**Spoiler alert**
As a new fan of Patrick Ness’s book series, “Chaos Walking” I was excited to watch the movie adaptation with Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley after reading the first two books in the series “The Knife of Never Letting Go” and “The Ask and The Answer” in the span of a month.
Patrick Ness grabbed the reader’s attention and refused to let go until you were begging for more plot. The books were fast-paced, and the characters had never-ending depth. While reading, I found myself rooting for characters that I had previously wished were dead. The author could spin your opinion about a character or idea on its head.
The first book, “The Knife of Never Letting Go,” began with Todd Hewitt, the youngest boy in Prentisstown: a farming settlement on a new planet that was Earth’s last hope for survival. Todd grew up surrounded by only men and their Noise. The men of the New World suffered from a disease called Noise; it displayed a man’s thoughts for anyone to see. A disease given to the men of the New World after they battle the planet’s native species, the Spackle.
The Noise was difficult to control and hide. Todd only knew what life was like in Prentisstown until one day, he stumbled upon a girl without Noise. The first book is mainly about Todd and the girl, Viola, running from the Mayor of Prentisstown and his army. The pair also battle the town’s preacher Aaron, who is determined to make Todd into a man.
In the second book, “The Ask and the Answer,” Todd and Viola battle the Mayor over the largest settlement on the New World, Haven. Patrick Ness was able to weave intricate plots and subplots together to create the “Chaos Walking” trilogy. However, the whole one hour and 50 minutes of the movie couldn’t even grasp the main plot of the book series.
At the beginning of the book, the Mayor and the preacher want to force Todd to become what they perceive as a man. In order to become a man in the New World, a boy has to kill someone after his fourteenth birthday. This way, the Mayor can complete his vision of having an army full of bloodthirsty men.
Instead, the movie opens with Todd, played by Tom Holland, walking through the woods with his dog, Manchee. The book starts the same way, except in the book, even the animals have Noise, and Todd can usually hear whatever Manchee is thinking about. However, in the movie, the beloved dog stays silent throughout Todd and Viola’s journey. Because of this, the audience is unable to make a connection with Manchee, and so when Aaron the preacher finally kills Manchee to get back at Todd, there isn’t any grief over his death.
In the movie, the pair also struggle to run away from the Mayor and the army. Todd and Viola are constantly getting caught and barely running away with their lives. In the book, Todd and Viola never really see the army and are only hunted by the murderous preacher, Aaron.
This was not the case in the movie, and instead, we see the Mayor chase after Todd and Viola to stop the settlers from coming to the New World. The preacher still chases after Todd and Viola, but the audience isn’t explicitly told why Aaron wants Viola dead. Rather than setting up for the second and third book, the Mayor and the preacher are both killed by Viola.
The movie ends with Todd waking up on a spaceship that has landed on the New World. The movie only mentions the native race, the Spackle, once, and the end of the movie doesn’t answer any of the questions it posed during the first scene.
As a fan of the books, the movie was more than disappointing; it was atrocious. Somehow the movie “Chaos Walking” made the “Percy Jackson” adaptations look like good movies.