Maze Runner Review- by Impression Blend

Full-text transcript of the Maze Runner review:

[00:00:00] Hi, everybody, today’s video is going to be a movie review of The Maze Runner, which is a film that came out last weekend. It’s based on the young adult dystopian novel under the same name. And I’ve actually reviewed the book before on my channel. So if you want to see that, I will link it down below so you can check it out. If you’ve never heard of the Maze Runner, if you’ve never read the book, you don’t know the premises. It’s about a boy named Thomas who is in his mid to late teens. I think he’s 17 years old. He wakes up in this dark elevator, which pushes him out onto this glade where he’s found by a bunch of other guys his age. And apparently he doesn’t remember anything. He doesn’t even remember his name. And he lives in the glade. Now, the glade is surrounded by walls that look really, really old. And outside the walls, there is a huge maze, which is apparently the only way to get out of the glade. The first boy was pushed out into the glade three years ago and from that point on the elevator brought a new boy every month, along with some supplies, things like that. So slowly they’ve established a community there and they have a group of people called the runners which try to solve the maze and map it out. But it’s huge. They have to go in for the night because these monsters come out called the grievers.

[00:01:19] And during the night, the walls of the maze changed. So they kind of have to start over every day. So that’s the premise of it. Thomas, the new guy obviously wants to get out of this Glades. He doesn’t want to stay there for the rest of his life. He also wants to know who put them there, why they’re there, why don’t they have any memories other than their names? Makes sense. And I found the movie was actually pretty good, especially as a book adaptation. I think book adaptations rarely come out good, at least in my opinion. There’s always some kind of disappointment. They always change like an important part or something like that. There were quite a few changes from the book to the screen, but I would say they all worked and the main plot points are still there. So if you have read the book and you liked it, I think you will definitely like the movie. And if you have not read the book, I think you will enjoy the movie for the most part. But I have noticed that people who are not familiar with the story were a little bit frustrated with the ending. I think it’s important to remember is that this is a trilogy. This isn’t a book that’s dragged out into multiple movies. This is actually what happens in the first book. And there’s more information to be revealed as the series go on.

[00:02:34] So it’s kind of hard to complete the movie and have it be a complete kind of story when it also needs to tie in to the next movies. I do think that the kind of overexplained the ending a little bit, it probably would have been better if they left it a little bit more ambiguous. I think it would have been more interesting. But overall, I still thought it was pretty good and it’s definitely better than I expected it to be. Is a book reading Skeptic. First of all, the action scenes were really good. All of the chases, the fights, they had a good balance between showing things and not showing things. And there were also, I thought, really well shot. So that was good. The acting was really good for the most part. It was a really diverse looking cast and everybody brought something different to the story, but they all felt like a community. It was really good. The only person they didn’t like and I’m sorry if you like that person, but that’s just my opinion was Teresa, there is a girl you can see that in the trailer. It’s not really a spoiler. She just she was just from another world. I don’t know. I didn’t think her acting was all that great. She looked the part, but every scene she was in, I felt really disconnected. And when she was interacting with the other leaders, the chemistry just wasn’t there.

[00:03:57] And she didn’t match the overall mood. And I just didn’t like her performance. I thought it was overacted. Sorry, I don’t know who this girl is. I’ve never seen her before, but I felt like they could have cast a number of people that would have done a better job. Pretty much anybody would have done a better job. Sorry. I thought overall the film had pretty good pacing, even though at some points I almost felt like it was a little rushed, like it was definitely not dragging at any point. There’s always something happening. It almost felt like if you’re not familiar with the story and you miss a few seconds, you might get confused later on because there’s always something going on. The dialogue was natural. They didn’t overdo the sling, thank God, because the slang that the Glazers have, they have this unique way to swear pretty much was something that really bothered me in the book because there was a lot of it and it was kind of distracting, at least for me. I never get used to it. But here it was very much tamed. And there wasn’t as much of it. So you still heard it, but it wasn’t like taking over the conversations, which was good. I really liked the overall look of the movie, definitely had a sense of place. And they kind of went with a more industrial looking maze, which isn’t what I imagined when I read the book.

