Flickering Myth’s Alex Moreland has been chatting to filmmaker Doug Liman about his latest release The Wall, which is out now on Digital Download, Blu-ray and DVD, and during the interview the conversation turned to Liman’s newest project, the YA adaptation Chaos Walking, which stars Tom Holland (Spider-Man: Homecoming) and Daisy Ridley (Star Wars: The Last Jedi).
“The Chaos Walking movie is sort of like The Bourne Identity because Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland are being chased to their death, in this case across a planet that’s just begun to colonise,” said Liman. “It has a lot of the elements of The Bourne Identity – of two strangers on the run, getting to know each other and trying to survive against overwhelming odds, but getting closer during the course of that. What really sets Chaos Walking apart is that Tom Holland’s thoughts are projected out for everybody to hear, as are all the men’s thoughts in the story. You know, I’ve committed my life to try to make original movies. Even when I tackle a genre; by definition, genres are familiar. So, I’ve worked my whole career to sort of surprise people with my interpretation of a genre and then occasionally projects come along like Chaos Walking that is so original in its content that, like Live Die Repeat, there is no conventional way to make the movie.”
“When I was making The Bourne Identity, the studio was fighting me every day,” he continued. “They wanted a conventional looking spy movie. There is a conventional version of The Bourne Identity. In fact, the latest one would be an example of that, of kind of what the studio wanted in the first place. And there’s the conventional version of Mr and Mrs Smith. The movies I’ve made, there’s been conventional versions of. Live Die Repeat, there was no conventional version of that movie. And now with Chaos Walking, there is no cliché, there’s no convention on that, of how to tell that story. But what was so extraordinary about it was any time I was shooting a scene and I was like ‘I’ve seen it before’… You know, you shoot a car chase, at some level you’re like, ‘Ah, I’ve seen this before’ and you push yourself and try to make it a little bit different. But in Chaos Walking, if I thought I’d seen it before I would realise ‘oh, I’m not using The Noise enough’. And the moment I’d stop and re-compute whatever it is we’re shooting and put The Noise front and centre it suddenly became way more fun and way more original. It was like a gift that kept giving. It started out as ‘Oh my God how am I going to do this’ and it ended up being… There isn’t a scene in this movie that’s not totally fun and original, specifically because of The Noise.”
SEE ALSO: Read our full interview with Doug Liman here
Chaos Walking follows Tom Hewitt (Holland), who lives on the distant planet of New World—a new hope for humanity until struck by “The Noise,” a virus which inflicts immersive visions of ones’ every thought. The cacophony drives many mad until Todd makes a hidden, silent discovery: there is a girl named Viola (Ridley), who may be the key to unlocking New World’s many layered secrets. Together, the two unlikely companions are forced on a white-knuckle adventure into an unexplored planet – trying to escape and hide in an environment where all thought is heard, all movement seen –as they both discover the truth about the lives they left behind and the spectacular world they’ve learned to call home.
Chaos Walking is set for release on March 1st, 2019 and features a cast that includes Daisy Ridley (Star Wars: The Last Jedi), Tom Holland (Spider-Man: Homecoming), Mads Mikkelsen (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), Demian Bichir (The Hateful Eight), Kurt Sutter (Sons of Anarchy), Cynthia Erivo (Widows), David Oyelowo (Selma) and Nick Jonas (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle).
