Chaos Walking (2021)
“It’s loud.” – Viola.
“We call it the Noise. Happened to all the men when we landed on this planet. Every thought in our heads are on display.” – Mayor Prentiss.
Chaos Walking (2021)
Directed by: Doug Liman
Written by: Patrick Ness (screenplay), Christopher Ford (screenplay), Patrick Ness (based on the book by)
Starring: Tom Holland, Daisy Ridley, Mads Mikkelsen
What has now been widely accepted as a commercial and critical flop, Chaos Walking is a confusing jumble of wasted talent and squandered source material. With a budget somewhere between $100-$125 million USD, it has grossed only $16 million USD worldwide, and coming out of the movie even that felt generous. So how did the production company screw this up so badly?
Firstly, I question why they made this genre of movie in the first place. An adaptation of a 2008 young adult novel (The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, who helped adapt the screenplay), Chaos Walking is set in a dystopian future in the year 2257AD. The newly colonised planet New World has no female inhabitants, and the men who reside there can hear and see each other’s thoughts in a stream of images and sounds called ‘Noise’. When newcomer Viola (Ridley) crash-lands on the planet, the inquisitive Todd (Holland) decides to help her as they run from the villainous Mayor Prentiss (Mikkelsen).
I haven’t read the book, but it seems as if the content would have made for an entertaining teen sci-fi/fantasy novel. There’s a lot to unpack, and even the simple concept of ‘visible thoughts’ is interesting. However, the production companies got lazy here and instead of focussing on finessing the script to refine this source material, they decided to spend a tonne of money on an A-grade cast and hoped that they would carry the film. And it really is a talented cast, with the two wonder kids in Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley fresh off the success of the Spiderman and Star Wars franchises, and Mads Mikkelsen, Cynthia Erivo and David Oyelowo bringing their critically acclaimed dramatic acting chops to the supporting cast. Lionsgate also decided to hire iconic director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Edge of Tomorrow, Swingers) to helm the project. So, they now have big stars, a talented director, and decent source material. And it’s worth pointing out that the simple equation of Bankable Stars + Alright Script = Box Office Success has clearly worked before – I mean, Adam Sandler has released complete garbage on Netflix for 5 straight years and every film is extremely popular, and Mark Wahlberg movies never miss. However, I feel like the production companies forgot one key ingredient here – no one cares about dystopian teen films anymore.
Five to ten years ago, sure, dystopian teen fiction was the hottest genre around. Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, these were all outrageously popular at the time. However, audiences got bored, and the fad slowly faded away with increasingly anaemic box office returns on these franchises. They really thought Chaos Walking was going to reignite the genre? Sloppy foresight, and they were punished for this. Today’s box office market share is overwhelmingly commanded by four main genres – superhero movies, kids movies, established mega-franchise (i.e. Fast and Furious, Jurassic Park, James Bond, Star Wars, etc.) movies, and the gamut of ‘original’ content created by streaming services. As a disappointing movie outside of any of these categories, this was set-up for box office failure from the start.
Not even the visuals (which are impressive, likely due to the large amount of money pumped into the SFX budget) or the talented actors are able to carry this movie to anything more than a mediocre rating. Holland is charming, innocent and likeable as always, and the script does give him some opportunities to provide some funny moments. Ridley’s performance is pretty vanilla (to be perfectly honest, I don’t think she’s a great actor, so I wasn’t expecting much more), and Mikkelsen’s character is such a predictable stereotypical villain that he sort of mails it in.
I’ve just spent 650 words ripping this film to shreds, and I haven’t even reached the plot. To be fair, the start is interesting, with an introduction of the characters, the ‘Noise’ and Viola arriving on the New World. However, the complication of Viola and Todd then having to outrun Mayor Prentiss is predictable, and fizzles out over the rest of the film. This means the last sixty minutes of the film land somewhere between boring and mildly interesting. The stakes just don’t seem big enough, and there are far too many plot holes throughout, including the most predictable ‘twist’ or reveal in a movie I can remember. I didn’t care enough about the characters to care about their fates, and the action sequences weren’t exciting enough to distract you from the meandering plot.
In no surprise, I don’t recommend this movie to anyone. If you’re into dystopian teen fiction, go and watch the other films from the 2000s instead. Similar to Will Smith’s dystopian flop After Earth, this never gets off the ground and will disappear into the depths of these actor’s otherwise impressive IMDb pages.
Rating: 5/10
After a bunch of research, I found that the production was actually an absolute disaster. Timeline:
Lionsgate acquired worldwide distribution rights to the film in 2011.
Multiple drafts of the screenplay were then written and edited by six separate writers from 2012-2013
The script then bounced around Hollywood for a few years, with multiple directors attached, before Doug Liman finally committed in late 2016.
Principal photography on the shoot finished all the way back in 2017, but the test screenings were so poor, the production companies shelled out an additional $15 million USD for reshoots.
However, as Ridley was filming Star Wars, and Holland was filming Spiderman, the reshoots couldn’t begin until April 2019, this time with another director, Fede Avarez.
Originally scheduled to be released in March 2019, the movie then gets pushed back two whole years due to reshoots and COVID.
The movie is finally released in March 2021, with Deadline Hollywood writing that Lionsgate had “already written off the pictures loss”.
Late March 2021 – this review comes out, confirming that the film is an absolute disaster and you definitely shouldn’t go and watch it.