Is 'Divergent' Just Like 'The Hunger Games'?

We first saw it with Twilight, the beastiality-laden vampire series about two star-crossed lovers destined to love one another for eternity. With the success of the book came the inevitable transformation into not two, not three, but four drawn-out films. Sales skyrocketed and the model for YA-adapted novels was born. The first Hunger Games film, adapted from Suzanne Collins' bestsellers, proved fans were still eager for trilogies, and the second film broke box office records. So with the release of another teen-centric novel-to-film adaptation being released Friday, we must beg the obvious question: Is Divergent any different than The Hunger Games ? Both films have young, female leads, and both are set in a dystopian future? How different could they really be?

According to Divergent's director Neil Burger and producer Lucy Fisher, the two franchises couldn't be more different.

"It obviously has a female heroine in the future. But my feeling was that I wanted to make it as different as possible as [The Hunger Games]," Burger said at the Los Angeles press day for the film. "Those movies are grand and grey and bleak and post-apocalyptic, so one thing was to tip [Divergent] towards a utopia... to shoot in a much more luminous and light kind of way," he said.

Another difference between the films, as pointed out by Burger, is that while Jennifer Lawrence's character in The Hunger Games is trying to escape her society, Divergent's Tris is fighting to join it.

"Tris wants to be part of this society, wants to find her place in it. So we tried to make it seem like a society that was worth joining. It's a very different story. She's not on the run the whole time, she's not just trying to survive. She's having really complex relationships with a variety of people: with her friends, with her parents with her mentors, with her superior officers, whether they are people who are trying to help her or people who are trying to undercut her," Burger argued.

Producer Lucy Fisher argued that the outlook and essence of both leading women, Katniss and Tris, are inherently different. "Our lead character is very different in that the person in [Hunger Games] is very, very strong from the beginning. Whereas our girl, Tris, isn't even allowed to look in the mirror when she starts off. She has a wistful want for something she doesn't even know she can ever grasp."

But don't take their word for it. Divergent hits theatres Friday, March 21. Watch the trailer for the film below: