The 5th Wave (film)

The 5th Wave
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	J Blakeson
Produced by	Graham King Tobey Maguire Lynn Harris Matthew Plouffe
Screenplay by	Susannah Grant Akiva Goldsman Jeff Pinkner
Based on	The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
Starring	Chloë Grace Moretz Nick Robinson Ron Livingston Maggie Siff Alex Roe Maria Bello Maika Monroe Liev Schreiber
Music by	Henry Jackman
Cinematography	Enrique Chediak
Edited by	Paul Rubell
Production companies	GK Films Material Pictures
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release dates	January 22, 2016 (2016-01-22) (United States)
Running time	112 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$35 million
Box office	$109.9 million

The 5th Wave is a 2016 American science fiction thriller film, directed by J Blakeson, with a screenplay by Susannah Grant, Akiva Goldsman, and Jeff Pinkner, based on the novel of the same name by Rick Yancey. The film stars Chloë Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Ron Livingston, Maggie Siff, Alex Roe, Maria Bello, Maika Monroe and Liev Schreiber.

Development began in March 2012, when Sony picked up the film rights to the trilogy, with Graham King's production company GK Films and Tobey Maguire's Material Pictures. Filming took place in Atlanta, Georgia from October 2014 to January 2015.

The 5th Wave was released on January 22, 2016 in the United States by Columbia Pictures. It received negative reviews from critics, but was a moderate box-office success and has grossed more than $109 million worldwide.

Plot

Cassie Sullivan (Chloë Grace Moretz), armed with an M4 carbine, emerges from the woods to raid an abandoned gas station. Upon entering, she hears a male voice calling for help. While searching the store, she hears a man, who points a gun at her, she asks him to put his gun down, he asks her to do the same. Cassie asks to see both the stranger's hands but his left hand is under his jacket. The stranger tells Cassie that his stomach might fall out if he moves his hand away, as a result of this, Cassie shoots and kills him. He was holding a crucifix and the screen cuts to black to show her backstory.

At home, the news reports a strange, city-sized hovering structure over their home in Ohio, containing invading extraterrestrials referred to as "The Others". Ten days later The Others cut the power off, causing Cassie's classmates' cars to crash into each other and a plane to fall from the sky. The Second Wave sees The Others drop a large metal rod on to the Earth's fault lines causing massive tsunamis to kill those living in coastal cities. While at a new refuge location, Cassie and her younger brother Sammy go to collect water as the area is struck by earthquakes and floods, and they climb a tree to avoid the flood.

For the Third Wave, The Others weaponize a strain of avian flu using three million birds as carriers of the virus. Cassie then reunites with her mother, Lisa. Cassie's mother warns her to take her brother to safety to avoid the plague. Cassie's mother then dies from the plague and her family create a memorial in their backyard.

In search of a safe community, Cassie leaves home with her father and brother and stumbles upon a refugee camp in the woods. A few days later, an army unit rolls into the camp and places all of the children on a bus. The Colonel leading the unit claims that there is an imminent threat to the camp and that they want to take everyone to the military base. Due to the limited amount of buses, their priority is to take the children to a safe place before coming back for the adults. As the children get on the bus, Sam tells Cassie he left his bear behind and Cassie goes to get it. Unfortunately, while she is getting the bear, the bus leaves without her. Cassie gets separated from Sam, and she watches as her father and the other adult survivors are massacred by the army after being told they would never see their children again.

Cassie scavenges her way toward the base to find her brother, but is shot in the leg by an unknown enemy and passes out. Seven days later, Cassie wakes up and meets a man named Evan Walker, who saved her. Cassie is afraid and pretends to sleep, but Evan tells her that he knows she's awake. Cassie immediately skeptical of Evan, asks where her gun is and Evan tells her that when he found her, he did not see a gun. One day, when Evan is out chopping firewood, Cassie looks around his house, stumbling upon a loose floorboard, where she finds her gun and something she engraved on the side. Knowing that Evan lied, she grabs her stuff and runs as fast as possible into the forest and gets tripped by a wire. Evan runs after Cassie and keeps her quiet as the drones are watching. Cassie tells Evan that she's going to find Sammy and Evan says he's going with her. As the pair travel together through the woods, they have an intimate moment and fall asleep. While Cassie is asleep, an "other" says Evan is out of his drone space and gets into a fight with Evan. After Evan kills the "other," he reveals to Cassie that he is both an "other" and human. He tells Cassie that this isn't the first time the "others" have been on Earth and that a long time ago, the "others" planted sleeper agents on Earth, Evan being one of them and that after seeing Cassie, he felt as though "a switch" went off and he was more human than "other" After learning that Evan is not human, she leaves on her own to go find Sam, but not before Evan tells her that Colonel Vosch and the army are actually Others, and that the Fifth Wave will use children to eliminate the rest of Earth's survivors by tricking them into fighting humans.

