The Maze Runner Review #MazeRunner
Lost meets Lord of the Flies.
And by Lost I mean Lost in every way good and bad. Remember how Lost drew you in with a cool, weird situation and interesting characters? How it sucked you deeper into it’s plot with the smoke monster and all the other stuff? How every episode raised another intriguing question that you sought the answers for in a desperate belief that if you could understand what was going on with Lost you might understand what was going on in your own life? Remember how the producers headed by bane-of-all-things-cool J.J. Abrams swore on a stack of Bibles big enough to rival the Great Pyramid if Giza that they had a plan and answers to all your burning questions would be produced by the final denouement?
Then remember how when time came to give you those answers the producers instead shot us all in the face with a firehose loaded with excrement? Well, that’s pretty much the Maze Runner.
By the way, in order for me to do this movie review justice I am going to have to spoil the crap out of it so SPOILER ALERT.
I admit it sucked me in. Not the trailers of course. I am too much a veteran of the inane YA novel movie genre to be fooled by a bland brunette girl with a 1,000 yard stare and a posse of sizzle chested man boys to expect anything other that the dregs of cinema. No, the movie itself sucked me in. The first half of the film was REALLY FREAKING COOL. The aforementioned man boys actually looked like they might have shared one or more testicles, acting was shockingly good, and the setting was awesome. The whole premise was fun and intriguing and like Lost I found myself drawn into the mystery of what this maze was and who was torturing and killing these kids. Was it some kind of sick snuff reality show? 
Were the parents of these boys political criminals who were being punished by being forced to watch theirs sons being eaten by Tyranids? (Punisher image courtesy of the Punisher t-shirt collection) Was the lone survivor of this show destined to become king of the world or turn into a stud to engender a new generation of super survivors? I was honestly wracking my brain coming up with cool possible explanations. The story did what is almost impossible for me in that I got involved in the plot.
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 29 Operation: Annihilate!
This is the fried egg on the back episode. I remember thinking he flying creatures looked very gross, like flattened fake vomit bleached to a sickening pale. This is one of those stories that always left me with a lot of questions and since I have a lot to do today why don’t I just ask a few of them?
First off how do these things fly? I mean, obviously with cheesy strings on the show but what was their theoretical motive power? They clearly can’t flap enough to generate lift. Telekinesis? If so why do they have to swoop around like a bat? Couldn’t they just float around? Or use their collective power to hold humans in place long enough to give them the wet back slap? For that matter if their means of attacking humans is attaching themselves to the back of the humans why didn’t anyone think to just wear a breast plate? It’s always aggravating when you suddenly realize that the entire problem could be solved with the application of some 8th century technology 
(don’t get me started about what a couple suits of chain mail would do for the zombie fighting capabilities of the Walking Dead cast. Rick and Michonne (armed with a sword BTW) image from the Walking Dead t shirt collection). They don’t even have to go full metal. Seems like you could defeat “them” with some plastic armor, a few big butterfly nets, and a tree shredder to feed them into.
Also can someone tell me what the title was about? Were the flying fried egg monsters out to annihilate the human race, or were the humans going to annihilate them? Not a really Federation approach. This title always seemed at odds with all the other really good Trek titles (Dagger of the Mind, City on the Edge of Forever, the Devil in the Dark).
I guess this episode shows that the only thing worse than being a red shirt under Kirks command is to be related to him. Poor Sam Kirk died in agony while his nephew and sister-in-law spent some time in a lot of pain. Also let us not forget how Kirks son David Marcus died on the edge of a Klingon dagger in the Search for Spock. Also didn’t Kirk let the one true love of his life get run over by a truck in City on the Edge of Forever. Don’t know if I would be inviting him to the family reunion.
Anyway, cool episode all that aside. It was later ripped off by Stargate SG1 and a few other shows. The only thing dumb was the devastation Kirk and McCoy felt when Spock was blinded. I really don’t think blindness was as debilitating in the Federation as it would be today. Geordi had that cool wrap around muffler face thing to help him see, and even in TOS they showed that blind people could see with technology in Is There No Truth in Beauty? I don’t think Spock had the emotional attachment to color as we would.
the Infamous Dave Inman
@Nerdkungfu
