Sometimes a movie has all the benefits of a big-budget, a loaded cast, is visually appealing, and has an interesting concept and, even with the theatrical experience, it’s still just sort of…meh. Unfortunately, that’s the case with Chaos Walking.
I’m not familiar with the source material so I won’t pretend to be. Set at least 100-years in the future on an Earth-like planet targeted for colonization, some unexplained thing turned all the men’s thoughts into an audio-visual representation for all to see. Naturally, that led to some big problems and war. When a ship carrying a young woman and her crew crash lands on the New World, she witnesses, first hand, the fallout of these men’s visible “noise”.
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It’s hard not to think of this in terms of “Twitter-world”. A place where all men’s frustrations boil over in their inability to understand and effectively communicate with women. Given the right structure, this idea could have landed well, but the whole concept is nerfed by its PG-13 approach. My understanding is that the source novel by Patrick Ness is classified as a “young-adult” story, with a 13-year-old protagonist. That explains why casting a 24-year-old Tom Holland into the lead and saddling him with the characteristics of a 13-year old don’t add up in the slightest.
There are a handful of moments that work well, especially in using “the noise” to visualize some memories and emotional cues, but it felt mostly like a narrative crutch. I get that there’s a ton of YA material that’s been made over the last decade but director Doug Liman, along with Ness and Christopher Ford, traded in the real substance for stylistic storytelling and tried to walk the line between the coming-of-age narrative and serious, adult-oriented plot. I know this was supposed to be the start of a trilogy, and you can feel the seed planting for further installments throughout the movie, but I just don’t see how they can move forward after this one.
Holland broke into stardom playing a high-school kid, but he’s not getting any younger, and pigeon-holing him into these characters is only going to last so long. FWIW, he’s good in the role and his sense of humor makes for some of the better moments in the film. Daisy Ridley was good too, but I don’t know what was up with her hair. When she’s introduced, she’s got tight braids and then her ship crashlands and she comes out of the wreckage with scraggly bangs. Then at the end of the film, she’s got yet another hairstyle. My money says they were going for some Leeloo from The Fifth Element, especially with the strong orange notes in Ridley’s costuming, but maybe it’s a look only Milla Jovovich can pull off. I actually liked Ridley in this role and would have preferred her to be the lead, given the context. Her character skews more adult while Holland’s skews more adolescent, and they don’t really have the romantic chemistry necessary to hold water with that part of the story.
The cast really is fantastic, with Mads Mikkelsen as the primary antagonist Mayor Prentiss. He’s always a strong performer and he’s one of the best elements in this movie. It still felt like there was something missing though. David Oyelowo plays the fanatical preacher Aaron and brings a different brand of villain to the table, filled with rage and apparently a lot of guilt that comes out of nowhere towards the end of the movie. Both high-quality actors who brought their best to some roles that had low ceilings.
Demián Bichir, Cynthia Erivo, Kurt Sutter, and Nick Jonas all had characters I would have liked to see more of, but in the pursuit of style, they all had to take a back seat to the grandiosity of the primary antagonists.
I absolutely love Sci-Fi, and I actually braved going to a recently re-opened theater in order to see this movie, but it just didn’t get there for me. The whole thing with “the noise” came across as gimmicky and shallow (as I mentioned earlier) to deliver some particular beats in the script. While I didn’t hate the movie, I couldn’t help but feel like it was a waste of potential. That seems to be the general consensus as well.
Recommendation: Unless you’re a diehard sci-fi aficionado or a fan of the source novel, you can probably skip this one. It’s not a bad movie at all, it just didn’t do anything particularly special or memorable with its screentime.