Cameron Johnson reviews latest flick Maze Runner…
Here we go again. After adapting The Hunger Games trilogy into, at least so far, some pretty good movies and giving us Ender’s Game, Divergentand The Giver, Hollywood still hasn’t had enough of its post-apocalyptic child-chosen-one “Lord of the Flies”-influenced youth action thriller binge, and has now provided us with the potentially great but ultimately unmemorable The Maze Runner, which places a gang of boys (and ultimately a girl) in a forested area in the middle of an inescapable and dangerous labyrinth that might be fun to traverse on the Playstation but lacks excitement on screen.
At the centre of the chaos is Thomas (Dylan O’Brien, a fine young actor but in character pretty much Percy Jackson with a little more personality), the last boy to enter the so-called “Glade”after one has arrived every month for a few years. Like the rest of the boys, he remembers nothing bar, eventually, his name, and is shocked to find that anyone who enters the maze and stays there for a long period of time is likely to die from attacks by the cybernetic Grievers, massive slimy aliens with Dr. Octapus’robot arms.
Thomas shakes up things at the “Glade”with his curiosity for the maze and willingness to explore within it, and eventually is able to join Minho (Ki-hong Lee) as a titular “Maze Runner”, one of the few “allowed”to go into the maze. All the talk about the “rules” and the self-righteousness of the villainous Gally (Will Pouter) infuriated me, but I suppose that is the point, because he turns out to be a great villain who fails only because he doesn’t have any real power that plot devices don’t give him.
Thomas, Minho and some others begin mapping out the maze, and eventually come to fighting the Grievers and planning their escape. The most exciting parts of the film come in its action, but a lot of stuff in the maze isn’t involving enough to keep us really that excited. It’s not until the very end of the movie that we get a look at the labyrinth in its full glory, which is perhaps director Wes Ball’s biggest mistake. We don’t ever get the sense that these guys are ever trapped in a massive prison, because once the maze actually comes into play they’re pretty quick to figure out which way they need to go. There are some scenes in which the maze tries to trap the guys in, and, while these scenes are pretty cool to look at, we don’t get much of a thrill from the actual danger and you sit there thinking this would have worked so much better, and with so much more intricacy, if it had been a video game instead.
Eventually we are introduced to a female character, Teresa (Kaya Scodelario), who is brought in solely to provide the antidote to a sting from a griever on one of the head runners, Alby (Abl Ameen), and then dissolves into the background. I’m not sure if the film is sexist or if the people who put these kids in the maze were (we never find out why only boys were sent into the maze apart from Teresa).
All is revealed in an ending that rips off every other young adult dystopian book-film at once, and paves way for a sequel or two. I’m not at all excited for more of this, though the acting was inspired and there was a level of mystery before the guys figured out the secrets of the maze. Besides that, The Maze Runneris a pretty escapable labyrinth of archetypical characters, done-before plot points, and popcorn-ready action that is better than Transformersbut no more than on par with everything else. It is a film that takes itself, and its characters, very seriously, a problem with pretty much every film with young heroes. Everyone’s either a prophet or an idiot, and the hero does the brave, or logical, thing every time. It’s not a bad film in most senses, and will provide enjoyment to its young target audience, but I won’t be remembering this like I do Labyrinth.
I will praise the maze for one thing, though - the characters actually swear. Finally, a PG-13 film where 13-year-olds act like it.
