The 5th Wave movie | The best thing was that single ab shot

(The guy is literally me after watching the movie, I’m sad that I’m not joking)

Shoutout to Penguin Teen Australia for including free tickets with the Bloodlines series giveaway. That was super nice of them 😀

Where do I start with this review. I think I’ll just recap it and comment as I go so be ready for spoilers if you haven’t read the book or watched the movie. The lazy version of this review would be it kind of sucked but since I feel a good swear filled rant coming up… feel free to skip to the TL;DR at the bottom!

I went into the cinema knowing The 5th Wave has bad ratings so I wasn’t expecting a lot but I really wanted to like this movie. The first few scenes blew my mind out. They were amazing! I was so excited to finally see a YA adaptation work… and then the camp scenes started the fall and fucking Evan Walker finished it. Oh my god, did he just ruin the movie so much. I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s just talk about the good things first.

I really, really enjoyed the first quarter or so of the movie. It was exactly  like the book. We get the flashbacks of the waves and we had Cassie killing the guy in the shop. Those scenes had tension and I loved it. Then we go back to the flashbacks and that was basically where it started going downhill.

I was really disappointed with the camp scenes to say the least. Where was the guy who crawled through human ashes? Where was the scene where Cassie had to hide in the ashes to avoid the soldiers??? WHERE WAS ALL THE DARK SHIT THAT HAPPENS IN THE BOOK? They were the disturbing scenes that really got me into the book and they weren’t in the movie. Pacing was totally gone by this point, literally the camp thing had 3 minutes of screen time and then Cassie’s dad is dead and Sammy’s taken to Wright Patterson. I was still hoping for the best because I was looking forward to the training scenes.

There were no training scenes.

Ben is me in that picture. Note the what the fuck are you doing face. You know how The 5th Wave book is like equal POVs of Cassie, Ben and Sammy. The movie totally shit on that. We get a LOT of Cassie with really, really short glimpses of Ben and Sammy which was a terrible decision because Cassie’s POV in the book is pretty boring.

Ok, so Sammy and Ben. I watched the movie with a friend and at point she literally turned to me and was like “Wait, is that Ben?”. There was no Wonderland, there was no squad rankings. Anything that was a military scene made no sense at all. We got the shooting lesson from Ringer but that’s it, and even the shooting isn’t explained because THERE’S NO SQUAD RANKINGS. Ben has this weird 3 second fight with Ringer and then she has to give them shooting lessons like wtf. He’s also super tight with Vosch for some reason that’s never explained. Also, what was up with Ringer’s panda eyes, it’s the fucking apocalypse, girl no one would take time to apply makeup.

We go back to Cassie and she’s being hunted by the Others. This is when fucking Evan Walker comes in and turns the movie to shit. I didn’t really like Evan in the books because he was a stalker but in the movies, oh my god, he’s just so sappy. He’s literally only there to serve two purposes: 1) Cassie’s love interest and 2) ab shot, in the singular because we don’t even get gratuitous ab shots. Don’t get me started on his Edward Cullen powers like WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT. The Others don’t have super strength or super speed. We don’t even get the rising suspicion that happens in the book, it’s just like honeymoon scenes until we suddenly find out that he’s half Other. Oh yeah, also WHAT THE FUCK WAS UP WITH THE HALF SHIT LIKE WHAT. It would make more sense to have him full Other, that’s even what the book did. Why did they feel the need to change this??

Evan, just please go away. You can’t help this movie, you made it worse TT.TT

There’s this point in the movie where I just start laughing at everything because it’s turned into a typical teenage film with Cassie making out with Evan on the run. This was right after the single ab shot we got so it’s literally instalove.

By the last quarter of this movie, pacing and logic have both sailed far far away from this movie and we get a really rushed finale and some awkward Ben being the third wheel scenes. Then boom boom boom and they’re all out of Wright Patterson and having a happy apocalyptic dinner. We also get the obligatory “The Others won’t win cuz we got the hope yas” narration. The end.

TL;DR : Do movie companies really think teenagers would like piece of shit movies because we’re teenagers? I just want a YA adaptation to have good pacing and a logical plot, I’m not even asking for much!

This movie had a lot going for it: amazing source material, some great actors but how could it all go the shit like this? Don’t worry 5th Wave, Fallen is coming out this year too so you definitely won’t be the worst movie I watch 😀

It’s been a while since I’ve had a good rant like this. So, what were your thoughts on the movie, if you’ve seen it. Or are you planning to see it? Let me know 😀