The Maze Runner - Movie Review

 
I watched The Maze Runner movie about five weeks ago.  Although I was planning on writing this movie review a week or two after watching it, I ended up really busy.  Right now I'm catching up.  Well, that's enough about roadblocks.  Honestly I did not know what to expect from this movie because, in my experience, movies made from books are never that great.  If the book is mediocre, then the movie is usually worse.  I will not dwell too much on the book since the book is not that popular, such as The Hunger Games or Divergent.

As a book, The Maze Runner was a promising start to a trilogy but is not so great by itself.  There were extremely gritty parts in the book that would definitely not make the cut into a PG-13 movie adaptation.  The movie definitely took out those gritty and also rather monotonous parts of the book out.  Surprisingly, the movie ended up better than the book it was based on.  Before sat in the theater, I could already tell that this movie was going to be better than the book from its trailer.  Although this was unexpected, I was glad to discover an exception to the "the books are better than the movies" media trend.

The Maze Runner movie takes out all the (not untasteful but) uneasy parts of the book that take over periods of days or even weeks and condenses them into an action-packed and suspense-filled (almost) 2 hours.  Sure, there are parts that do not make sense because of that.  For instance, there's the part where Teresa throws a Molotov at a Griever when the mechanical monsters first attack the Glade.  One of my friends commented that perhaps the Gladers could have used fire to fend off the Grievers.  There was no alcohol in the settlement in the books, so I guess this was "canon-conflict" if you ask the fanatics of the Maze Runner Series.  Yet this was a viewable reworking of the actual  Griever attack on the Glade that took place for about two weeks (I think, I read the book about two years ago), where 1 boy would be taken every night the Gladers did not get out of the Maze.  The canonical scenes are barely palatable with mainstream audiences - the movie makers were not selling out but I felt that their artistic license actually improved scenes that made me callous to the Gladers' suffering.  Other than that, those little "movie only" errors are something that nitpickers like Cinema Sins do.

I loved the visual effects.  The CGI was just right, it was not over the top or looked like the production hit the bottom of the budget.  The Maze effects were realistic, such as when the Maze moved its walls (which only happened when the Runners were in the locked Glade in the book).  The actors were extremely good and well suited for their parts.  I am not an expert with who in the Hollywood scene would be great for parts (there are not too many teen actors compared to well their established adult stars) but they carried out pretty darn good adaptations of the book characters.  Dylan O'Brien made a great Thomas.  He luckily did not carry over the occasional corniness of the book's Thomas.  Also Ki Hong Lee portrayed Minho very well.  I feel that the movie somehow focused more on Thomas and Minho a lot more than the other characters.  (This interaction between Thomas and Minho really comes out only in The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure.  Teresa had much more prevalent in the book but not a in the movie.)  The innocence of Chuck was perfect in the movie.  The same quality goes to Newt.

There were only two things that bothered me about the movie.  The first was how many times Thomas looked backwards every time Minho screamed, "Don't look back!"  I guess that's something Cinema Sins would catch if that only happened once.  However it happened at least five times, not to mention that Thomas somehow manages to look back at least 3 times yet still escapes peril.  The second thing that bothered me was the ending basically outlined plot elements that are extremely vital to the plots of the next 2 installments, The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure.  At the end, the head scientist Eva Paige mentions how there's a virus, the Flare, that ravages the Earth and that the Gladers are in an experiment that will help them find a cure for the Flare.  This seemed like just a scene that was put in just in case the sequel did not make the cut, which reminds me of movies that failed to produced sequels such as The Golden Compass and A Series of Unfortunate Events.  Ironically, The Scorch Trials is being made.  At this point I am cannot be sure if this scene was the result of the production's artistic license to put that "not so great secret" out there that kept the plots of Books 2 and 3 of the Maze Runner series fresh.  This might not be that much of a deal to the movies, however, because this movie creates quick, excellent, and concise versions of what actually happens in the books.

All in all, The Maze Runner is a great movie.  A major note: It is not a huge deal if a movie watcher has not read The Maze Runner series before watching the movie.  However the book series is probably a more realistic version of what would have happened compared to the movies.  The movie was always exciting and had just the right amount of suspense.  Good actors and actresses are also a plus, especially when the movie characters are extremely true to the book's characters.  I look forward to watching the sequel, The Scorch Trials, when the movie comes out.
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Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Maze_Runner_poster.jpg