Something Awesome #35 - Movie Reviews - The Maze Runner

And already I contradict myself, and the next Something Awesome that I write is, once again, a movie review. Don't worry, I have a couple of non-movie review full length Something Awesomes coming soon. First, though, I gotta talk to you guys about a movie that I saw the local premier of tonight: The Maze Runner, and, spoiler alert, I really liked it.

 

Now I want to point out that yes, I know this is a book series first and foremost, and no, I have not read any of those books. I have family who have though, and it has been suggested to me many times. This series is a young adult post apocalyptic with some fantastical undertones, with the giant maze being a prevalent part of the story, and a theme of being a victim of an inescapable maze, even when you aren't inside it. This series would seem to be something that I would enjoy. I like Percy Jackson, which is young adult, and The Hunger Games, which is young adult post apocalyptic. So why, you ask, did I never read these books? Simple: I heard that the movie was coming out, and I wanted to be able to look at it as a movie.

 

But let me say, now that I've seen this movie, those books are gettin' read, dang it.

 

Now don't get me wrong, it wasn't a perfect movie. It was a post apocalyptic, as much as any other, so much so that it doesn't even bother to explain some of its themes. These kids are in the center of a maze, where they have been thrown with no memory of who they are. There are only boys there. Some of them run the maze each day when it opens, and if they don't return by night fall, when the maze closes, they are always dead by the next day, killed by the enormous technologically-driven labyrinth's resident mythical monsters: the Grievers.

 

Then our lead shows up, Thomas, played by one of my favorite young actors, Dylan O'Brien, who can carry a scene like no other young actor in the business today, and has been so far vastly underutilized in the series where he has a starring role as the comedy sidekick/strategist: MTV's Teen Wolf. Once Thomas shows up, everything changes. The monthly supply crates which are risen up into the maze, each with a new boy, stop coming a couple of days later, after delivering the first girl to the place that the residents have come to call The Glade, and a Griever is killed and a device recovered from it.

 

More and more rules and elements are added to the already mostly-full pot, rarely ever extrapolated upon, but that's okay, because the rules are followed, up until it becomes necessary to break them, and once they are broken, it makes sense how and why. The exposition never get's too heavy, because the characters, who are, for the most part, all played brilliantly by the young cast, react as you would given the situation, and do a great job taking this weirdness in stride, helping us to do the same. Maybe they seem a little too mature from time to time, but that's because they have no choice, and they are still given plenty of chances to act like kids would, too.

 

Thomas shakes everything up. He finds what he thinks is a way out of the maze, using the device pulled from the dead Griever, but that night, when he's trying to convince the others to use this way out, the door stays open, and three more open in the other three walls. Soon Grievers poor out and overrun the settlement. Soon the population of more than fifty is reduced to something like twenty-four. Despite this, though, Thomas still wants to change things, to get everyone out. See, Thomas has something that the others are only starting to find within themselves: curiosity. He's curious about the maze, and about the possibilities that lie without it, and he can't bring himself to believe that his curiosity could be a bad thing.

 

So Thomas takes a huge risk to get his memories back. Soon he remembers that the others are test subjects, and that he and the girl, Teresa, played by Kaya Scodelario, used to work with those who were testing them. He's horrified, and he reveals the truth to his few friends amongst the other Gladers, but they don't care. They've seen that he wants then to get free, and they are willing to support him. So Thomas and Teresa lead maybe fourteen people through the maze, against the wishes of Thomas' nemesis, Gally, played by Will Poulter. They escape, but they emerge in a testing facility where everyone is dead, and the world outside it practically uninhabitable. Men arrive and take them away by helicopter. Queue the sequel hook.

 

This movie was exciting, it looked great, had great drama, action, and had character relationships, despite the large cast. The dialogue was well-written and heavy, and was delivered expertly by every actor with a speaking part, elevated by Dylan's commanding presence. Despite the almost fantastical setting with its bare bones logic, I never once found Thomas, played by this great young actor, to be unbelievable, and that helped to sell everything else. The best decision that the filmmakers made was to show the entire story from beginning to end from Thomas' perspective. Literally the first thing that we see in this movie is the first thing that Thomas remembers: waking up on the platform being lifted into the Glade. The only time that the movie breaks from this POV is at the very end, for the sequel hook, but that can be forgiven.

 

The elements of the movie, of the story, all came together well, except for one, and this is really the only major fault that I had with the movie. There was a character named Chuck: a short, chubby kid who seems more artistic and kind compared to the other, primarily athletic residents of the Glade. I know I was supposed to like this character, and feel bad about what happened to him at the end (spoilers: he dies), but I just couldn't. Don't get me wrong, he was played well, and he contributed to the story, but Thomas' attachment to this kid was just too strong, too fast. In dangerous scenes, everyone in the freakin' movie all seemed worried about the wellbeing of this one kid who the audience all knew was going to die. His "I'm fresh out of the academy, two days from retirement, with loved ones back home" speech half way through saw to that. I just felt like, despite how likeable the character really was, he just ate up time and got in the way. Maybe it's different in the book, I dunno, but here I just didn't like him.

 

Still, The Maze Runner was good. Surprisingly good. Was it Citizen Kane? Heck no, why would you even ask that? No, it was good, for what it was especially, but not great in terms of movies in general. It is a movie that fans of the genre will eat up, and I am really looking forward to going back now and reading the books, and watching the sequel, should it come. If you have any interest in these kinds of stories, you will enjoy this. If you just want to watch something that is driven by the best of the next generation of actors, you should watch this. Otherwise you might not like it, so use your own judgment. Overall I give the movie a low 7 out of 10 in terms of movies, and a high 8 out of 10 in terms of movies in this genre, and I recommend it. If you see it, let me know what you think in the comments below, and come back later for another Something Awesome.