After surviving the breakdown of society and uprising of rebels, Divergent heroine Tris Prior is leading the quest for answers in the new film Allegiant.

Released in US theatres this weekend, Allegiant is the first of a two-part finale to the Divergent franchise. It is set in a post-apocalyptic Chicago where society is divided into five factions based on people’s personalities: wisdom, honesty, selflessness, kindness and bravery.

The films are based on Veronica Roth’s trilogy of novels.

The events of Divergent and Insurgent have led to civil war. In Allegiant, two female leaders battle to govern the city while Tris (Shailene Woodley) leads a small group of friends outside their gated world.

Tris leads a group of friends across destroyed lands in Allegiant.

Amid destroyed lands, they discover an organisation with a chilling agenda, that established Chicago as an experiment to find someone who is “pure”, with attributes of all five factions.

For Woodley, the character of Tris, an innocent teenager forced to harden up both physically and emotionally, joins a growing roster of strong female roles in film.

“You see Halle Berry and Ashley Judd kicking ass back in the day but it’s really nice to still see that train rolling and to see that there are more, more and more strong women out there in films,” the 24-year-old actress said.

Woodley added that the Divergent films, which also star Theo James, Miles Teller, Zoe Kravitz, Naomi Watts and Octavia Spencer, presented an equality between young men and women fighting for freedom.

“It’s not males are leading and the females are being suppressed or the females are leading and the males are being suppressed,” she said.

Sparks fly between Shailene Woodley and Theo James in the sequel to Divergent.

“There’s equality between the kingdom and the queendom and I think that’s all that needs to happen in our modern world.”

The Divergent films follow the young adult hit franchises Twilight and The Hunger Games, both also adapted from young adult novels and huge hits at the worldwide box office.

Five Twilight films took in $3.3 billion, while four Hunger Games films took in nearly $3 billion. The Divergent films have so far grossed more than $500 million worldwide. While Allegiant received an unfavourable 36 per cent rating on reviews aggregator Metacritic.com, the series does have avid fans.

“Ultimately, I think we make these movies for selfish reasons for ourselves – just to be actors and artists to be able to express. But when people receive them, there is something very gratifying,” Woodley said.