Friday, May 22, 2015

The Maze Runner


RATING: A-

The dystopia genre is beginning to become more like the superhero genre: it's spitting out variations of itself faster and faster. Eventually, at some point, it's probably going to wear off and get old. That may not happen for a while, though, not while people are still being creative and keep coming up with interesting, worthwhile ideas--cautionary tales. 

This was the *second* dystopian young-adult book series of 2014 to have its first movie come out, the other one being Divergent. Meanwhile, the Hunger Games "trilogy" is still going on as well. So how does this one hold up? A lot better than I expected, actually. 

The movie wastes absolutely no time in cutting to the action: teenager boy named Thomas wakes up in a box elevator that is taken up to a gigantic enclosure surrounded by four stone walls, where he meets about a good fifty or sixty other boys who have been living in the "Glade" as well for some time. Beyond those walls? The Maze. And some of the boys have been going in there, trying to find a way out for some time now. 

This admittedly doesn't even sound dystopian at first, or even particularly unrealistic. Until we meet the Grievers. The robotic Shelob-like spiders that come out at night to eat anyone who's left in the maze. And Thomas becomes the first to kill one of them. And they tear off its leg. And they discover an electronic device of a sort. 

Unlike the others, who have been just trying to survive in the maze for years, Thomas knows something is wrong and is determined to find out what. And the action-packed thriller that ensues is exciting to the very last minute. There are multiple plot twists as the movie goes on, until we get to the ending which ends on a slight cliffhanger of sorts, leaving us to wait for the sequel based off the second book--Scorch Trials. 

The movie has been criticized by people who did and didn't read the book alike for being confusing. I did not read the book myself, and I didn't find anything particularly confusing--at least, nothing that I knew won't be answered until Scorch Trials. 

The Maze Runner is a very thrilling, heart-pounding flick. It may have a somewhat thin premise at first, but things just keep getting amped up and up until they've unearthed the latest case of a government--or something--abusing its powers. That may seem like a spoiler, but come on, what dystopian book/film doesn't involve that? Overall, it's definitely worth watching, whether you've read the book or not--in this case, I don't think it matters. 

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