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.
BIG SPOILER ALERT However, in the back of my brain I had a horrible niggling doubt about what the real story was going to be and like the lump in your scrotum you keep hoping turns out to be something normal but secretly know it’s a tumor that doubt manifested itself into the stupidest cancer of a plot device possible; the age old really really stupid scientific experiment. I guess I can feel good about my ability to predict stupid plot twists. Remember how in real life and most movies that aren’t flat out dumb when scientists are faced with a deadly disease they do stuff like look in microscopes and run tests on animals? Ever think if you managed to isolate a small group of people who were immune to this deadly disease you might want to take blood and stool samples and maybe use actual science to determine how you could use their DNA to stop the disease? Well I’m certainly glad you have heard of this rare science techniques because the scientists in this movie think the way to cure a disease is to throw all the naturally immune boys into a giant maze and sick cyber spiders on them every night to see how they die. Go science!
What disappoints me is that for the first part of this film I forgot I was watching another lame YA adaptation and thought for a moment that I could be watching a science fiction film. However YA + science fiction = no science at all. What started off as a decent flick swerved off the freeway into the oncoming traffic on the other side and proceeded to pile up every other car in a massive scrum of plot holes and unanswered questions. The movie was super cool when the main characters didn’t know what the hell was going on. As they gained more and more knowledge it actually got stupider and more full of questions. The first 2/3rds of the film rationed the plot points out in a very reasonable manner and then all of a sudden the exposition flood gated opened up and a deluge of worthless and nonsensical facts came flooded out (almost like someone from the studio called and said “Don’t forget we are launching a franchise here! Explain s*$& quick!).
Sigh. The brief plot summary. A kid wakes up in an elevator going up to the surface of a pleasant glade where is is met by the extremely civilized society of boys. They all live inside a maze and at night in the maze giant spiders come out and kill stuff. The boy joins the Maze Runners and finds out how to get out of the maze. A girl appears and 30 teenage boys who have not seen a female in years treat her with all the sexual interest of a burlap sack filled with dirt (at that age I could get turned on by a mannequin. Glad that stopped last year). The society breaks down with the help of the bad kid and they all escape only to learn that it is some kind of scientific experiment (to determine how well teenagers can survive against monsters?) to help cure a world wide disease and also the earth has scorched most of the surface of the planet except for the few square miles where the maze is.
So worth seeing? I’m of two minds on this. For one thing I appreciate the fact that they managed to steer clear of a lot of the bad YA movie tropes. There was no inane love triangle. The guys looked like they might have enjoyed the benefits of testosterone at some point in their lives and spent their nights as guys should: setting things on fire and wrestling. The girl was not the main focus of the film and could have easily not even been featured. This film is not as good as the Hunger Games but is probably a little better than Divergent. For the first 80 minutes you feel like you are watching a real movie. But the gear shift into stupidity is so annoying and disappointing that I seriously felt like punching someone. It is really annoying. Also this film might just be an attempt to launch a new franchise (the main clue being when the last words spoken was the main scientist ending the film with “Now we are ready for Phase Two” to which I respond with “Now I am ready for F&^$ %*^!”) and if the last half of this film is any indication the next installment could be stupidity refined to weapons grade. I’m going to say in the interest of your cultural awareness you should probably see it. There is very little worthy of a big screen (most of the action was that really annoying quick/cut editing technique that blows) so wait for VOD. Decent date movie in that it’s young adults but all the guys manage to keep their shirts on.
Thanks for reading. Looks like we have crossed the end of summer movie desert and are starting to get more films to see. I’ll see at least one more this weekend and write it up. Have a great night
the Infamous Dave Inman
@thenerdblog
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