Rebecca: Finally—a dystopian sci-fi teen flick that gets rid of pesky girl power, goofy costumes and cheesy love triangles! If you took The Hunger Games and removed all the drawn-out anticipation of the games, the complex relationships and internal conflict, all the world building and scope, what remains is The Maze Runner, a male-centric fusion of Lost and Lord of the Flies that, while extremely derivative, perhaps is not altogether without merit. As directed by Wes Ball, the film is cleanly shot and quickly paced, focusing on an excellent cast of young actors.
Dylan O’Brien stars as hero Thomas, who at the film’s start has amnesia and finds himself with other memory-swiped boys trapped in the center of a massive maze. As Thomas acclimates to his bizarre new surroundings and encounters each new obstacle, produced by whoever is controlling the maze and by clashes with the other boys, the actor carries the proceedings admirably. Aside from Patricia Clarkson’s nefarious villain, the sole female in the cast is Kaya Scodelario’s Theresa, who shows up later to further the intrigue, help the hero in key moments and run from danger with her hands open (seriously, who does that?). By the film’s rushed and disappointing conclusion, it’s unclear whether in their past life Theresa and Thomas were siblings or romantic or just friends, and this lends itself to the theory that the filmmakers actively sought to make The Maze Runner as close to counter-programming as can be achieved in a year in which both Divergent and this November’s Mockingjay: Part One are certain blockbusters.
What do you think? Is The Maze Runner refreshing after so many girl-centric teen dystopian flicks? And how did you feel about that slapdash, presumptive-sequel ending?
Ryan: Well … credit where it’s due: the direction and cinematography are surprisingly good. The “Glade,” a sort-of permanent summer camp, has the richly realized feel of a much more prestigious enterprise. Pairing the Glade’s authenticity with the towering, groaning walls of the ever-changing maze makes for some striking imagery, and The Maze Runner is best when it uses this locale to create an unsettling atmosphere to match an inherently unsettling premise.
But whenever The Maze Runner pierces its own veil of mystery, what’s behind that curtain is found extremely wanting. An eerie maze of concrete and rusted steel gives way to a mess of dodgy CGI filled with grotesque, cyborg spiders that I’m pretty sure I spent hours of my adolescence killing in the classic video game Doom. As the film rockets towards its conclusion, trope after filthy trope gums up the works. So naturally, the Glade’s denizens have all aligned themselves into cliques, á la Harry Potter. And, what a shock, the meat-head rival gets in the way of everyone escaping. And of course a character has some special knowledge in the eleventh hour that just happens to be the key to salvation. Characters die on queue in ways so heavily telegraphed as to rob The Maze Runner of any tension or intrigue.
The ending is particularly deflating. Consider the premise, and then imagine the least interesting explanation for the characters’ imprisonment; if you’ve read any young adult and/or dystopian fiction, I’ll wager you’ve come pretty close to nailing most of the film’s latter revelations. To then end on a note of shameless sequel-baiting feels a little unearned, even arrogant.
None of the movie’s characters help, either. A byproduct of The Maze Runner‘s premise that almost every character has amnesia is that nobody has a real back story. The writing isn’t strong enough to compensate for this overall lack of context for any character’s actions or personality, so we’re left with a lot of one dimensionality. Besides the aforementioned meat-head, there’s the wise-cracker; the plucky comic relief; the Special Boy with Special Gifts (that’d be Thomas); and the girl, whose primary characteristic is that she is a girl. None of them have any depth, and neither does the movie on the whole.
The Maze Runner is indeed refreshing at times, but it’s dull and derivative in equal – if not greater – measure. I would love for the restrained approach sporadically used here to be implemented in another movie, on a larger scale. For its part, The Maze Runner leans on the worst examples of its genre too often to be a success, and the inconsistency makes for a frustrating experience.
Rebecca: Three points:
1) I do agree that the meat-head, as played by Will Poulter, is unfortunately lacking in depth, and also that the film reinforces, instead of challenges, tropes/stereotypes. Why must the unusual-looking kid with a broad nose and ruddy face be a bossy jerk, while the hero is a white, hunky ripped guy who could pass as an Abercrombie model and is probably a twenty-something pretending to be sixteen?
2) Yep, the ending is awful.
3) BUT I MUST OBJECT to your suggestion that these characters would have benefited from back story. First of all, this approach of contextualizing and complicating characters in flashbacks to create drama in a surreal, frightening and mysterious situation has been done—Lost is an example. What I find refreshing about the film is how tightly paced it is, how it lets the characters‘ actions define them and surprise the viewer instead of depend on those flashbacks to do the heavy lifting. Does it hurt that these teens have amnesia? I don’t think so. It puts the viewer in the same boat as the hero, creating a sense of immediacy and disorientation.
Also, for most of the film, the stakes are relatively high as compared to similar teen fare that spends, on average, the first two-thirds of its running time on angst and then jumps into high gear during the final act (i.e. most Harry Potter films and The Hunger Games); in The Maze Runner, characters die and suffer throughout, and the main character, because of his evident hotheaded nature, injects himself into danger without seeming overtly dumb or becoming unlikeable. This is no easy feat, and is in large part why, despite the predictable casting and truly horrendous ending, I give the lead and the focused direction so much credit in an otherwise mediocre effort.
Ryan: I don’t think I can completely agree that Thomas makes it through the movie without acting like an idiot, but at least he gets smarter as time goes on, and is really no dumber than anyone else around him.
And you know what? I’ve thought about it, and I think you’re right about the amnesia angle. The characters in The Maze Runner aren’t bad because they have no back-stories; they’re bad because the script stinks. Hah! Last word! Goodnight America!
Filmbrosis 
