On Display for All to See

Another day, another bland movie for us to review on this site. The thing is that this time it really didn't need to be: Chaos Walking has all the pieces it needs to be an enjoyable film, at least in so far as the people involved in the production could make it. It's directed by Doug Liman, who has made a lot of great films (Swingers, Go, The Bourne Identity, Edge of Tomorrow). It stars Tom "SpidermanSure, DC Comics has Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, but among the most popular superheroes stands a guy from Marvel Comics, a younger hero dressed in red and blue who shoots webs and sticks to walls. Introduced in the 1960s, Spider-Man has been a constant presence in comics and more, featured in movies regularly since his big screen debut in 2002." Holland, Daisy "I was in Star WarsThe modern blockbuster: it's a concept so commonplace now we don't even think about the fact that before the end of the 1970s, this kind of movie -- huge spectacles, big action, massive budgets -- wasn't really made. That all changed, though, with Star Wars, a series of films that were big on spectacle (and even bigger on profits). A hero's journey set against a sci-fi backdrop, nothing like this series had ever really been done before, and then Hollywood was never the same." Ridley, and Mads "Hannibal" Mikkelsen. It should work.

But it doesn't, not in the slightest. It's a very handsomely made film, and it has some solid action. it has a concept that should be interesting, a world to explore that could lead to a lot of potential. On every front it feels like the film is grasping for something. And yet, and this is utterly mild-boggling when you watch the film, it manages to achieve nothing. All these great pieces are there but the film squanders it all on a bland and uninteresting mess. I don't know what we should expect from a Y.A. movie now, long after the Y.A. boom has died off in cinemas, but we should expect better than Chaos Walking, that's for sure.

Based on the Chaos Walking trilogy of novels by Patrick Ness (who also co-wrote the screenplay), the film posits a world where all the men have "noise", visual representations of what their thinking that float outside their head for all the world to see. This only affects the men, but as it so happens all the women in the human settlement (on this alien world) died when the aliens of the planet (though as Ridley's character, Viola, wisely points out, it's the humans that are technically the aliens) attacked the settlement. Since then it's been just men right up until a space pod from a colony ship in space crashes on the world with only one survivor: Ridley's Viola Edge.

The first to discover Viola is Todd Hewitt (Tom Holland), a young member of the colony who has very powerful Noise that he struggles to control. What shocks him is that Viola has no Noise; he can't read her and that freaks him out. It also freaks out the rest of the town, but the Mayor (Mads Mikkelsen) is more worried about what the colony ship signifies: more colonists means he could lose his power over the colony. So he convinces the rest of the town to chase down Viola and stop her from communicating with her ship; when the ship lands, the Mayor plans to ambush it and steal all the supplies and tech for himself. Fearing for Viola's life, Todd helps her escape and the two go on the run. They have to find someone that can help them before the colony ship lands lest the Mayor wins and he takes over the world.

A big part of the problem with Chaos Walking is that the story is an utter mess. Adapted from his own story, Ness wrote this screenplay so I'd think all the salient points would have ended up (at least) in the script but it does feel like there's a lot missing from the story to make it, well, sensical at all. The film is a fairly svelte 110 minutes, tight for a sci-fi film in this era, and I have to wonder just how much of the important meat of the film was left on the cutting room floor (if it actually existed at all).

I will admit that I haven't read the book (but I also doubt I even will considering how bad this film is -- it's a terrible ad for reading the book, that's for sure). I have wonder about a lot of stuff that the film just takes for granted, that the characters never think about, but I recognized quite quickly. For starters, did no one survey the planet before colonists were sent here. Even before the probes would discover the radiation in the sky that causes "the Noise" they should have found the aliens that lived on the planet and wondered about them. There's never any mention of the fact that the aliens were unexpected, or that maybe the colonists should have been warned about their existence. It's just taken as fact that the colonists were sent to a planet that already had a sentient species (and a larger colony ship was sent as well to follow) and no one ever thought that this was a bad idea.

Worse, the Noise should really be a deal breaker. There's radiation around the planet and you're telling me this didn't send up any red flags? You can see it from space (as we do when the second investigative force, including Viola, attempts to enter the atmosphere). Again, why would the probes (assuming there were probes which, come on, there had to be) not report back, "oh hey guys, there's something unusual here." Nope, they just send colonists like, "lol, s'all good, bros. Have fun!" It's really dumb.

But on that same front, the film never once explores why only the men on the planet have "the Noise". It's not just that Viola doesn't have noise, it's that no women have it (we later see more women in other colonies and they're all free of the Noise). What's specific about the XY chromosome that the radiation only affects the menfolk? Is it even that? That just brings me back to the fact that a survey of this planet should have sent up some massive red flags that would have kept everyone far away. It would be one thing if the colonists were a rag-tag group that ignored higher authority and landed her against express orders, but considering that a second ship, Viola's ship, is sent to explore the colonies (and then crashes as soon as the men on the pod are affected by the Noise), and the larger colony ship is sent for after, clearly no one cares and that just makes no sense.

And then there's the aliens, of which we see exactly one. It's the kind of plot development that you'd think would have, you know, actual development. There are aliens on the planet and what we see of them, all of one, is neat -- they have their own Noise, and they can express it in different ways from a human -- but then the film completely ignores it for the human conflict that, frankly, is utterly tedious. I have to guess the aliens would have been explored in a sequel that, we should note, will never happen because this film was an absolute Box Office bomb.

If the film explored some of these things (and then ditched other matters without even bringing them up at all, like the aliens) that would be one thing. There's about thirty minutes of setup here that needed to be done to explore the world before we even got into the story proper, and then there's a lot more work that has to be done on the characters as well. We need more about the Mayor as he's a villain that is evil without much explanation (we're left to assume the Noise drove him mad but it's never properly explained). Todd having powerful Noise is another matter that's never really explored until right at the end when he needs it. And then there's the pairing of Todd and Viola which the film keeps shunting to the side despite clearly wanting them to fall for each other; that might have worked better if the two actors, Holland and Ridley, had any chemistry at all.

This film is just an utter mess, start to finish. The best thing that can be said is that director Liman, and his stars, manage to hold everything together with both hands just enough that this film actually feels like a film. It's not a good one, by any measure, but at least they achieved something that felt like it came out of a studio. Even then it does feel like this movie should have been shelved, never to be seen again. It came out right at the start of the COVID lock-down but I don't think that's what sank the film -- the film is what sank the film. This is an utterly, absolutely bad film that needed to be redone, start to finish, from the script onwards to make something actually watchable. You can just get through the film due to the talents of everyone involved, but to say the experience is enjoyable would be lying.