Finally I have made the decision to return to the theaters, it had been almost exactly a year since I had been. My last movie at the theaters was Bloodshot, which left a horrendous taste in my mouth because it was so awful. I saw it on March 15, 2020, and on March 7, 2021 I have made my return, and it was glorious. Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley are two names that get me excited to watch a movie, and this one was not coming to VOD, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get back into the dark theater and experience the massive screen and extraordinary surround sound. Thankfully the movie was good, and it was even better than I expected it would be. The story had an odd premise that had me questioning how good it could be, but it was executed well.
Chaos Walking was the sci-fi story of a group of people who had left Earth to start off a new civilization on a new world. In the village Todd Hewitt was living in, there were no women left. What Todd had been told was that when he was little, a group of the native species of the planet, the Spackles, attacked and killed all the women. Then a spaceship sends out a landing craft that crash lands on the planet leaving only one survivor, a woman, Viola. Todd took a liking to her, but the rest of the town seemed very averse to her being there. So Todd tried to save her, they end up in a different village where there were woman, and the society was run closer to normal. Then when Viola reads Todd’s mom’s diary to him, he realizes things were not what they had seemed, and he continues to help Viola try to get in contact with her space craft.
The main sci-fi gimmick of the movie was from the male’s thoughts no longer being internal. Every time a character thought something, especially the younger characters with less control, it would come out in their voice even though they were not talking. Also when the thoughts would come out a mist of color/aurora/fog would emit from their heads, at least this was how it typically would occur. There were also times when they could create an image with their thoughts instead of just a mist. This played a key role a couple times in the movie. Also the existence of the mist created a more prejudice society.
One of the underlying themes of the movie had to do with that prejudice. There was the prejudice towards the Spackles, and there was the prejudice towards women. Both of which seemed like they could have been explored into more to explain why the feelings were so strong. The initial explanation for why the Spackles were disliked was due to them massacring all the women of the village, but when this idea was proven to be false, there was not much more of an explanation as to why the natives were disliked. They made it sound like there had been a war between the Spackles and Todd’s people, but it was unclear if this war happened once Todd found out the Spackles did not kill the women in his village. So if anything it seemed like the Spackles were disliked for wanting to defend their planet and not wanting humans to invade. There was a moment in the movie when Todd and Viola encountered a Spackle, and it was very confrontational, but Todd lets him go and the Spackle walks away. It was trying to show that there was not much animosity between them and be a connecting moment, but it did not hit the mark. Then the Spackles were not mentioned again really, which was odd. One way in which it showed the prejudice was that even though the Spackles did not actually kill the women, they were easily able to pawn off the blame on them, so that the younger people in the village had a hardened feeling towards the Spackles.
It was reminiscent of frontier life in America. When people came to America for the first time, the feeling initially grew that the Native Americans were in our way even though Americans were taking their land. Then once Americans continued to encroach on the land that was not theirs, they started to blame Natives for bad happenings, sometimes intentionally when they knew it was not the natives, just because they knew it could easily be placed on them. In the book, The Indifferent Stars Above, a book about the Donner party, they talk about two men that killed a third that they did not like, and they blamed the death on Native Americans, and they said the Natives took many of the prized possessions from the wagon as well. So it is not exactly the same occurrence as in the movie, but it was close because they used the people’s prejudice to make themselves blameless in an immoral act.
The women in the village that were massacred, by those men that were leading it, did it due to prejudice. So on the planet, every time a male had a thought it was spoken, but it was only the men that this phenomena was occurring. The women could keep their thoughts to themselves leaving the men feeling vulnerable and less empowered. So the men in power felt threatened, specifically the mayor and the priest. The priest argued that since the women did not have their thoughts being spoken that they did not have souls. Visually this makes more sense when watching because when the thoughts were vocalized there was a colorful particle/aurora that went around the head of the person, it looked at times like it could be a soul. So they used this reasoning to go after the women and eliminate them from the village.
Going back to the Sparkles briefly, they felt like they should have had way more of a role in the movie. They were referenced regularly, but only visually appeared twice. Once in the fight between Todd and the Sparkle, and then the second time, when Todd and Viola were trying to find the other village, they came to an overlook of one of the Sparkle villages, and that was about it. The way they initially framed them as the villains, and then gave them their redemption, it seemed like there would be a good chance that they made an appearance at the end and helped them save the day and radio to Viola’s people, but it did not happen, which was disappointing.
The two stars of the film were Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland. They are both well known for their stardom in other franchises. Ridley in the newest Star Wars trilogy, and Holland for being Spiderman in the Avengers movies and the soon to be Spiderman trilogy. In this movie, they seemed to give a nod to both characters’ franchises. They alluded to Star Wars with the chase scene in the woods. It was not nearly as cool as the chase in Star Wars, but they had Ridley’s character on a dirt bike, riding through the trees being chased by others. There was no speeder bike or massive redwoods, but it was similar enough to make my mind wander to the Endor chase. Then towards the end of the movie Holland’s character must climb to the top of a crashed spaceship. They only show the end of the climb, but it seemed like he needed his superpowers to climb up to the point that he did. They had him hanging and climbing, and eventually he had to climb down, and that also was not shown, so it seemed obvious that this alluded to him as Spiderman.
Going back to the movie theater might have clouded my judgement on how good this movie was, but I really enjoyed it. I thought it was one of the better movies form this year that I have seen, it was not quite as good as Judas and the Black Messiah, but it was still good and worth the watch. I was glad that I spent the $13 to go and see it. It was much better than the other 2021 movie I watched this weekend, Coming 2 America. This sequel bombed in comparison to the first one and was not worth the watch, but if you have Amazon Prime, I do suggest watching the original. I gave Chaos Walking a 90. When compared to some other recent Sci-fi movies that were supposed to be top tier, I found Mad Max Fury Road to be better, I wrote a whole review on Mad Max that I have not put out yet, but I really enjoyed it. Then when it came to Blade Runner 2049, which I had heard was excellent, I just did not get the hype. It was visually beautiful, but the rest just did not resonate with me. So if you have a movie theater to go to and feel comfortable going I suggest Chaos Walking!
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