I'm not going to lie: my main motivation for seeing this movie was Stiles. Stilessssssss. He's the best. I'm also inherently interested in all YA book to movie adaptations because a) I like reading YA and b) YA movies are either great (The Hunger Games) or hilariously bad (Twilight series) and even though I prefer a great movie experience I am also usually down for a hilariously bad one. So which was The Maze Runner?
Somehow, it was both.
The beginning was pretty great. Just confused Stiles in an elevator. In that moment, we were all confused Stiles in an elevator. Great. The set up is interesting too: a bunch of boys are all stuck in 'the Glade', which is surrounded by a man-made maze that changes every night. None of the boys remember who they are beyond their own names. They have to explore the maze to find a way out. There are also giant mechanical spider things in the maze that want to kill them. Cool. Cool cool cool.
They set a good pace for revealing info and moving the story along, and I thought the scenes in the maze were both interesting and filled with tension. The robot spiders, or 'Grievers' as the boys call them for some unexplained reason, were creepy and the CGI looked pretty good because they were only seen in darkness. I was intrigued from the start to know why the boys were in the maze and why their memories were wiped, so it had that going for it.
But for all that good, there was also some not so good, including Stiles--who's character is actually named Thomas so I guess I will call him that from now on--and Teresa...and that ending.
But let's start with Thomas.
He's one of those YA super special snowflake characters that for no particular reason is inherently better than everyone else. But he's curious, everyone keeps saying. So what? I'm confused as to why more of those boys aren't also curious. What the hell else are they doing all day living inside a single square mile? I know he has his Super Secret Backstory, but that really isn't expanded on enough to be relevant. Also: Thomas is milquetoast to the max. The only thing I know about Thomas's personality is he's curious, and that's because all the other characters tell me he is. He is so bland I think I might have fallen asleep while writing this paragraph. Cute but bland.
This leads to my next point: Teresa. From the trailers--and the book synopsis--Teresa's arrival as the first female to the Glade appeared to be a major plot point, an upset of the fragile ecosystem the boys have built as well as a turning point in the story. Nope. She was utterly pointless. She came up in the elevator with a piece of paper that said She's the last one ever, and my friend pointed out that they could have literally sent the elevator up with just the piece of paper in it and it would have had the same impact on the story. Teresa and Thomas have a ~connection~ right away, and I was really hoping they were brother and sister (hell, they actually look like twins) so Teresa wouldn't end up being just a weak ass love interest for our curious hero. But alas, tis not so. She is simply there too stare longingly at Thomas until we get back to the real story.
Side note: I think this Thomas/Teresa problem could have been resolved if Thomas simply didn't exist and Teresa was the hero. Think about it. Way cooler story, right? Yes.
So both Thomas and Teresa don't quite fall into that YA hilariously bad category, but the ending does, to which all I can say is: ??? There are so many layers of what the fuckery in that ending that I actually feel like I know less about what's going on than I did before the movie started. I don't want to spoil anything, but I do have one question: who the heck edited that suicide video after the maker of it was you know, dead?? Did the maker edit in all that supplemental video footage posthumously? Lol.
So basically I liked this movie up until that clusterfuck of an ending. I am down for the sequel though, because I am expecting it to veer head on into hilariously bad territory, which will be fun times.
