The Divergent series has, in many ways, been doomed from go. Propping up the dystopian hero’s story is a clumsily conceived, confusing “faction” system that makes so little sense it can cause spontaneous combustion if meditated on for extended periods of time. So, here we are, considering Allegiant, the third entry in the series based on Veronica Roth’s popular YA books, directed by Robert Schwentke. While the overlong, bland, uninspired, nonsensical movie didn’t cause said spontaneous combustion, my explosive demise is imminent; there’s another one coming out next summer, part two of this miserably drawn-out finale, and if there’s any silver lining, it’s that we can at least say there’s an end game in sight.

Again, we join Tris (Shailene Woodley) as she continues to unravel the mystery of “the founders,” the people who set up the cockamamie faction system however-many years ago. To catch up: Until the final events of Insurgent, Chicago had been divided into districts, whose residents are assigned according to their dominant personality traits. Upon opening a mystery box left by the founders, Tris and the rest of Chicago learns that there are people beyond the sky-high city walls that have confined them for all this time, a revelation that effectively collapses the longstanding faction system and sends plucky Tris, her super-soldier boyfriend Four (Theo James) and their rebellious friends on a quest to find out, once and for all, what’s beyond the wall.

An underwhelming run-n-gun sequence follows our heroes as they evade military forces sent by Four’s mom, Evelyn (Naomi Watts), who in the last movie disposed of the tyrannical Janine (Kate Winslet), only to (predictably) adopt the former leader’s totalitarian tendencies. The group makes it over the wall, but not before two of the series’ prominent characters of color—played by Mekhi Phifer and Maggie Q, who are each given virtually no dialogue as a parting gift—are gunned down, likely to make room for the new influx of white actors we’re about to meet (Daniel Dae Kim shows up for a second too, another minority bit-part designed to create a false sense of diversity). Not an uncommon Hollywood practice, but frustrating nonetheless.

On the other side of the wall, we find a Martian-looking wasteland, an army bearing futuristic weaponry, a new city (built, amusingly, on the remains of O’Hare International Airport), and a benevolent leader David (a sleepy Jeff Daniels), who informs Tris that she is the sole success of the “Chicago experiment” the founders set up all those years ago. There are details, but they’re too stupid and uninteresting to get into here. The basics are, Tris is the key to the prosperity of the human race, and David, who (surprise!) isn’t as benevolent as he appears to be, pampers her into ignoring her friends to concentrate on fulfilling his Hitler-y dreams. Four, Christina (Zoe Kravitz), and Tris brother Caleb (Ansel Elgort) do their best to snap Tris out of her self-aggrandizing daydream while also dealing with a civil war that’s broken out back in Chicago between Evelyn and Johanna’s (Octavia Spencer) respective followers.

The logic of the faction system was already frustrating, but now the series introduces this master-race narrative that only makes things worse. It simply isn’t clear what the message is Roth and the filmmakers are trying to get across. Is it that everyone’s special? No one is special? Tris seems pretty special. So do her friends. They all specialize in one thing—Four kicks major ass, Caleb’s good with tech—but the movie seems to be saying that their laser career focus is the result of genetic tampering or something, which leads us back to the secret behind the faction system mess. I can feel my body wanting to burst now, as I type this.

The enjoyable thing about Insurgent was that the action was urgent and inventive, but the set pieces here feel more trite and way less entertaining. The folks beyond the wall have nicer looking lasers and flying bubble ships than the dirty trucks and machine guns we’ve seen in the previous installments, which is a welcome change, but one can’t get over the fact that every bit of art design we see feels woefully generic, as if they were scrounged from a bin of unused video game assets. Unexpectedly missed are the surrealistic dream sequences from the first movies.

Perhaps the biggest head-scratcher of all is how a movie can fail so epically with such an amazing cast of seasoned vets and young stars populating the screen at any given moment. For goodness sake, you’ve got Spencer, Watts, and Daniels bouncing off of Woodley, Elgort, James (who’s not half bad here, actually), Kravitz, and Miles Teller, whose charisma can make the most terrible line work, at least to some extent. The Whiplash star is a standout as the opportunistic Peter, whose flips in allegiance have been enjoyable throughout the series. My feeling is that the cast makes a terrible script feel somewhat coherent and emotionally grounded, and for that the unlucky few who actually see this movie in a theater should be thankful.

With with young actresses emerging as bankable leads in sci-fi and action pictures, taking a bit of the pie from their hulking male counterparts, casting the right actress in those lead roles is more crucial than ever. Jennifer Lawrence has set a high standard with her work in the Hunger Games series, and Shailene Woodley holds her own as the star of Divergent, the first installment of adaptations of Veronica Roth’s best-selling YA series.

