Maze movie runs a straight course

Well, well, well … J.K. Rowling really started something, didn’t she? The author of the Harry Potter series might have created a wonderfully imaginative fantasy series for children – “might” being the operative word, but she unknowingly opened a Pandora’s Box of sorts for all future book and movie series based on the under-18 set.

Case in point: The Maze Runner. Author James Dashner’s trilogy about a gathering of teenaged boys and young men has now hit the big screen in a moderately thrilling and somewhat intriguing way. I have my doubts about whether this story is actually appropriate for the age of the audience that it represents with its main characters but my nearly-13-year-old son assures me that he’s seen worse.

The start of this adventure dispenses immediately with any kind of back story or exposition to introduce us to the setting or anything. Our protagonist Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) awakens in a panic as he rides a harsh service elevator to the Glade. This is a rather idyllic dale populated by a few dozen other lost boys, or should I say “stolen boys.” They have all been kidnapped and no one knows why.

The open oasis features grasses, fields of crops, wooded areas… oh, and it’s surrounded by an immense metal structure that there is no escape from. None of the human denizens of the Glade has any memory of their previous life or how they arrived at the spot.

None of them can escape either. While the structure reveals an opening to the maze within it every morning (and closes it up every night), no one has ever survived a night in it and no one has ever figured out what’s beyond it. The Maze is besieged with creatures called Grievers, a kind of monstrous cross between Shelob the spider from the Lord of the Rings and the bugs from Starship Troopers.

When Thomas arrives, he is given the introductory tour including the three rules of living among the other boys. This includes the rule “Never go outside the Glade.”

So what does he do? He starts breaking the rules, which leads the collective to confront their fears of the unknown and of once again regaining their prior lives.

This is the kind of story that is borne out of so much literature, so much of which is similar to the inspirations of The Hunger Games. While I despair at the glut of fictional film work that relies heavily on the plight of children in such troubling circumstances, I can’t help but be pleased to recognize The Lord of the Flies and 1984 in new movies designed and advertised directly to boys who are my son’s age.

While The Maze Runner may not have the most intelligent voice to offer messages to pre-teens, tweens and teenaged consumers of pop culture media, it does at least wear its heart on its sleeve. Dystopian drama of a populace under constant surveillance and threat of death? Yup … Orwell would recognize it well. A displaced society of young men who must create their own order and occasionally clash against it, well, certainly Golding would be proud to have had the influence.

If we were looking at influential movies, I would also name check The Goonies and the Canadian sci-fi think piece Cube as well.

I would say that this movie does not live up to its own expectations but it sure tries. It has a clever enough storyline – one that will no doubt soon see the silver screen when its second and third parts get produced – but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it an intelligent creation. To be honest, it’s a pretty facile rehash of those other classic dramas and narratives from much better fiction except that things seem to fall so easily into place to solve our protagonist’s challenges. I yawned several times throughout the movie’s nearly two-hour runtime, but not because I was tired: I was certain that I had seen everything before at least once in other movies.

The Maze Runner might have all of the pieces going for it, including themes of free will, anti-authoritarianism, and courage, even a storyline that somewhat compels me to know the extended saga better, but this trilogy must do much better to impress its audience with its creativity in the future. Right now, it seems too much like cold pancakes reheated in a microwave: it reminds you of something better while still being brutally bland and far too dense.