Sunday, July 18, 2021

Chaos Walking (2021)

IMDb plot summary: Two unlikely companions embark on a perilous adventure through the badlands of an unexplored planet as they try to escape a dangerous and disorienting reality where all thoughts are seen and heard by everyone.
Directed by Doug Liman. Starring Tom Holland, Daisy Ridley, Demián Bichir, and David Oyelowo.

I absolutely LOVED the book series -- I found it engaging and thrilling and the characters wonderful. This does a pretty good job of making the characters work. Tom Holland in particular is charismatic enough to still be likable even as we hear his every thought spoken out loud, including his infatuation with and fantasies about Viola. But the movie falls extremely flat in its exposition, which is never doled out at the audience's pace, either re-hashing things we've been told multiple times or taking extraordinary leaps to reveal new truths we weren't anywhere near. That small detail ends up taking this world that was so fascinating in its original incarnation and making it strange and confusing and ugly. Read the books, but skip this.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Chaos Walking < Fahrenheit 451
Chaos Walking < The Way We Were
Chaos Walking > Madagascar
Chaos Walking < It Could Happen to You
Chaos Walking > Bohemian Rhapsody
Chaos Walking < Mulan (1998)
Chaos Walking > Animal House
Chaos Walking < Fame (2009)
Chaos Walking > Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Chaos Walking > The Yellow Birds
Chaos Walking > Dark of the Sun
Chaos Walking > Running With Scissors
Final spot: #2833 out of 3404, or 17%.

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