Rerun... The Maze Runner

Magic Mike XXS was a non-starter

In my opinion, the most frustrating films are those ones that come so close to being really good and then muck it up. I find it hard to blame the Scary Movie movies or the Sharknado clones because when your expectations are sub-basement, then you can't be disappointed. But when you watch a film that you begin to really enjoy and then it pulls the rug out from under you, either by doing something monumentally stupid or unbelievable or by simply running out of ideas, that really hurts.

And so it is with The Maze Runner.

The Maze Runner is one in a long line of young-adult dystopian future book-to-film adaptations, however while most films in this category are largely aimed and the teenage girl market, this one is very much aimed at the boys (read: there is swearing drinking and fighting). Our protagonist is Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) who wakes up in The Glade, a small square of green land surrounded by a huge stone maze. Its inhabitants are a tribe of kids self-named "The Gladers" (yes, this film, like most of its kind, has invented new words to stand in for perfectly acceptable ones to show how "futurey" it is. That being said, this being a PG-13/12A film, the combined swear word "shuck" is genius). The Gladers are all boys, one new arrival coming every month, and they explain to Thomas that his life now consists of basic living-off-the-land survival, and the exploration of the maze, every day, in search of a way out. But if you don't get back to The Glade before nightfall, you get trapped in the maze where no-one has ever survived a full night. However, there's more to Thomas than meets the eye, and from the day he arrives, the rules of the maze start changing.

When William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies, he painted a wonderfully vivid picture of what young boys are like devoid of rules and regulations, however, I could never help but feel that it was a slightly unfair portrayal - mainly I had a problem with the idea that everything would turn to ash quite so quickly. The Maze Runner obviously owes a lot to Golding's novel, even having many of the same stock characters.

Marked for death? Surely not...

Where this film separates itself from its predecessor is that it shows the boys as more than capable of keeping it together. Granted, these boys are 15-16 rather that 12-13, but it's refreshing to see an "abandoned kids" plot where they have been managing OK for years. And this is what really drew me in to the film: like Thomas, the audience is dropped into this story in medias res with a fully functional society at work with hierarchy and job systems. None of the boys remember anything pre-incarceration except for their names and no-one knows who has subjected them to this puzzle-death-game. We are asked to accept the world as it is without explanation, and that which is unknown is an intriguing mystery. This kind of trust in the audience has been rather absent in this kind of movies, with films like The Hunger Games opting instead for an introductory exposition dump to detail who is good, who is bad and why the world is the way it is. I was gripped for the first hour, as The Maze Runner parrots the mission statement of The Cube in saying "Don't worry about why they're here, worry about how they'll escape."

Then it all falls apart. The finale of the movie has the boys tripping over the entrance to building of the people in charge, wherein they are met with a video which does a concluding exposition dump about who the good guys are, who the bad guys are and why the world is the way it is. Normally, it would just be lazy - an indication that the writers couldn't think of a good way of ending the film and were probably running out of money, but that's not all that's at play here. As we wade through the torrent of information being spewed at us, we begin to realise that we aren't quite following everything. Information is being left out. But this is the end of the movie why would they...? And then it hits us. This is a young-adult dystopian future book-to-film adaptation. It is bloody obligated to be a franchise. And as the final line of the film rings out "It's time to begin Phase 2", I just got mad.

I'm coming for you, Hollywood!



Not mad because I'm against franchised movies. Not mad because it's still a lazy way to end a film. Not mad because somewhere there is a table of businessmen actively seeking to reduce art to a value sum. Mad because, in spite of the state of cinema today, The Maze Runner was almost really good. Up until that point you had a brilliantly built world. An intriguing premise. Great acting, for the most part - Thomas Brodie-Sangster, a young English actor who is popping up in all sorts of things now is quickly proving himself as the next Jamie Bell. I got mad because it just seems like every good idea now has to go through the wringer of business marketing until what little originality is left is eclipsed by the necessity to optimise merchandising. It spoils the fun.

And the fact that this happens so often, never ceases to a-maze.

Corporate Jim's tip # 64: End your presentation with a subtle joke and a handy visual aid!

That's a wrap.