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" Romance! Girlfriends! Four! Divergent, the movie adaptation of Veronica Roth&amp;#039;s insanely and deservedly popular trilogy, is sometimes considered The Hunger Games&amp;#039; little sister in the girls-who-kick-ass-in-a-dystopian-future genre. But Shailene Woodley blows that right up. She plays Beatrice Prior, aka Tris, who lives in a walled-off Chicago, a hundred years after a war that devastated the planet. The city&amp;#039;s population is broken down into five factions, and Tris chooses to leave her family and the Abnegation faction \u2014 which is all about selflessness \u2014 for the wild and fear-flaunting Dauntless tribe. She goes through a crazy initiation process, catches the eye of Four, the hottest guy there, and ends up having to defend her life and everyone else&amp;#039;s when the fact that she&amp;#039;s Divergent \u2014 meaning her mind works in more than one way (making her brave, selfless and wicked smart) \u2014 gets discovered by the wrong people, including the leader of the Erudite, the knowledge-seeking faction, lead by a icily intimidating Kate Winslet. I think the odds are ever in your favor that you&amp;#039;ll enjoy Divergent waaay more than Hunger Games. Here&amp;#039;s why: 1. The characters actually have fun. The Hunger Games is really one long relentless slog through war, misery, and poverty. Katniss and Peeta go from their bleak, gray home to the hellscape of the Arena, with a quick stop in the Capitol to feel horrified by and superior to its partying, colorful denizens. When Tris leaves her gray but kind of happy home to run with the wild boys and girls of Dauntless, you can feel her thrill to their endorphin-fueled swagger and unbridled physicality. Sure, things DO go wrong and the training involves knives flying at her head, but it also involves lots of whooping, dancing, tattoo-getting, and bad-assery. 2. There&amp;#039;s some romance. Katniss&amp;#039; painful &amp;quot;Ooohhh, I&amp;#039;m only pretending to like kissing Peeta, but maybe I do, but I don&amp;#039;t, but Gale is smoldering at me, what do I do,&amp;quot; gets really old. Every time she gets physically close to one of her male admirers, she looks like she&amp;#039;s in physical pain. Tris, on the other hand, seems to enjoy the sight of Theo James as Four almost as much as I did in the audience. She knows her limits, but she also knows what she wants. MORE! See What Shailene Had to Say About Kissing THEO. JAMES. 3. Tris has a best girl friend.  Katniss only sort of develops a real female friend who&amp;#039;s a peer towards the end of Mockingjay, mostly because she finds someone almost as broken as she is. Tris meets Christina when they both choose Dauntless and then have each other&amp;#039;s backs, laugh together, tease each other about boys, and matter to each other in a way that feels real and natural. I like girls who know how to have best friends. Katniss sort of just seems to know how to have weaker, younger women depend on her. 4. It&amp;#039;s kind of thrilling. The visuals and acts of physical courage in Divergent can be so exciting that you want to soar and leap along with the characters. In Hunger Games, you cheer for Katniss&amp;#039; triumphs, but it&amp;#039;s all just so grim, you never want to be in anyone&amp;#039;s shoes. As Tris finds her own strength and courage and yes, attraction to Four, you want to be in there with her. 5. The baddie is another badass chick.  Donald Sutherland is awesome, but there were moments when watching his face-offs with Lawrence as Katniss gave the creepies, like weird, old great-uncle kind of creepy. Woodley as Tris gets to fight against cool and cunning Kate Winslet, another powerful, badass woman. It&amp;#039;s kinda cool. (Though to be fair, Katniss will face off against semi-evil women in Mockingjay). MORE: Get a Dauntless Body! 6. Woodley&amp;#039;s hair  I swear, it should get its own billing. She puts it up and pulls it down the way a real person actually does. Down, it is so thick and shampoo-commercial looking, you&amp;#039;re going to get distracted and dazzled by her highlights. Up, her perfect, center-back-of-head ponytail whips the ass of Katniss&amp;#039; fishtail side-braid.  7. It hits close to home While The Hunger Games&amp;#039; messages about poverty, power, corruption, and the commoditization of people and violence is certainly powerful and relevant, Divergent&amp;#039;s lessons of believing in your own mind and body, being open to others&amp;#039; views of the world and the corrosive and corruptive nature of fear and power feel very personal and impactful, especially for its original YA audience.  MORE: Which Divergent Faction Would You Be In? What do you think? Is Divergent better than The Hunger Games? Comment below!  Originally Posted on Cosmopolitan.com "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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