Young Adult Month - The Maze Runner

In the not too distant future, after a disaster takes place

A nerdy guy with Rage Issues, among the last of the human race

He was just a media nerd, he ranted a lot, it was quite absurd

But he was special for some reason, so bad men decided it was Rage Issues season

He’ll star in 3 movies, 4 if we squeeze him dry

He’ll go and join a rebel force, as he’ll slowly lose his mind

Now keep in mind, he’s just a guy, no different from you or me

So, he’ll have to learn how to survive, with the help of YA Movies

Franchise Roll call:

The Hunger Games

The Maze Runner

Diiiiiiiivergent

If you’re wondering how he posts his thoughts, and who he’s posting for

Repeat to yourself, it’s just a theme, and stop thinking any more

It’s Young Adult Month!

Because I’ve made a conscious choice to read the books from this point on, I’ve decided to change the order. The Maze Runner was a series of 3 books (I’m excluding the prequel books since they weren’t adapted) written by James Dashner and released between 2009 and 2011, and it’s Fox throwing their hand into the YA ring with the adaption of this franchise.

And it’s off to a mixed start, but with a silver lining of making over $300m on a $35m budget. Critically though, it holds a 65% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which just barely qualifies as fresh, with an average score of a meagre 5.9/10, it holds a similar audience rating of 68%, though with a higher 3.7/5 average. These would be the highest scores this franchise gets so let’s take a look.

This film, as well as the book thrives on what you don’t know to start off with, and has a lot of twists and turns, so full spoilers for the plot synopsis.

Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) finds himself in a glade full of strangers, with barely a memory of who he is, it’s soon explained that he’s in the middle of a maze, a maze that in 3 years, no-one has managed to find the way out of, so they’ve settled down and formed a small community known as the Glade, each with their own jobs.

Thomas’ reckless selflessness ends up with him trapped in the maze at night, where cyborg monsters known as Grievers attack. He manages to survive and even kill one of the Grievers but this begins to change everything. The maze opens up, making the Glade vulnerable to attack at night, and a new person, the only girl, Teresa (Kaya Scodelario) arrives as the proclaimed last initiate, and seems to inexplicably recognise Thomas. Can the group manage to escape the maze? And what awaits them when they do?

This movie has a similar plot structure to the book its based on, but changes a lot of the little details that make the book an engaging read. Some of these are necessary in the adaptation to film. For example we don’t see Thomas doing various jobs around the Glade to see which one he was most suited for, also the escape code is more simple and that accounts for another element that was cut out of the book.

In terms of things that were cut either because the studios didn’t think the audience could take them seriously or because of budget, there are 2 that spring to mind. The first being the telepathic connection Thomas and Theresa have and the other being the existence of a rudimentary teleporter called a Flat Trans. I’m fine with these being cut out, although it’ll make adapting the next 2 books more difficult as their inclusion there is more central to the plot.

I think the movie did as a good a job as they could capturing the overall aesthetic of the book. The maze looks suitably impressive, the Grievers look similar enough to how they’re described in the book, and the characters look pretty much on-point with their descriptions. The CGI is decent for a film with this budget, and the use of makeup for the griever stings is also pretty effective.

It’s very difficult to analyse the plot of this movie without immediately comparing it to the book now I've read it, the book has its distinct advantages over a movie as you can get into the characters head, and the length isn’t restricted so the passage of time is better. I’ve said before that a movie should stand or fall on its own merits first and as an adaptation second but here most of its major issues come from elements poorly implemented as an adaptation.

There are a couple of characters completely screwed over in the adaptation process, but the main one I want to talk about is Gally (Will Poulter). His hatred for Thomas seems largely unjustified here and his ‘take over of the glade’ is a plot cul-de-sac that goes nowhere and wasn’t in the book. The fact that the serum to help against Griever stings is only available with Theresa means they can’t have him having been stung by a Griever like he was in the book, which means he can’t vaguely remember Thomas from having been stung, fuelling his initial hatred of him.

The hatred grows, in the book, when Theresa shows up and something akin to the ‘the final phase’ is mentioned, it’s only after her arrival that Thomas enters the maze to save Minho (Ki Hong Lee) and Alby (Aml Amreen) and survives the night, and whilst Minho is suggesting Thomas become the head runner, he’s suggesting punishment for rule breaking well beyond what the others would accept. He disappears not long after this.

He returns when the Grievers attack, telling everyone that they’d claim one victim per night (which is all merged to one attack) his next appearance is in the final room where he kills Chuck (Blake Cooper – who got just about enough screen-time in the film that this death makes me feel sad) but in the book, it’s clear he’s under mind control whilst doing it, which is not the case in the movie, this combined with him being stabbed by Minho rather than beaten to death by Thomas not only devalues a strong Thomas moment, but is also gonna make things confusing 2 movies later.

The other person who got shafted is Theresa. In this movie she does basically nothing and although I’d hardly call her a major player in this book either, she does provide a couple of important plot moments for later one, including a mantra that is instead done when Thomas stings himself

Ava Paige – The head of the not very subtly named WICKED, rebranded WCKD in the film

Gets a bit more screen-time than she did in the book, a consequence of them hiring Patricia Clarkson to play her. The problem is it amounts to her giving a speech explaining some backstory, which is fine, but all the while her men are being taken out behind and she shoots herself, only to appear alive again in the end. It all ends up being a bit silly. She was never that sort of villain in the book and by the end you wonder whether she was really a villain at all.

The acting is pretty good throughout, which was enough to carry this film in spite of the odd problem. Dylan O’Brien’s Thomas has the unfortunate job of being the audience insert character and is quite bland because of this. Props to Thomas Brodie-Samster playing Newt as he’s the only other actor of note I’ve not mentioned yet.

The Maze Runners offers a faithful overview of the book’s story but it doesn’t handle the details very well, devaluing the actions of certain characters, or expanding them beyond their need in the story (I’m talking Gally, not so much Ava.) I understand the need to condense the plot and, in some cases, (like the code) I think it actually improves the story but the overall package is just OK.

Rating 55/100