Last weekend I did something I hadn’t in … years? I went to the movies.
The film I saw was Chaos Walking, the onscreen adaption of the Patrick Ness book The Knife of Never Letting Go. Now, I have never read the book, and at any competent platform that would immediately disqualify me from passing any sort of public judgement on it whatsoever. But this isn’t a competent platform, it’s Yammer House. And it’s not for no reason that we proudly(?) proclaim ourselves ‘The Home of Mediocrity.’
So away I go – and by the way, there are no spoilers anywhere in this post.
Firstly, I’d like to make some corrections to Dr Google’s description of Chaos Walking, which reads:
In Prentisstown, Todd has been brought up to believe that the Spackle released a germ that killed all the women and unleashed Noise on the remaining men. After discovering a patch of silence out in the swamp, his surrogate parents immediately tell him that he has to run, leaving him with only a map of New World, a message, and many unanswered questions. He soon discovers the source of the silence: a girl, named Viola.
It bears astonishingly little resemblance to the movie I saw. Admittedly, most of the basic elements are there, but they’re jumbled up and out of order. Oh, and some of them are incorrect. Even I can manage a better blurb:
In Todd’s settler village Prentisstown, New World, everyone can hear each other’s thoughts – this is called the Noise. New World also has no women, as they were all killed by the native Spackle species. Todd’s simple world is soon torn apart, however, when he meets a mysterious girl who has crash-landed on the planet. She displays no Noise at all, and there is talk of sacrificing her. Together they must run, evade the Spackle, and discover the truth about Prentisstown.
Firstly, I’ve just discovered that writing blurbs is way harder than it sounds. Like, really, that was seriously difficult. More to the point though, I’m not even that happy with what I wrote and it’s still WAY truer to the film than Google’s offering.
Anyway, I thought this film was really good. The plot was straightforward, and the story well paced and easy to follow without any knowledge of the book. While by no means a classic, Chaos Walking is a good, entertaining film.
Apparently, though, the professional critics have given it poor reviews. Well, I say fuck ‘em. I enjoyed it, as has anyone else I know who has seen it – which only serves to reinforce my opinion that critics are basically worthless. I mean, who the hell needs someone else to tell them whether they liked something???
So yeah, fuck ‘em. Go and see Chaos Walking.
Comments