who runs Weaving Pages, which was great. For a short while (i.e. a few seconds) I saw Casey (Dark Readers), Ben (Benjamin of Tomes), Jim (YA Yeah Yeah), Debbie( Snuggling on the Sofa) and Hannah. People who I knew were there but never got to see include Jess (Jess Hearts Books), Ryan (Empire of Books), Cait (the Cait Files) Jax (Making it Up)  Amber (The Mile Long Bookshelf) and Amber (Books of Amber) and   . Lesson learnt-busy film premieres are not the place to try and do a "meet all the bloggers". Maybe another time?

I am most definitely not Dauntless

Back to the day. I met Rita, which was really good. My friend and I did the aptitude testing, which said we were Erudite within a few questions. Rita and I went on the rock climby thing, which she won by miles. We were going to do some other things, but then we saw how long the queue to get into the cinema was already and decided to go join it before all the good seats were gone!

 I'm not sure, but I think we were in the queue for over an hour. Not complaining-we're British, we know how to queue. While we were in that queue, all the important people started arriving. We were on the other side of the square, so we didn’t get to see them up close, but we could see them on screens and hear the fans screaming (I’m not sure if my ears have yet recovered from the cheers when Theo James arrived).

look! wristbands! 

Finally we got to the front of the queue. After an Erudite guy checked that we were allowed in (I am so jealous of all the people who got to spend a weekend pretending to be people from Roth's Chicago), we got on the red carpet and chose a faction, and we got wristbands that correspond to our chosen factions.

Ok, wristband designer, seriously? Did you not realise some people might like to take theirs off without cutting the thing? I pulled mine on normal tight, and my normal playing with things on my wrist tightened it even more. I was inside the cinema when I realised that it wouldn't come off. When I got out, I realised there were spikes keeping the fabric once it had been pushed up. I had to cut my wristband off. Designer gets negative consumer feedback.

the sad fate of my wristband

We then got seated by faction. Erudite were somewhere in the middle, which suited me fine. We got to see a livescreen of what was happening outside, ie everyone's interviews on the red carpet. I got a bit angry when they asked Shailene and Kate who designed their clothes but not Theo, and then remembered "we live in a sexist world that values women by what they wear" and tried to get not too annoyed before hopefully enjoying the film. Then a short presentation of the people involved. Then the film began.

The film was really good. It adapted the world really well, made Roth's Chicago come to life, and

Of course, there were some changes. Things got cut, i.e. the whole eye stabbing thing, which is the only thing bar the major characters, world and plot that I remembered, and some things got added. I'm sure there were more changes, but I've not read this series in ages.

Trigger warning for attempted rape. It's short, and in Tris's fear landscape thing, and I'm glad it's in there because people will talk about it and sexual assault is a thing that we as a society need to talk about and deal with, and it's nice that she gets praised for defending herself. But trigger warning is there.

They made Four an asshole in this. I know he wasn't the nicest guy at the start of the book, but by the time they were kissing, I honestly didn't see why Tris liked him in the film. He does get nicer after that though.

I love the way they did everything, especially the testing, the fear landscapes... everything about Dauntless really! The acting was really good, especially Jeanine, Christina and Eric. I left with a strong craving to reread Divergent (first review here). And Insurgent (first review here). And actually read Allegiant. Film wise though, I am definitely ready for Insurgent.

Anyway, after the film, I tried finding people. Mostly failed (see prior list of people who were there but I never saw). Outside  we saw this guy in a suit who had loads of people crowding him and fawning over him and he was only a few feet away and we might have got his autograph or something but by the time my friend and I had tried to work out who he was he was gone

Anyway, it was a great day. Thank you hugely to Entertainment One and Harper Collins for the amazing opportunity, and I hope that if you see Divergent, you do too!