A Captive Audience for a Tale of Captivity

On my flight to Hawaii, I decided to watch a movie that probably wouldn't have made the cut were I not stuck on an airplane: The Maze Runner. The film is an adaptation of yet another young adult book series imperiling teenagers in an apocalyptic future. I haven't read this particular iteration of the premise, by author James Dashner, so I took the movie only on its own. Unfortunately, the movie didn't quite seem that it could stand on its own. Either important details had been lost in the adaptation from the book, or this first installment was relying too much on the arrival of later movies to provide missing context.

Of all the recent stories of this ilk, The Maze Runner most lets the influence of Lord of the Flies be visible: a bunch of young boys are trying to maintain a society in a secluded valley. But this valley lies at the center of a deadly maze that closes and rearranges itself each night. "Runners" attempt to find an escape for them all... if their makeshift society doesn't crumble first. The protagonist is Thomas, the latest of the monthly arrivals in this maze -- his memory erased, but his determination intact and his skills vital to the group.

Cracks in the premise appear almost immediately. We're told early on that every way to escape the maze has been tried before Thomas' arrival, but a casual brainstorm suggests several plausible ideas that ought to have been explained away. The kids are capable of making rope; can they climb to the top of the walls? They have tools that can carve into the maze walls; how about carving handholds? They have supplies (and new recruits) delivered to them by an elevator in the ground; have they used their tools to try to jam the doors and climb down the shaft?

Even if you ignore all this and take the backstory on faith, events portrayed within the movie also beg for an explanation that never comes. After dozens and dozens of boys are delivered into this maze/prison, the elevator serves up a single girl to kick off Act 2. This single exception to the "all boys club" is never explained. We do at least learn eventually where she (and Thomas) come from, but it's part of a cyclical explanation that fails to satisfy. Both because I don't want to give spoilers and because it seemed unclear to me, I'll summarize it vaguely as this: they've been chosen because they're special, and they're special because they were chosen.

The few people in the cast of lesser-known young actors do inject a bit of life into the proceedings. Dylan O'Brien, from MTV's Teen Wolf, makes a fairly charismatic hero. Thomas Brodie-Sangster -- who has appeared in everything from Love Actually to Phineas and Ferb to Game of Thrones -- is an effective face for the maze dwellers (even if the plot actually has him as the second-in-command). But the film is at a disadvantage compared to other YA dystopian franchises for having essentially no adult characters to cast with more heavy-hitting actors.

Still, the entertainment scale does fluctuate a bit when you're stuck on an airplane. The Maze Runner was good enough for a captive audience to pass two hours. There was an earnest and serious quality to it that kept me engaged until the end. Still, I'm not sure I'm going to look to the forthcoming sequel for the answers this movie should have provided. Not unless I'm stuck on another long flight, anyway. I give The Maze Runner a C-.