The only thing that keeps Cassie going is the hope that she can save her brother from the training camp established by the army. Ben Parish and her brother are in the same squad and were sent on a mission to kill "others" with helmets that have lenses to detect "others" and kill them. Ben ties Sammy up in the military base before going on a mission to keep him safe and tells the leaders that his squad is accounted for and telling his squad members that Sammy has food poisoning. As the squad fights the "others," one is fatally shot and Ringer blows up a car to create a distraction while the rest of the squad finds a safe place to hide. Ringer tells the group that she is skeptical of these "others" because they aren't scared of much more powerful weapons, but are scared of a bunch of children. Because of this, Ringer takes her tracker out of her neck and her squad immediately says she's an "other". Being forced to decide whether to shoot her or not, the squad asks their squad leader, Ben, whether to shoot Ringer or not. Ben immediately takes out his tracker, and the squad tells him that he's showing up through the lens as an "other" too. The squad then finds out that "green" showing through the lens does not mean "other" but rather, the "green" signifies human.

The squad figures out that Colonel Vosch and his people are the "others" and have sent the children as soldiers (the 5th wave) to kill the rest of the humans. Ben tells the others that he left Sammy back at the base and needs to go get him. He puts his tracker back in his neck and tells his squad to lay-low, asking Ringer to shoot him to create a fake story and tell Colonel Vosch that his squad is all dead. While Ben plans to rescue Sam, Cassie jumps in front of a bus pretending to be a lost child and ends up being taken to the military base. During her medical exam with Sergeant Reznik, she is given exactly the same medical exam as Ben. As Sergeant Reznik tells Cassie to look through the lenses and look ahead to see the "other" held by the military, Cassie kills Sergeant Reznik and steals her military uniform, takes her tracker out of her neck and moves around the base to try to find Sammy. Colonel Vosch is skeptical of Ben being shot specifically in a place that hit no vital organs, while the rest of his squad was killed. Colonel Vosch tells Ben to stop lying, and the Colonel reveals that he is an "other" and will kill Ben. The military base is exploding and the Colonel tells one of his men to take Ben away and kill him. Ben disarms the soldier and takes his gun while running, he bumps into Cassie, the two try to find Sam and are stopped by two armed soldiers telling them that they are in a restricted area. Through an air duct, Evan disarms and kills both the armed guards. Evan tells Cassie that he cannot be both "other" and "human," he can only choose one and because of her, he chooses to be human. After kissing Cassie, Evan tells Cassie and Ben to go find Sam before he blows up the training facility.

The "others" are in the process of evacuating and deploying the children to other cities. Cassie keeps moving through the crowd of child soldiers when she sees Sam and puts her hand over his mouth, leading him to an empty room with Ben. The whole military base is being blown up by Evan, and the three have to leave. As they are running away, they see the Colonel getting into a helicopter and one of the soldiers starts shooting at them. There is an earthquake and the ground starts cracking open, as they are about to fall to their death, they see a Humvee pulling up, they run towards the Humvee and see Ringer driving. They jump into the Humvee and get to a safe place. Cassie and Ben talk about what they will do to save the other children, while that is of extreme importance, Ben tells Cassie that they'll think about what to do tomorrow and just try to enjoy today. Ben and his squad are enjoying their meal with Cassie, and while the squad talks and has laughs, Cassie's voice is heard narrating saying that hope is what will drive humans to win one day and that it's our hope that makes us human.

Cast

• Chloë Grace Moretz as Cassie Sullivan
• Nick Robinson as Ben Parish/Zombie
• Ron Livingston as Oliver Sullivan
• Maggie Siff as Lisa Sullivan
• Alex Roe as Evan Walker
• Maria Bello as Sergeant Reznik
• Maika Monroe as Ringer
• Liev Schreiber as Colonel Vosch
• Zackary Arthur as Sammy Sullivan/Nugget
• Tony Revolori as Dumbo
• Talitha Bateman as Teacup

Production

Development

In March 2012, Columbia Pictures picked up the film rights to the trilogy, with Graham King and Tobey Maguire attached as producers. On April 15, 2014, it was officially announced that Chloë Grace Moretz would star as Cassie Sullivan, and that J Blakeson would direct from a script by Susannah Grant. Nick Robinson and Alex Roe joined the film as Ben Parish and Evan Walker, respectively. Liev Schreiber was cast as the villain. On August 11, Maika Monroe was cast as Ringer. The following months, Zackary Arthur, Tony Revolori, Ron Livingston, Maggie Siff, and Talitha Bateman joined the film.

