Chaos Walking, originally a novel by Patrick Ness who also co-wrote the script with Christopher Ford, has a striking premise. It’s set on a planet in a post-Earth world where men’s thoughts can be heard by others and women don’t seem to exist (at first). The thoughts are known as “noise” and interpreted visually, to great effect by Ness and director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Edge of Tomorrow). 

Ness' book was much celebrated in a space where dystopian sci-fi was ever-present: in the wake of the  Hunger Games success, when young readers’ appetite for more seemed insatiable. Readers of the first book in Ness’s series, "The Knife of Never Letting Go" were undoubtedly possessive of Todd, Ness’s title character who's played by Tom Holland in the film. Todd is a boy amongst men, who manages to control his “noise” better than the others. One Goodreads fan said she felt like his protective mother for the entire read and that she’d “do anything for him.” To say die-hard fans of a novel adaptation to film are hard to please is an understatement, but Ness took his adaptation work in stride.  

“I hope they really like it,” Ness says earnestly. “They’ve been patient and have wanted to see it made for a long time. I tried to approach it as a remix, more than an adaptation, but the original doesn’t go away or get deleted. A remix does different things because it has a different purpose. It was a wonderful creative challenge. That kind of limitation is such a spur to creativity. Turning it into something new felt free and exciting... I do think Tom and Daisy (Ridley) are wonderful in the film. Every spirit of the book is there, the core relationship is there, and there’s also new stuff that is really cool.” 

Todd’s world is visually stunning. He hails from Prentisstown, located on a backwater planet with no women in sight. The town’s mayor (played by a Mads Mikkelsen at his most evil) has secured loyalty through convincing most of his men that the noise gives them strength. Here, being a woman is an insult (even though according to rumor, the women were originally lost to the indigenous population of the planet). The film's world feels very specific, likely due to all the crafting work Ness did in his novels.

He says of world building: “Less is more. Readers are a lot smarter than you think they are, so it’s always wise to cut back. For example, Todd would never tell us anything that someone on the planet wouldn’t already know. Try to keep exposition as minimal as possible. My other approach to world building is to treat everything as a fantasy. Everything. And you’ll see how easily your world slips together.”

Undoubtedly the book and the film are a commentary on toxic masculinity. Consider the mayor of Prentisstown preying on men’s masculinity to keep his population under his thumb, and how quickly they are whipped into a frenzy when a female earthling with no noise (Viola, played by Daisy Ridley) lands unexpectedly on their planet.

“I started with the premise: the thing I fear we do the worst as humans is our assessment of difference," states Ness. "We find it so difficult to treat difference as merely equal. We always consider it better or worse than us. Either of those we also often feel obliged to attack. All the wars we have fought between people who are so similar — you’d have trouble explaining the difference to an alien. I thought, what if that difference manifested in every single interaction? You had to deal with it at every second. That’s where the idea of the noise came from. What if this difference between men and women was so apparent, we could’t pretend that it wasn’t there. Sometimes it was handled very badly, and sometimes people worked hard to handle the difficult situation and made it work. In the last ten years we have seen more and more evidence of how women aren't heard. Women don’t have noise and are apparently silent. How does that make different kinds of men react? In terms of something like New Prentisstown, there are instances where the masculinity is so toxic, it became destructive. That’s what is interesting to me. Would we always do the worst things, or are there ways to find a peaceful solution? I think the movie ends extremely hopeful, because Todd and Viola are an example of how it can be done." Todd’s struggle to get to a point of hope is literally visible, as his noise tells him constantly: “Be a man, Todd. Be a man.”

“That is one of the core themes of the film; that this arbitrary idea that one age or one action makes you whatever a man is supposed to be,” philosophizes Ness. “Todd’s been taught this one particular thing. Daisy's character immediately questions it. In the book, he’s thirteen and about to go through a ceremony to 'become a man.' And Daisy says, 'This planet doesn’t even have the same suns as Earth does, so how do you know you are really thirteen?' So what does that arbitrary number mean? She immediately starts to make him doubt what he’s been taught. It's about getting away from this idea that being a man is one simple, violent thing. To me, the journey from childhood into adulthood is not about loss of innocence. It’s only loss of innocence in the sense of moving into complexity, moving into a space of contradictions — that’s what being a man is. To choose to act, or not to act on, what you are capable of. To doubt what you’ve been taught without becoming less of who you are…. Allowing the world and yourself to be larger than you thought it was.” 

Chaos Walking also offers glimpses into a world ruled by a woman. No surprise, the settlement with a female mayor (Hildy, played by Cynthia Erivo) is more peaceful, albeit, not necessarily less judgemental. Ness says the character was based on his great aunt. “Her name was Ingebore and she was the most incredible woman I’ve ever known. She chopped her own firewood and was just an amazing human being. I admired her so much that I often thought, why couldn’t she be in charge of stuff? In a way, the character is speaking to that wish. Why can’t more people like my brilliant, wonderful aunt be in charge of things. As a gay little kid, I hungered for different leaders than those I’d been given.” 

As Todd and Viola journey to get Viola back on her ship and keep her safe from the swarms of men who feel threatened by her presence, the two learn to quickly cope with their massive differences. As Viola learns to deal with Todd’s noise, so does the audience. Ness said creating a visual look for the noise was one of the greatest conversations that occurred in making the film.

“We asked, what is the noise? It’s not exposition. It can’t be someone just thinking about the plot. I told the director and special effects people it’s meant to be a representation of the unfiltered brain, so at its core, it’s emotional. Everything we’re thinking in a violent swirl. And what makes us human is how we interpret that and filter it for other people. We talked a lot about the colors. How the core would work. My favorite noise in the movie is David Oyelowo’s, because he plays a fire and brimstone preacher (Aaron). He always looks like he’s slightly alight. It feels like his brain is constantly churning out little fires, and it feels marvellous with how they did it." 

Ultimately, Ness hopes fans of the book and new audiences alike — mostly families — will watch the film together. “I hope it inspires conversations about how men and women treat one another, and how Todd and Viola are a good example. It’s a really, really hopeful film coming out of a different and dark place.” 

Undoubtedly Chaos Walking is a journey of transportation. It takes one to a place where privacy is lost and little feels gained. Instead, many have been thrown into literal chaos where the future feels deeply uncertain and the human race struggles for survival at every turn. A woman as salvation is not a unique idea, but in a world where no one has to give a penny for one another’s thoughts, will she be enough? Hopefully, Ness gets a sequel to help answer that question.