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'The Maze Runner' barely finds its path
A scene from The Maze Runner, a latest 20th Century Fox film based on the James Dashner 2009 fantasy novel
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A scene from The Maze Runner, a latest 20th Century Fox film based on the James Dashner 2009 fantasy novel. (AP/20th Century Fox)
When you are trapped inside a wall-protected sanctuary but with all your needs constantly met, would you try to break free just to see what life was like outside?
The Maze Runner, a movie adapted from a young adult fantasy novel with the same title written by James Dashner, tells the story of how restless boys try to escape a comforting environment that confines them.
The story takes place in a dystopian post-apocalyptic world in a place called the 'Glade', a green meadow surrounded by gigantic thick walls. The doors in the walls open and close once a day and behind them lies a maze of labyrinths that constantly changes.
The inhabitants of the Glade, who are known as 'the Gladers', are all boys. How they ended up here, they do not know. They all seem to have developed amnesia and can only remember their names a few days after arriving in the Glade. All of them arrived through a cargo box elevator located right in the center of the Glade.
The first of the boys is Alby (Aml Ameen). He has been living in The Glade for three years and becomes the leader ' in charge of explaining to the newcomers, who are delivered via the elevator each month, the rules of living and surviving in the Glade.
The movie begins with the arrival of Thomas (Dylan O'Brien).
After the elevator door opens, Thomas is greeted by Gally (Will Poulter), a physically strong young man who has the word 'bully' written all over his face.
Gally roughly pulls Thomas into the Glade. Thomas tries to run but is stopped by the other boys and is put inside a cage. Apparently, this is what newcomers always face during their first day at the Glade.
The following morning, Alby frees Thomas and explains to him the rules inside the Glade. Basically, everyone in the Glade must contribute to the society ' they grow crops and build shelters to be used collectively by all the inhabitants. There is also an elite group called 'the runners', whose job is to map the maze within the walls to find a way out.
The runners must return to the Glade each day before the wall doors close. Failing to do so means death at the hands of creatures known as 'the grievers', which look like a blend of spiders and machines, that lurk in the maze each night to kill anyone who becomes trapped there.
After a couple of days, Thomas begins making new friends, such as Alby's deputy Newt (Thomas Sangster) and a young boy named Chuck (Blake Cooper). For whatever reason, though, Thomas never gets along with Gally.
Unlike any of the other boys, Thomas has a high degree of curiosity about the Glade, the walls and the maze. He believes that instead of only the runners, everyone should dare to step into the maze and work together to find a way out.
But every time Thomas tries to enter the maze, he is stopped by Gally who stresses that the rule prohibiting non-runners from entering the maze must be obeyed at all times.
Eventually, Thomas breaks the rule when trying to save an injured Alby and the runners' leader, Minho (Ki Hong Lee), from the maze.
With good team cooperation, Thomas and Minho manage to outsmart and kill a griever while taking Alby to safety. Despite this, Gally believes that Thomas must be punished for breaking the rules and tries to convince Newt, who takes over the leadership after Alby is injured.
Newt proceeds to give Thomas a light punishment and he even promotes him to become a runner. This does not bode well with Gally, who later on in the movie seems to be involved in a power struggle to lead the boys against Newt.
Factions begin to grow within the Glade ' those who support Thomas and those who back Gally. The situation becomes more complicated when the elevator delivers the first girl, Teresa (Kaya Scodelario), into the Glade.
Teresa's arrival is accompanied by a written message saying that she is going to be the last ever arrival in the Glade. Suspicions grow, however, as she, despite also suffering memory loss, seems to know Thomas and he seems to know her.
What happens next in the movie is Thomas, using his wits, manages to unravel his past and the reason why all of the boys ended up in the Glade.
In terms of theme, The Maze Runner offers a deep question on the search for freedom.
The situation in The Glade before Thomas arrives can be viewed as heavenly. All the members of the Glade have enough food to eat, water to drink and shelter. Supplies, such as new clothes, are even sent periodically once a month in conjunction with a new arrival.
But, as represented by Thomas, comfort and security are not enough to contain human beings' natural curiosity and desire to to explore the world.
The acting by the cast of young actors is not bad, especially Poulter, who manages to bring out the paradox inside of Gally ' an insecure bully who is too afraid to go outside his comfort zone and would rather be imprisoned in The Glade than risk looking for freedom in the maze.
The greatest mystery in the movie is Teresa. Despite being the only girl in the Glade, she is completely insignificant. A mannequin could replace Scodelario, who plays Teresa, and no one would notice.
The movie is, in a sense, deep yet forgettable.
The depiction of the brutal and dark post-apocalyptic era is accompanied by PG-13-type violence. Sure, the director Wes Ball has some of the teenage characters in the movie killed, but the depictions of their deaths are very soft and subtle, far less brutal and gory as their deaths were described in the original novel.
Like The Hunger Games franchise, Hollywood has once again delivered a lame PG-13 movie, despite the brutally dark tale, just because most of its characters are teenagers. Had The Maze Runner been directed by someone like Quentin Tarantino who, if anything, seems to revel in the bloodthirsty, it would have been a movie to remember.
