It was kind of inevitable. As more (and more) popular YA novels are made into films, the fact that film and fiction are different playing fields is becoming crystal clear. With The Maze Runner, starring Dylan O’Brien, we have a wildly imaginative world drawn up before us from the pages of the celebrated opening chapter to The Maze Runner series by James Dashner, but somehow, due to a combination of editing, derivative dream sequences and lack of time to ‘get it all in there’ (the basic rule that is broken with every single adaptation, bound to disappoint at least some core readers), this world is housed within a weak and unsupported backstory plot.
Surely, readers of Dashner’s books would argue that it is indeed supported. And that’s the beauty of a book—it creates a world slowly and fully, able to flesh out every aspect of the story. But moviegoers need it a lot quicker, and in The Maze Runner’s case, things carry along fine and dandy enough for almost 75% of the way through (thanks to Dylan and a spirited supporting cast) but then the twists start flying in and each is a bit more ridiculous than the last one.
Here we have the small and contained Glade, where boys have woken up with no idea who they are for three years. The Glade is surrounded on all sides by the titular Maze, which changes every night and is home to scary creatures known as the Grievers (these robot monsters look and sound pretty cool). The young men, or Gladers, must learn to work together to figure out their highly complex predicament, in the hopes of one day finding an escape.
Enter Thomas (Dylan), who is ‘the one that changes it all’. Those looking for the same flare and fun that he brings to Stiles on Teen Wolf might be a little disappointed, but Dylan carries the film well enough, playing the straight man opposite some fun characters. Frypan (Dexter Darden) and Newt (Love Actually’s Thomas Brodie-Sangster) in particular lighten the mood here, the actors doing justice to their unique characters.
But soon after Teresa (the pretty Kaya Scodelario) shows up, things get iffy. First off, Teresa is supposed to be significant in some way, as the only girl ever to be sent to The Glade, but this is never explored. She doesn’t seem to serve any purpose other than to be a beautiful girl among the boys. Curiously, the Maze itself is not thoroughly explored either, with Thomas entering its walls only a couple of times before figuring it out (most of the work was done before he even arrived, by an elite class of boys known as the Runners—Thomas becomes the last of them).
While the labyrinth featured in The Maze Runner is impressively designed with some incredible set-pieces, the filmmakers forget that a maze is only as fascinating as what lies beyond it, and here, the insanely broad, post-apocalyptic backstory that is crammed into one monologue in the last 5 minutes of the film just doesn’t cut it. More questions are raised than anyone could possibly answer, but instead of a cliffhanger, audiences who haven’t read Dashner’s work might leave fairly confused.
Guess we’ll have to wait for the sequel to get some answers.
—DH
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