A Failed Adaptation: “The 5th Wave”
This film adaptation of the first book in the young adult sci-fi series about an alien invasion is a misfire. It fails to deliver even the most basic level of entertainment.
The premise is grim: an alien invasion has decimated humanity. A global blackout cripples society, massive tsunamis devastate coastal regions, and a modified avian flu wipes out much of the remaining population. Now, the aliens hunt the survivors of the first three waves of attack. The “5th Wave” involves “sleeper agents” – aliens in human form, indistinguishable from ordinary people. Cassie Sullivan (Chloë Grace Moretz), a former high school student, wanders through the forests of Ohio, armed with a pistol and a rifle, trusting no one. She’s determined to reach a military base where her younger brother, Sam, was taken after their parents’ death. Cassie suspects the boy is in the hands of disguised aliens, who are trying to turn him into a living weapon.
During filming, one explosion was more powerful than planned, turning a street in Macon, Georgia, into a “battlefield.” Forty buildings suffered broken windows, and some structures were seriously damaged.
Remember when everyone was trying to make their own “Die Hard in a…” or “Die Hard on a…”? Now, in Hollywood, after the success of “Twilight” and “The Hunger Games,” everyone’s trying to make their own “Schoolgirl and…” or “Schoolgirl vs…” “The 5th Wave” is “Schoolgirl vs. Aliens,” and on the surface, it seems to have all the ingredients for success.
Before Liev Schreiber was cast as Colonel Vosch, Viggo Mortensen, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Ethan Hawke, and many other stars were considered.
- A commercially successful book series as source material: Check. (Rick Yancey’s “The 5th Wave,” published in 2013, is the first of three books about Cassie’s adventures.)
- A charismatic and well-known young actress in the lead role: Check.
- Two attractive potential boyfriends for the heroine: Check. (A girl always needs options!)
- A sinister and deadly villain played by a compelling actor: Check. (Liev Schreiber as Colonel Vosch.)
- A decent budget for computer-generated effects: Check.
- A tragic setup: Big check.
- The film’s conviction that adults are useless and only teenagers can save humanity: Huge check.
So why does “The 5th Wave” inspire not excitement, but bewilderment?
Lost in Translation: The Book vs. The Screen
Because Rick Yancey wrote a novel that’s difficult to adapt, and the three screenwriters failed. Yancey’s “The 5th Wave” is written in the first person, and the book’s charm lies in the internal monologues of Cassie and the second main character, Ben Parish (Nick Robinson from “Jurassic World”). These monologues reveal the characters’ souls, their thought processes, their erudition, their dark sense of humor… and, of course, their experiences with what happened to them and their families. The plot of the book is weaker than the characters’ internal monologues, and the words the characters speak aloud reflect only a small fraction of what’s going on in their heads. Therefore, when the screenwriters almost completely abandoned voice-overs and didn’t compensate for this omission, they threw the baby out with the bathwater. Without the constant stream of thoughts in Cassie’s head, she’s not an interesting heroine, but a banal “blonde with a gun.”
.jpg “Scene from “The 5th Wave””)
And it would be fine if she actually used that gun! It would seem that, having cut out the heroes’ inner world, the creators of the adaptation should have focused on dramatic action – expanded the book’s battle scenes and invented new fights and shootouts. However, they did the opposite – they cut and removed! The ending suffered the most, which is completely unacceptable – a sci-fi blockbuster should end on the most powerful note possible. “The 5th Wave” ends with a whimper, with minimal combat participation from Cassie. That is, there’s a “big boom” at the end, but the heroine has nothing to do with it, and it’s the walls of an evacuated and no longer needed base that explode, not hordes of enemies. War against concrete – a new word in dramaturgy… And if you think that before this moment the heroine is mowing down villains like a machine, you think too highly of the film. Let’s not say exactly how many creatures Cassie kills, but Boris Yeltsin would have had enough fingers on his mangled hand to count them. This is not an action movie, it’s a disgrace!
Casting and Character Issues
By the way, about Cassie. By casting Chloë Grace Moretz in this role, the film’s producers made a big mistake. Yes, Moretz looks like an attractive high school student, and if she were a newcomer, there would be no significant complaints about her hiring. But Moretz is not a newcomer. She has a considerable filmography, and it consists almost entirely of roles of not just cool, but super-cool girls like Hit-Girl from the movie “Kick-Ass.” Therefore, Cassie with her face looks as ridiculous as if Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1990 played an ordinary guy who barely knows how to hold a weapon and who looks admiringly as experienced soldiers do their job. The producers should have either hired someone with a less combative resume, or allowed Cassie to turn into a “killing machine” at least by the end of the film and please the actress’s fans.
In general, there are so many script flaws in “The 5th Wave” that they can be listed endlessly. Take the image of the aforementioned Colonel Vosch. We called him the main villain, since in the film this is not a spoiler – Vosch behaves villainously from his first appearance on screen. In the book, Vosch’s bad deeds receive a rational “positive” justification, which makes readers lose themselves in guessing about his true nature. This is essential for the narrative, as it makes later plot revelations potentially unexpected. On the contrary, in the film, viewers realize what is really happening long before the characters do. And the audience doesn’t uncover plot secrets together with the heroes, but waits about an hour for the characters, like giraffes, to realize what Vosch is doing.
And what about the fact that the film cuts out the book’s explanations of how the aliens are physically structured, and the story of how there are political factions among the aliens that differ in their attitude to the conquest of Earth? Agree, this is crucial information, and a couple of screen minutes should have been found for it!
The Unforgivable Sin: The Romance
However, the screenwriters’ most unforgivable sin is the presentation of the love line. In the book, it must be admitted, it is far from perfect, but the romantic scenes are much worse. They evoke not tenderness, but nervous laughter – they are so ridiculous and implausible and so poorly written. In particular, it follows from them that Cassie is so charming that one glance at her dirty face can make an alien (who, let’s note, is by no means a humanoid) fall in love selflessly and start killing his relatives. Of course, love at first sight is the foundation of romantic cinema, but not to this extent! In the book, the character comes to betrayal and passionate love after a long acquaintance with the heroine, and his actions have additional justifications. This is much more plausible and natural. And if the creators of the film decided to simplify the narrative so much, then they should have cast a stunning beauty in the role of Cassie, and not Moretz, who is more charming than model-beautiful.
As you can see, the entertaining fantastic ideas that Yancey put into the book are lost in the midst of weak and stupid scenes, the scarcity of action irritates fans of action movies, and the absurdity of romantic episodes infuriates connoisseurs of love stories. The result is a movie that can only appeal to the most undemanding viewer. Well, or those who are obsessed with Moretz and who don’t care what she does in the film – the main thing is that she is on screen.