Thomas wakes up in a box elevator which sends up to a place called the Glade surrounded by a mysterious ominous maze with no exit patrolled (at night) by dangerous cyborg creatures called Grievers.   Everything starts to change with the arrival of Thomas where no one remembers anything else except their name.  Then Thomas breaks the rules to try to save two of the Gladers by going into the Maze, but it gets more complicated when a girl named Theresa arrives saying his name.   The Gladers must solve the mystery of the Maze before it is too late as events have put a few things into motion.

 

THE MAZE RUNENR is a frustrating adaptation of the James Dashner novel as some of the changes works for the movie while other changes goes against what made the book a good read.   The movie has a compressed time frame where the story takes place over three to four days where the book takes place over weeks.   Also most of the character development of the book is tossed aside along with a few plot points that make some of the choices in the movie make less sense.  The casting and production are top notch, but the Griever creature design isn’t as cool as imagined the Grievers in the book.  All of this may make me seem like a book purist, but I know book and movies are different mediums and the right changes can still make a good movie be a good adaptation.  I do like some of the design of the maze better and how they discover the Griever Hole in the movie more, but I do think the script tosses aside the plot of the other Runners aside too much to just focus on Miho and Thomas too much.  Even some of the relationship between Thomas and Theresa is thrown aside for the script.    There is one good change for every bad change from book to movie.   THE MAZE RUNNER isn’t one of my favorite adaptations.  Adaptations that really work are movies such as DIVERGENT, THE HUNGER GAMES, and TWILIGHT where THE MAZE RUNNER is a mixed bag of frustration.  I think people who have never read the book will probably enjoy the movie more where the ones who loved the book may find a problem with this movie.   I say go read the book and wait to rent this movie.  I hope they do a better job with the adaptation of the sequel, THE SCORCH TRIALS, but part of me wish they could remake THE MAZE RUNNER now with a  better adaptation of the material.

 

This review is ©9-21-2014 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com

 

Like Enterline Media on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/enterlinemediaweb and follow on tumblr at http://enterlinemedia.tumblr.com