Woodley, a proven talent (The Spectacular Now, The Descendants), takes command of the film as our heroine Beatrice with a strong spine and perceptive wit. Unfortunately, even her presence (along with the rest of the rock-solid cast) can’t patch up the dull script, which is head-scratchingly nonsensical at worst, campy fun at best.

The aforementioned head-scratching begins with the film’s setting, a near-future dystopian Chicago divided into five distinct factions, each with their own role to play in maintaining an orderly, functioning society. This societal structure is so impractical it’s funny, though it serves its ultimate narrative purpose of providing rabid YA fanboys and girls with the same fantasy tribalism that was an appealing foundation for the Harry Potter series.

Beatrice was raised in the faction called Abnegation, an Amish-like group that prides itself on selflessness and humility. The kids in Dauntless, the enforcer faction whose members traverse the damaged city streets (and rooftops) like a parkour S.W.A.T. team, catches Beatrice’s eye as she shares their (ostensible) taste for adventure and camaraderie. Now that she’s turning 16, she’ll have the opportunity to switch factions, if she so pleases, after taking a VR test meant to suggest which caste she’s best suited to based on her attributes. Administering her test is a tattoo artist named Tori (Maggie Q), who informs her that her attributes are too numerous to shove her into any faction, an anomaly referred to as–you guessed it–Divergent.

Problem is, Divergents are considered a threat to society as they disrupt the order of the faction system. Erudite, the faction of intellectual snobs, hates Divergents the most, and their leader (Kate Winslet) seems hell-bent on sniffing them out and doing god-knows-what with them. (Probably something evil!)

Beatrice chooses to align with Dauntless, where she trims her name to Tris and gets thrown into a sort of bootcamp where the brutality of the training borders on felonious. She makes a handful of friends, bonding immediately with petit nice-girl Christina (Zoe Kravitz). Miles Teller plays a prick former Candor who bullies Tris at every turn, a dynamic made more interesting if you’ve seen the two co-star in The Spectacular Now.

Director Neil Burger (The Illusionist) is too precious with the source material, and the overwhelming amount of expositional information (conveyed largely in uninspired voiceover by Woodley) dampens any urgency and drama the actors manage to get rolling. For every well-acted, emotional minute between Woodley and her co-stars, there are 10 hollow minutes of tiresome explaining. The art design is forgettable and generic, and the world Roth has built doesn’t seem to be grounded in any sort of logic. Most of Chicago is literally crumbling to bits, while the yuppies in Erudite walk around in buildings that look as immaculate as giant Apple stores. This is the most obtuse kind of social commentary, since the logistics of it all don’t make any sense. Roth’s analogy is too extreme, too undercooked.

The hunky Theo James plays Four, Tris’ commander and crush. Woodley and James have good chemistry, but again, the script betrays them. When Tris glimpses a bit of Four’s back tattoo, and he peels off his shirt to show her the rest of it without a second thought, it’s hard not to let out a little groan. At one point, Tris proclaims proudly, “I am Divergent!” as Burger zooms in slowly. She might as well be looking straight into the camera. It’s schlock like this that no actor, no matter how skilled, can recite naturally.

Divergent is too by-the-book, literally and figuratively (and ironically), for it to be a viable challenger to Hunger Games‘ throne atop the YA market, but it’s got some thrilling set pieces (an urban zipline scene is a standout) and has a great cast, making it a distant–but solid–second. Divergent is chock-full of holes, but Woodley and her bright band of co-stars try valiantly to save the day.

Divergent trailer

This Friday, Divergent drops on the masses, looking to cultivate a the same kind of ravenous YA fan base that made Twilight and Hunger Games so goddamn bankable. (The second installment of Hunger Games I quite liked, proving these kinds of films don’t have to be reduced to cash-grabs.) The Divergent book series has already amassed a gigantic, devoted following, so now it’s just up to the creative minds behind the film to follow through.

We had an opportunity to sit down with two of the stars of the Veronica Roth novel adaptation, Maggie Q, who plays shadowy tattoo artist Tori, and Mekhi Phifer, who dons a badass black jacket as Max, the leader of Dauntless, one of five factions that make up the world of Divergent. Directed by Neil Burger, the film also stars Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Kate Winslet, and Miles Teller.

In the edited press roundtable interview below, the actors spoke to us about how it feels to be involved in such a huge franchise, what characters they’d like to play other than their own, navigating the movie industry as a minority actor, and the importance of saying no to stereotypical roles.

Divergent opens this Friday, March 21 nationwide.

What drew you to the project? Secondly, have you read the books, and do you know the fates of your characters?

