In 2021, after a decade of juggling writers and months of extensive reshoots, one YA fiction series was finally brought to life on the silver screen, and then promptly forgotten. Equipped with a cast of A-listers like Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley and based on a massively successful book, Chaos Walking had the potential to join the roster of teen dystopian classics, but instead fumbled its way through production and was a box-office flop. So how did the epic tale of Chaos Walking, with such great source material and great actors turn out so… not great?
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What Is ‘Chaos Walking’ Based On?
The movie Chaos Walking is based on the hit book trilogy of the same name by American-British novelist Patrick Ness but seems to be based on only the first book, entitled The Knife of Never Letting Go. This novel tells the story of Todd Hewitt (Holland), a boy living in Prentisstown, a small town on an alien planet inhabited only by men whose every thought is broadcasted outside of their heads for all to see. This mysterious phenomenon is called Noise and was allegedly caused by the planet’s violent native species, the Spackle, releasing a germ that infected all the men and killed all the women. Even the animals have Noise, like Todd’s fiercely loyal dog, Manchee, so the two are able to communicate. Todd slowly begins to learn that everything might not be as it seems when he is sent out of town by his adoptive fathers and discovers a girl named Viola (Ridley) who has no Noise. As Todd and Viola are hunted by the maniacal preacher Aaron (David Oyelowo) and Mayor Prentiss himself (Mads Mikkelsen, yeah, I told you the cast was good), Todd realizes that everything he’s been taught is a lie and that Viola might be the key to revealing just how corrupt Prentisstown and its leaders truly are.
While the Chaos Walking series consists of three books of 500 pages apiece, even the basic plot summary is enough to pique some serious interest, right? Lionsgate evidently thought so and acquired the movie rights in 2011. In April 2012, Charlie Kaufman was hired to write the screenplay, and with the writer of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich now on board, it seemed like Chaos Walking was headed for success. By the following September, acclaimed filmmaker Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, etc.) was in negotiations to direct the picture. Unfortunately, both of these esteemed names left Chaos Walking, and by 2014, Jamie Linden and a slew of other writers were brought on to revise the script, and in 2016, director Doug Liman was locked in to take the helm of this already struggling ship.
Why Was ‘Chaos Walking’ So Delayed?
Although pre-production was off to a rocky start, franchise darlings Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley joined the cast as the two leads in 2016, and other stars like legendary villain Mads Mikkelsen, Cynthia Erivo, and Nick Jonas soon followed suit. Chaos Walking now had all the necessary pieces to get the ball rolling on the next hot YA franchise (or so they thought) and principal photography took place from August to November of 2017. Long story short, six years of pre-production and three months of filming seemingly did not pay off, and after test screenings, Lionsgate deemed Chaos Walking “unreleasable.” The movie required extensive reshoots in 2019, which were delayed because of the immense popularity of Holland and Ridley, who were then shooting Spider-Man: Far From Home and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, respectively. Chaos Walking finally crawled its way across the finish line for a 2021 release and made about $30 million against a budget of $100 million.
Why Did 'Chaos Walking' Flop?
To be fair to the filmmakers, when Lionsgate bought the right to Chaos Walking in 2011, the YA book adaptation scene was in its golden age, and dystopian stories were particularly big. The studio thought it might have the next Hunger Games on its hands, and really had no reason to believe otherwise. However, after the messy production took 10 years to complete, the YA moment had kind of lost momentum, not to mention that Chaos Walking was quietly released a year into a global pandemic.
Furthermore, the central idea behind Chaos Walking would be incredibly difficult to portray on film. Noise is a confusing concept even in the books, as a stream of consciousness that can also serve as a picture show of memories or as a weapon when need be. In a film adaptation, nearly every performance would have to be done in two parts, once with the physical performance, and once with the voice recording of Noise to be overlaid. In the movie, Noise seems to have endless capabilities, like conjuring a fence or lifelike projections of real people. Preacher Aaron, whose epic role was greatly reduced in the film, has Noise that looks like flames for some reason, and the incessant ramblings of Todd’s Noise become tiresome and border on laughable by the end of the movie (take a shot every time he says “Yellow Hair!”). However, the movie adaptation took excessive liberties in all sorts of ways, and its bizarre portrayal of Noise is only the tip of a very convoluted and disappointing iceberg.
How Does the Movie Compare to the Books?
Chaos Walking made some major changes to the source material, making the end product almost unrecognizable as the same story. Now, the author of the books, Patrick Ness, who was also credited as a writer on the script, has said that “a movie is a remix” and that some things will have to change when adapting such detailed source material. This is fair enough, but some of the things that the filmmakers chose to omit drastically changed the story, and they left out some visceral elements of the books that would have definitely been interesting to see on screen.
For example, a major change that was made in the movies is that animals don’t have Noise. In the books, Todd’s dog Manchee can communicate with him, albeit in simple terms, and this makes both the reader and Todd form a strong bond with the little companion. Manchee is later brutally killed while protecting Todd from Aaron, and Manchee’s confused pleas for help make his death even more heartbreaking. In the movie, Manchee doesn’t talk and is just along for the ride, being lugged through the forest by Todd until Aaron drowns him in the river. Manchee is portrayed with a valiant effort by a terrier named Winston —who definitely didn’t get paid enough for this gig— but taking away the dog’s voice made the moment of his death far less impactful for both the audience and Todd.
As previously mentioned, the Preacher Aaron’s role is also almost totally diminished in the film. While in the book, the twisted man is mauled by alligators and beaten with rocks on his quest to get to Todd and Viola, in the movies he’s just kind of.. there? Chaos Walking takes away some of the book’s most intense scenes, which take place between Aaron and Todd as the former gets progressively torn apart but refuses to die, wanting Todd to sacrifice his morality and kill him instead. This relationship in the book not only offers terrifying imagery which would have been great in the film, but a fascinating moral dilemma of what it means to be a man. Aaron is eventually killed by Viola, who stabs him in order to save Todd and prevent him from having to do it himself.
All of this depth is sacrificed in the film for bizarre add-ons, like one scene in the movie where Tom Holland gets totally naked, trudges into a river, and fist-fights an octopus so that he and Daisy Ridley can eat it for lunch. Other important elements were likewise omitted, from the depth of Todd’s relationship with his dads to Viola getting shot and nearly dying to the fact that Mayor Prentiss doesn’t die but rather becomes the leader of a whole other town. In the movie, the plot is inexplicably altered, with the evil Mayor Prentiss acting as a mentor for Todd, and Todd’s entire journey of self-discovery basically getting cut in favor of servicing the movie’s unfulfilling romance between him and Viola.
At the end of the day, while Chaos Walking absolutely paled in comparison to the books it was based on, we can appreciate the arduous journey that the cast and crew went on to make it happen. At the same time, we can also acknowledge that the production seemed more intent on gathering a crew of high-profile actors rather than fine-tuning a script that obviously missed the mark. Basically, it’s too bad that the film neglected to delve into the book’s rich themes of gender politics, colonialism, and redemption in favor of showing us Tom Holland’s butt. Had the adaptation been more faithful to the books on which it was based, maybe Chaos Walking could have joined the ranks of other great dystopian powerhouses, rather than being a failed star vehicle that burned itself out before anybody even saw it.
