The Maze Runner is a 2014 production from the Gotham Group, Temple Hill Entertainment and TSG Entertainment. The film is the directorial debut of Wes Ball with the screenplay written by Noah Oppenheim, Grant Pierce Myers and T.S. Nowlin. The main stars in the movie include Dylan O’Brien, Kaya Scodelario, Aml Ameen, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Ki Hong Lee, Will Poulter and Blake Cooper. The movie scores a 6.8/10 on IMDb and received a 57 Metascore.
The Story
This story could have gotten me heavily invested in a new sci-fi franchise but it completely failed to do so. This movie butchers almost every basic movie-story rule I can think of. The foreshadowing of events is painfully visible while past, off-screen events are extremely unclear and vague. You can see after 10 minutes that Thomas is going into the maze as soon as he can. Meantime, the stakes are a bit unclear at this point. We get almost no explanation about the situation and how they got there.
It seems to me like there is no problem at all for our group of boys. Every month a new arrival comes through and they introduce him to the situation while they live on. There seems to almost no sense of danger for these guys, only the runners are in any sort of danger but we don’t get to see their point of view. This created a feeling in me that there is almost no reason to go into the maze because they seem to have been safe for multiple years.
But then this new boy arrives and within 3 days everything has changed. The majority of the tribe gets killed while they also welcome their first female member. Oh, and someone survives the night inside the maze for the first time ever. First of all, why were there no females before? Now it just seems like a group of teenage boys on a hunting trip. In this first movie, the fact that she is a woman doesn’t seem to have any impact so why shouldn’t they put in any more?
Furthermore, how have they not been able to survive inside the maze? Thomas is hardly any more experienced than someone like Minho. It also seems like Thomas kind of becomes the new leader within his first 3 days in the group, while others have been there for years. It creates a hard to believe story with some strange holes in it.
When they finally escape the maze, they find a scorched Earth and a few answers. But a new virus has been the bigger problem and wiped out humanity? Why did they need to add the unoriginal Earth warming up story to this? A deadly virus on its own could’ve fun. Also, who built the maze in the middle of the desert while the Earth was heating? That seems hardly possible.
The Characters
None of the characters in this movie has a proper character arc. Apart from Thomas every single character is expandable and barely of importance. Alby is just there to explain to the viewer what is going on, while characters like Newt, Chuck and Minho are more like fillers. We’re made to believe that Teresa is important to the story but she did absolutely zero with past knowledge, whilst Thomas did.
But I feel like Thomas story does not exists, just like the others. We get no backstory apart from the fact that he was working with the creators of the maze. Meantime in the maze, he is suddenly a hero with capabilities outperforming those of his peers who have been living there for years. It is also incredibly painful to watch Thomas ask loads of questions just so the plot can be explained. Sometimes even a clear emotion has to be said out loud for some reason.
The Production
Probably the only part where this movie performs a sort of reasonable. The maze was quite well made with some interesting set pieces. Although they definitely should’ve shown every section and its special defences, rather than just the two. The Grievers were a bit strange though, with their half-robotic, half-human like bodies. As I said already, the writing was hardly any good while the scores were unnotable.