The Maze Runner

Another young adult novel gets a movie

We start our tale off with a boy, Thomas (Dylan O'Brien... who I'm led to believe is important to young audiences) arriving in an all male commune cut off from regular society. The leader of the young men, Alby (Aml Ameen) and his second in command Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster....of Game of Thrones fame) shows him around their commune called The Glade. The tightly-knit, functioning society is surrounded on all sides by walls housing a maze that would seemingly lead to the Gladers escaping. The Gladers have certain rules which have kept them functioning as long as they have. 1) Carry your own weight, 2) Never hurt another Glader, 3) Never go in the maze, which we later find out means: never go in the maze past dark. Every morning the society sends out a group of people called runners to map the maze, and one day a group of runners gets caught in the maze past dark. Thomas gallantly goes in the maze to try and save them. That is where everything changes.

Apparently I need to start reading again. If this "young adult novel boom" is going to last any longer I am going to need to see if the book was any better than the movie. Right now movie studios are all trying to find the next Harry Potter, Twilight, or Hunger Games series that will keep their studio nice and profitable. So we have been getting Divergent, The Mortal Instruments, and now The Maze Runner. It would just be nice to have some sort of grounding point to realize that this series might have been worth it, if the series was done right. So far, I have read The Hunger Games, Twilight, Harry Potter and Mortal Instruments, other then that I have had to rely on the movies. Unfortunately, Divergent and The Maze Runner make it seem like I am not missing much having not read the book.





Not to say this movie was all around bad. The concept was strong going in. A society of young boys making a strong commune, and having to find their way out of a maze that surrounds them. Interesting, and unique to be sure. My main problem stems from the final act of the picture. This movie reminded me of The Hunger Games, mixed with The Cube, mixed with amnesia and other movie plot cliches. The first two acts got me invested only to figure out that they went the way of 80's-Science Fiction-THE END?" ending. The ending piled on a bunch of nonsensical gibberish and almost completely undid the hard work the first two acts put in. Sure, since this a young adult novel you can kind of tell what is going to happen, leading up to the big ending  People split up, their is an antagonist that rallies troops, important people end up dead. All very cut and dry, race to the ending story telling that would have paid off if the ending was actually good. The only other negative thing I really have to say about the movie is, that the big bad company responsible for this should have dropped the name W.C.K.D. (or wicked). and just called themselves Umbrella Corporation.

The acting here is a cross between mediocre to good. Dylan O'Brien holds his own, but probably shouldn't be leading his own movie quite yet. Thomas Brodie-Sangster does well here, but is brushed to the side to make more camera time for Dylan (which I am assuming was the big name this movie hinged its success on). In fact you can say that for most of the cast. I was surprised by the performance from Will Poulter, just wish I would have gotten to see more of him. Aml Ammen, Ki Hong Lee, and Blake Cooper were just like the rest of the supporting cast, good enough but hard to gauge due to lack of screen time. For someone that was allegedly this movie's biggest hope for success I expected more from him, and ultimately was disappointed. Oh well, if you can't appease the "Teen Wolf" audience, you can at least appeal to the readers, right?

I feel like I am about to say something that will piss off most of my readers, but it kind of stuck in the back of my head through out the entire movie. So, for all of you who don't want to hear about gay stuff please skip this paragraph. I was wondering why no romantic relationships had sprung up through out the three years these boys had been stuck together? On the one hand I was disappointed that I didn't get to see something like that pop up. On the other hand, I was kind of relieved I didn't have to see any articles after this movie came out about "being gay is the product of your environment." What was weirder is that when a society of young, hormonal teenage boys sees their first girl for the first time in three years, and no one was trying to hook up with her. Again I was torn. On the one hand we thankfully didn't have to sit through another forced relationship story arc that would no doubt lead to jealousy and dissension in the ranks. On the other hand, it seemed unrealistic that the first girl these boys have seen in three years wasn't the object of someone's affection. Yes, I know they had bigger things to worry about, but I feel like there was something the writer was leaving out. Were their hormones effected by the amnesia? Did they forget what love (or lust) was? Is the writer really expecting a target audience of teenagers or younger to not think about sex and where it applies in this future? All very weird, and ultimately a little disturbing that it at least wasn't said in passing. All it really would have taken was one line of dialogue. Young boy goes up to the girl starts flirting, and she says, "Don't you think we have bigger things to worry about?"

So there we have it. I imagine that whoever is going to see this movie already knows they are going to see this movie. Either you are going because the lead actor also stars in "Teen Wolf," or your going because you are part of the reason the book became a "best seller." No amount of writing I do is going to keep those groups away from this movie. If you are in my crowd that could care less about either of those reasons this review is for you.

Final Verdict: Netflix it Final act aside this movie was fair enough. nothing to write home about, and at least had an original concept towards the beginning. I can take or leave most of the actors in this, but none of them did "bad" per say.