Chaos Walking isn’t one of the best movies to come out in recent years, but to an extent, I found it fairly entertaining. Especially the humor and the performance by Tom Holland. But the main thing that gave this movie a heart was its concept. Thoughts turned into pictures, pictures turned into sounds. This plot, even if utilized in a very formulaic way, was crucial in every event that took place. It brought humor and tension in the story without which Chaos Walking would have been even more bland. So what is this noise, how did it originate and what is its significance in the world of Chaos Walking? Lets dive deeper
Noise is the collective thoughts of the men which are projected and given a voice outside of people’s heads. The New World is filled with men and these men have a violent history behind them. Spackles, as they believe, have eliminated all the female population of the new world and all that is left of this world are the sad, hopeless lives of men. The only companions they have between them are fellow men and their thoughts to keep them company. There are those who know how to control their noise but for the majority of people who don’t like the protagonist, Noise can be very troublesome. It’s almost like an inner voice but with less cohesion and sophistication. Their sexual urges and their most embarrassing of thoughts come alive and play around their heads like puffs of pixie smoke.
The History of Noise
The history behind this noise is mingled in the war of Men vs Spackles, but as we later get to know, the Spackles were never really a threat. As Daisey Riddler’s character says in the movie, it isn’t the Spackles who are the aliens but rather the men who landed in the new world and inhabited it. The men and their leaders feel insecure that all their thoughts came alive and hurt their egos the bad way. So if they can’t have the satisfaction of knowing what the other gender thinks and feels, they made sure that they eliminate that gender altogether.
It’s almost poetic that it was the men who were affected with this and not the women, as it somehow tests the patience and the insecurity of men. The wrath and anger, comes into full focus as their feeling of being claustrophobic rises. Hence they go ahead and kill the women in the Prentisstown and eliminate any means of learning by which the coming generations might learn about their past.
Its usage in Chaos Walking
This noise, which is said to have no effect on women, can be controlled in men too. Like the mayor Prentisstown, played by Mads Mikkelsen, learns to grip a hold on his noise by fixing a specific memory for every scenario. He is able to use this noise in order to create holograms which can trick people through false belief that they are real. But in the end, this is how his character meets his end in the climax.
The noise used by the Protagonist has images of women which were killed by the mayor in order to protect his fragile memory and insecurity. These women, even in their deaths, make the mayor realize and pay for the crimes he committed in the past. The noise is also responsible for bringing out the sense of immaturity in Tom Holland’s character. It makes him likeable, and childish which makes way for the humor in Chaos Walking.
The Movie Culture Synopsis
All in all, the concept of noise is really unique and I was bummed out by the fact that it was so underutilized in the movie. It should have played out as a really clever and thrilling cinematic, but it ended up overusing the same old tricks in fairly bland sequences.
Noise ends up being used as a hologram at best and while it does result in a shock for the first usage, the effect obviously dies off by the end of Chaos Walking. There’s a lot which is present in the trilogy of Chaos Walking which unfortunately never makes its way into the movie. So if you are interested to learn more about this concept, be sure to dive deeper into the source material of Chaos Walking.