Mekhi: First and foremost, in our profession, what draws you into any [project] is not only the people you’re going to potentially be working with, but the quality of the script. That’s first and foremost. Neither one of us knew about Divergent at all. What drew me to it was that it was just good. Then, you have Neil Burger, Kate Winslet, Ashley Judd–all of these other great people in it. It’s hard not to want to be a part of something so special. Then I spoke to my agents and people who knew the series, and they were extremely excited.

Maggie: You have to have faith in their assessment. They’re like, “You don’t understand!” and you’re like, “You’re right! I don’t!”

Mekhi: We sort of pseudo know [the fates of our characters]. We don’t have the script, but things could change. Who knows.

Maggie: Adaptations are funny. It depends.

Mekhi: There’s a certain artistic license we’re taking with the adaptation. It’s not necessarily literal to the book. I’m sort of twisting in the wind. I don’t know what’s happening. (laughs)

Maggie: [As for what drew me to the project,] the script is first and foremost, whether it’s a best-selling book or not. Let’s be honest: there are best-selling books that have been made into movies that are not good. Because adaptations are specific to what they think will work from the book, you kind of have to read the script first and not the book first, to see whether you like the way they’ve adapted it. If you want background, a rooting and education of it, you can turn to the book. We had Veronica Roth on set to help us, too, and it wasn’t a weird thing. It’s [typically] a weird thing to have writers on set: it’s a no-no.

Mekhi: Unless you’re doing TV.

Maggie: Yeah. It’s annoying. But on TV you need them because it’s constantly changing. But on a film that’s a touchy thing.

Mekhi: Usually in film, the [studios] acquire the rights [to the script], and then they say “get out of here” [to the writers].

Maggie: I don’t know how writers don’t jump off buildings. Their work kind of makes it on screen, but it takes a lot of passes. [As for the fates of our characters,] I know when she dies. I mean, the books are out, so that’s something the people knew before I did. We just hope that when we die the mourning is so great that people can barely make it! (laughs) This movie sets our characters up: who we are, where we’re going. The next film is going to be very exciting of us.

You guys are officially a part of this franchise now as these beloved characters, with this rabid fan base. If you could play another character in the series, who would you be?

Maggie: It’s hard, because they did such a good job with casting!

Mekhi: I like being Max! (laughs)

Maggie: Imagine if Mekhi was like, “I’d love to play Tris..” (laughs) I don’t know. I mean, I like our journeys.

Mekhi: I like our journeys as well. That’s a good question. Nobody’s ever asked us that. [I would pick] somebody in Dauntless.

Maggie: Yeah, we like Dauntless.

Mekhi: Jai [Courtney]’s character is interesting from a male perspective.

Maggie: But again, he does it well and he’s one of our friends, so I don’t know if I would want to take on what he did. There are so many characters in the franchise. A few die in this one, and then we’ll go on to the next one and see who we kill! (laughs)

Black actors are having a stronger and stronger presence in cinema, even though things aren’t where they should be, especially in television. Asian actors aren’t even close as far as visibility. They’re always type-cast, and it’s irritating. You two weren’t type-casted for these roles at all, which helps in terms of that conversation.

Maggie: It’s fun to be paired [on this press tour] with another minority. We know what it’s like. We know how that box exists. It’s very real. (To Mekhi) I’m sure you were offered every drug dealer role. Every pimp role.

Mekhi: Oh yeah, of course. You’ve got to say no. You’ve got to turn it down!

Maggie: You have to say no. The only power you have is to walk away. You can sit around all day long and whine about what [parts] you’re not getting, but it’s not about what you’re not getting; it’s about what you’re not taking. For me, as an Asian American, I’m looking for roles that are non ethnic-specific. If you come to me and you’re like, “Can you play this flower girl on this boat?”, the finger goes up really fast. The blood boils really quickly. Sure, I or any Asian girl could play that role. If you’re doing a story on history or whatever, that’s totally valid.

When you get roles that are stereotypical and do not push our cause or further our image in media and in entertainment, it’s your responsibility to turn those things down. I’m not saying that from the position of, “I’ve earned enough so that I can say no.” I’ve said no to things when I had no money.

Mekhi: Absolutely.

Maggie: It wasn’t about that. It was about the big picture. Where do I want to go with this? Do I want to make that amount of money for the next six months, and then what? It goes away, and I’d have no further career beyond that. Or, do I want to make smart decisions that are going to change the face of my freakin’ community?!