Filming

Principal photography began on October 18, 2014, in Atlanta, Georgia. Three months later, on January 11, a planned explosion of a bus in downtown Macon, Georgia for the film went awry when it spread wider than planned, blowing out more than forty windows on Cotton Avenue, collapsing ceilings, destroying store fronts, setting one building on fire, and leaving soot on the brick buildings as well. The production company promised to cover all damages caused by the 3:45 am incident, but the work that was done was done badly and remains incomplete sixteen months later. Filming officially ended on January 17, 2015.

Music

In April 2015, it was announced that Henry Jackman would compose the music for the film.

Release

Columbia Pictures originally set the film a release date for January 29, 2016. On April 30, 2015, they pushed the release date forward to January 15, 2016. In December 2015, they moved the release date to January 22, 2016. It was released on January 14, 2016 in Australia, Germany and the Middle East.

Marketing

An international trailer for the film was released on Sony Pictures' official YouTube account on September 1, 2015.

The film was released for home media on 3 May 2016. The film was released online on various video sites 2 weeks prior to this.

Reception

Box office

As of March 20, 2016, The 5th Wave has grossed $34.8 million in North America and $74.4 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $109.3 million, against a budget of $38 million.

The film was released in North America on January 22, 2016, alongside Dirty Grandpa and The Boy. The film was projected to gross $10–14 million from 2,908 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $475,000 from its Thursday night screenings and $3.5 million on its first day. It went on to gross $10.3 million in its opening weekend, finishing 6th at the box office.

Critical response

The 5th Wave received mostly negative reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the critics' approval is a 17%, based on 118 reviews, with the average rating of 4.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "With unimpressive effects and plot points seemingly pieced together from previous dystopian YA [young adult] sci-fi films, The 5th Wave ends up feeling like more of a limp, derivative wriggle." Metacritic gives the film a score of 33 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". On CinemaScore, audiences gave the film an average grade of "B–" on an A+ to F scale.

Rob Vaux of the Sci-Fi Movie Page gave the film one star out of five, saying, "The YA adaptation craze hits a low point with this aimless, purposeless alien invasion story that wastes a fine cast." In the San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle wrote, "rarely does a movie that fails so utterly start so well", falling apart ahead of the fifth wave. As to a possible trilogy, "if we’re not really vigilant, and look to the skies, and prepare, they’re going to make at least two more of these things. We’ve got to beat back the invasion now". Eddie Cockrell of Variety gave the film a mixed review, saying, "The 5th Wave is an effectively decent post-apocalyptic, young adult, world-in-the-balance survival thriller" with an "arrestingly original spin on trendy genre tropes", although he suggested that fans of the book may have "issues with what has been edited".

Brian Truitt of USA Today gave the film a positive review, rating it 3 out of 4 stars, stating that it "is an inviting sci-fi invasion", and praising Moretz and Robinson as "equally strong" co-leads. Shannon Harvey of The West Australian also gave the film a positive review, writing, "It’s actually got a lot going for it, from acting prodigy Chloe Grace Moretz as the kind of tough but fragile heroine you can cheer for to handsome production values, several plot twists". Michael Patterson of Moviepilot gave the film a positive review, rating it 9 out of 10, and calling it a "thrilling story of survival".

Accolades

Award	Category	Recipient	Result	Ref.
Teen Choice Awards	Choice Movie Actress: Sci-Fi/Fantasy	Chloë Grace Moretz	Pending

Possible sequel

While the general critical reception to the film overall has been negative, the film's box office nearly tripled its budget of $38 million. Also, though many critics have reviewed the film negatively, standard audiences of the film have found general satisfaction in the film, mainly being the book's fanbase. The profit and mild popularity of the film may see Sony consider another film in the franchise.

External links

• Official website
• The 5th Wave at IMDb
• The 5th Wave at Box Office Mojo
• The 5th Wave at Rotten Tomatoes
• The 5th Wave at Metacritic
• The 5th Wave on Facebook
• The 5th Wave on Twitter