You can now add The Divergent Series to the number of film franchises that have suffered from studio greed and have failed audiences by unnecessarily splitting the last part of the story into two films. It happened to The Hunger Games and Twilight and the ridiculous trend backfires once again with the latest film in the Divergent series, Allegiant.

With the death of Jeanine in Insurgent, Tris (Shailene Woodley), Four (Theo James), Peter (Miles Teller), Christina (Zoe Kravitz), and Caleb (Ansel Elgort) scale the wall that has hidden them from the rest of the world for their whole lives. They now know that their Chicago home was some sort of experiment and they’ve been invited to go outside the wall. Tris, especially, is eager to find out the truth about her “divergence.”

Not so, Evelyn (Naomi Watts), the former leader of the factionless, now leading the governing council, which also includes former Amity leader, Johanna (Octavia Spencer). Evelyn tries and executes those loyal to Jeanine and in Tris’s mind, Evelyn’s disregard for life makes her as bad as the despised Erudit leader.

When Tris and friends make it over the wall, they encounter a radioactive wasteland. Rescued from the muck, they meet the folks from the Bureau of Genetic Welfare. There Tris learns that she is what they call genetically pure whereas Four and all her other friends are considered genetically damaged. David (Jeff Daniels), overseer of the Chicago experiment, endeavors to answer Tris’s questions in order to enlist her to convince the Bureau’s council to keep funding his research.

Desperate for answers to her many questions about divergency, her mother, and the Chicago experiment, she drinks in what David tells her, ignoring the fact that Four has serious reservations about whether or not David can be trusted.

As a movie which continues the Divergent series, Allegiant moves the story forward but that’s about all. The character of Tris, so strong in the first two films, sits back and becomes passive. We don’t really care about what happens to her anymore. I tend to wonder how the last film still to come, Ascendant, will turn out. However, if your teens are fans of the series, the movie provides many opportunities to talk about some values that have far reaching consequences in life. They include the value of life, the abuse of power, deception for one’s own gain, betrayal of trust, seeking truth, and loyalty.