I was negotiating my deal on Nikita. A copy of the Hollywood Reporter came to my house one day. There was a photo of me, and it said that there was this landmark casting about to happen. I was like, “Ooh…what landmark casting?” I started reading this article, and it said that if I took the deal–I was still negotiating–that I would be the first Asian American lead on broadcast television. I wanted to throw up. There are so many quality Asian American actors out there, but they’re not giving us the lead roles!

What was important to me was not that it was an Asian lead. What was important to me was that it was a lead that was not written for an Asian. Nikita’s always been played by white girls. Always. Warner Bros. took a leap of faith and said, “We don’t want a French girl, or a white girl, or this or that. We want the right actress. And it doesn’t matter if she’s black, or white, or yellow or purple. We want the right person who has the heart of this character. You have it.”

These are not ethnic-specific roles (in Divergent). It’s not like Tori pushes the dim sum cart around the Dauntless vault, you know what I’m saying? But let me tell you…you get those scripts. They come all the time.

Mekhi: Max definitely wasn’t just written for a black man. You want to be good at what you do, and hopefully that helps break down stereotypes.

Mekhi, one of your early roles was in Clockers, and that was a very complex role and not stereotypical.

Mekhi: Right, right.

Later on you were on ER, and it’s that great progression where, you start seeing people in these roles and it no longer becomes specific to a particular ethnicity.

Maggie: You’ve got to walk into the [casting] room and change their minds. You do. I’m like, “Send me into that room where they want a white girl. Now. Send me into that room.” I don’t care. It shouldn’t be about that. They should be open to whatever, but if they’re not, you’ve got to be up for that fight. Half of the time it’s getting the job and performing at a level where you can continue to work. But the other half is that fight, getting into those rooms.

We’re seeing a bit of that now with the Fantastic Four casting. Michael B. Jordan’s a great actor. I think people will start turning, open up, and change. They’re fictional characters.

Maggie: We do live in the United States. What are we talking about? If we can’t be diverse here…I don’t understand how that’s even possible. It’s very, very strange. It’s also a global market now, too, which is why it’s changing. Some of it is that attitudes are changing. Some of it is that certain parts of the world–Latin America, Asia–we’re selling half the world, baby. You’ve got to put [actors] in positions where people in other parts of the world can relate to what you’re throwing on screen.

I’ve seen a lot of progress because of the global market, number one. Two, you have to get out there in a way where people actually know you as an individual. It’s about people knowing and liking you as a person first, seeing your work and appreciating it for what it is.

Mekhi: I’ve turned down money [before] because I was either going to be making lateral movement or going down as far as the way I was being perceived by the public and fans. There are jobs that I wouldn’t take, but then there’d be this job that would take you to another level.

Maggie: You’ve got to be patient, have faith in the process, and also know that you have something to offer that’s real. Then, it’s really all about what actually matters.

Mekhi: If integrity matters to you and you want to be an actor, when you get those jobs, save your money so that you’re not a slave to the system.

Maggie: I got the best letter ever. When we get scripts, there’s always a cover letter on it that says, “In anticipation of our conversation,” or “As per our conversation, here’s the script, here’s the director, here’s who’s in it.” There’s always this cover letter. To be fair to my agent–who I’ve been with for ten years and who I love–there was a bunch of scripts I was delivered. He was in Paris, hadn’t seen them, and had them sent over. I got this script–I’m not going to tell you what movie it is. “In anticipation of our conversation, please find the script written by ‘blah blah’, starring ‘blah blah’.” I shit you not, it said, “Please take a look at the role of ‘The Chink’.” You can’t make it up. That’s the name of the character.

It’s framed in my office, because I want to always be reminded of what’s out there. First of all, I’m going to punch this writer in the face! Just let me know where he or she lives. Then, they were like, “It’s kind of a cool character!” Super racist. A very talented Asian actress ended up taking the role. A very talented Asian actress. You’ve got to say no.

This past Wednesday, Divergent, the next potential YA phenomenon from Summit Entertainment based on the popular Veronica Roth book series, premiered in San Francisco with stars Maggie Q and Mekhi Phifer in attendence. The film, about a daring girl named Tris (Shailene Woodley) who discovers she’s “divergent”, meaning she doesn’t fit into any of the five factions that make up her city (a post-apocalyptic Chicago) like everyone else. The film also stars Kate Winslet, Theo James, Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort, and Zoe Kravitz.

The franchise already has a ravenous fan base going in to the first film of the series, and with a talented cast of young talents and seasoned vets in tow, Divergent has a strong chance of setting itself apart in the sea of YA contenders vying for the attention of young fanatics. We’ll see the film’s full impact on March 21st, when it releases nationwide.

Check out photos from the red carpet below, and stay tuned for our chat with Maggie Q and Mekhi Phifer coming soon.