The Maze Runner - Film Review

IN the wake of the success of the Hunger Games franchise, the youth dystopia is now suddenly cool again.

TV's The 100 has been a worldwide success story, the Divergent movies looked to start a new franchise based on a completely insane pretence, The Giver gave Taylor Swift her acting break, and there is even the likelihood of the youth market finding Interstellar something worth viewing. This is all accompanied as well by the latest installment in the Hunger Games franchise, with the first part of final novel Mockingjay set to be released in November.

Arguably the biggest hype comes for the best-selling Maze Runner, which is based on a best selling series of novels by author James Dashner. With three books, two prequels - although one is currently being written for a 2016 release - and a large fanbase, many anticipate success.

Box office success is already assured - the film has already made enough to have more than its budget back - and its predominantly young cast is mostly signed up for the sequel next year, and most likely its own sequel in 2016.

The film starts with a sharp shock of a lift rising to the top containing a young man who has been in water. He rises into a green grassy square filled with similarly aged boys and surrounded by giant walls, beyond which lurks - as will be painstakingly explained later on - a maze filled with robotic spider-like creatures.

The central idea may work eventually, but it does sacrifice a lot of its early momentum in the opening moments to endless painstaking exposition. The first third is almost constant explanation of every single detail, and the momentum first generated in the panicky rise to this strange new world is lost.

The boy (Dylan O'Brien) wakes with total amnesia, although eventually remembers his name to be Thomas. He tries to integrate himself into this new societal order, but finds things a struggle, and also seems adept at trying to break through the societal structure.

Things quickly begin going awry, as the previously held societal order begins to break down. But even then, it all feels a bit slow despite the gentle raising of the stakes. As a result, despite the actors doing reasonably well with their dramatic rations, there is very little sense of jeopardy or momentum towards any end goal or game.

There are equally some predictable story tropes being trotted out. To bring out just one example, one of the things spouted is that "Nobody who has spent a night in the maze came out alive". You can already guess from there what will happen next.

Gradually, things reach some sort of climax, as the maze is further explored, explained and everything else. But then, when the finale is reached, things actually get interesting.

There is more explanation, as there seems to have been throughout, but at the business end, it provides a new and interesting sheen to proceedings, and is perhaps the thing that makes the most sense of this previously unfulfilling storyline. Christ knows it needed it, and almost in a surreal way, it seems to justify the need for a continuation, even after all the pedestrian sub-Hunger Games twaddle before it.

The final bit is certainly the most interesting portion of this enterprise, and seems to weight out some of what came before. There's nothing terribly bad about it, and there's certainly no fault of the actors involved, who do their best to breath life into the script. But it needed to possess a lot more about it in the initial period to make it stand out in the dystopian crowd.

Maybe the other works coming out in the next few weeks will have more about them to bring something fresh amidst the crowded dystopia field.

2/5