[00:05:18] But it worked and it worked with the monsters called The Grievers. They kind of had a pretty mechanical look to them, which they’re supposed to. But some people thought they were a little too mechanical. They actually thought it was a pretty good depiction of what they described in the book. But yeah, generally, I would say it was a pretty good book adaptation, even though it had changes. And I think if you like kind of dystopian worlds and fast paced action, you would really enjoy the movie. Now, I’m going to go into a more spoilers section of this review. So if you haven’t read the book, this probably is the time for you to say goodbye. Please watch the movie or read the book and come back and talk to me about it. But I’m going to talk about the changes from the book to the film and what I thought about them, what I thought worked and what I thought didn’t work. A real good are ready for spoilers. OK, so first of all, the telepathy between Theresa and Thomas is completely gone, is just doesn’t exist. And I can understand that they probably didn’t want to worry about another subplot and another thing to confuse people with. But at the same time, I was really curious about how they would do that and they just decided to abandon that. So it’s fine. It doesn’t really affect anything, but it definitely affects the connection that Theresa and Thomas have because in the book there’s a definite connection as soon as she arrives and then the telepathy happens and, you know, they’re connected in some way other than her knowing his name.

[00:06:52] But here is just kind of like, do they know each other? What’s happening? I don’t know. I’m kind of on the fence about this one. When do you guys think. I think the biggest change from book to screen was the fact that they decided to go with nobody has seen a griever before and lived to tell about it, which seems like a really small detail. I mean, like nobody survived, OK, who cares? But that actually had a lot of repercussions on the rest of the story, because first of all, that means nobody has ever gone through the changing and remember things, they kind of do it a little bit in the beginning, but it’s not to the same effect as it is in the book. So they don’t have the serum which helps them go through the changing and survive. Thomas doesn’t see the grievers before he goes in the maze, which is something that happened in the book. I think Newt showed him the grievers or maybe it was Albi. I think it was Newt showed him a griever, like on the second day in the Glades. So he’s like, this is the problem over there. Also, it affected the character of Gallie a lot because the reason that Gallie doesn’t like Thomas in the book is because Gallie was stung by a griever at one point before Thomas’s arrival and has regained some of his memories.

[00:08:08] And so when Thomas arrives, he knows this guy. He’s like, I remember you, I don’t like you. Whereas in the movie, he’s just kind of a dick for no reason. Like, he’s like, no, we want to stay in the glade and stick to our community rules and yeah, Thomaston like you. And that’s just didn’t work for me. I think that’s the thing that I liked the least because his character motivations were just off because he never went through changing. So he didn’t really have a reason to hate Thomas, and yet he still didn’t like him. And then there’s this whole story in the book where Gallie goes into the maze and he’s gone for a few days, I’m pretty sure. And he comes back and he tells everybody the grievers are going to take one person every day and blah, blah, blah. And that just never happens in the film, which once again really affects the Big Griever attack scene. Because Alvie doesn’t sacrifice himself or anything like that, he just gets killed. That’s that they pretty much just get attacked by the grievers. And there are some people that survive and most of these people decide to go into the maze and try to get out, which is fine.

[00:09:17] It’s still worked as a plot. And I do understand that they need to simplify it because they only have two hours to cut this movie down to. And there was a lot of information to put in these two hours. But I felt like that affected characters and their personalities a little bit. Not a little bit, a lot of it. So I don’t know. I really felt kind of sad that Gallie was kind of a flawed character. He just wasn’t a nice person. He didn’t really have a reason to not be a nice person. That didn’t make sense to me. Then the whole thing with Thomas, where he gets stung by a griever to remember things, doesn’t really go down the same way in the movie. And I feel like it was a little bit confusing for some. Somebody who hasn’t read the book because the book really makes sure you understand that you go through the changing, that gives you a lot of memories, and that’s why he did it. He wanted to figure out something, some kind of information to help them get out of the maze, where in the movie he just injects himself with Griever Poison. And you’re just kind of like, why did you do that? Why did that just happen, at least in my opinion? Obviously, I knew what was going on, but I felt like it was not explained very well. And lastly, the whole discovery of the code and how to get out of the maze, which is where Theresa’s character would have been handy, which is fine, I guess I didn’t like her anyways, so I’m OK with that being cut.

[00:10:44] But if you remember from the book, there was this whole scene with her trying to figure out the code and there there’s words and they keep trying to pull them together. And then it’s a sequence and they have to push the button, not in the movie. That didn’t happen once again, probably for the time purposes, because the movie could have been really long if they tried to explain every single detail. The point I’m trying to make here is that even though there are a lot of changes from the book to the film, it still was a good adaptation because they managed to keep the main plot points, even though the way that they got from point A to point B to point see was slightly different because there are so many small changes that affected that they managed to keep the mood and the feeling of the book in the movie. If that makes sense. I pretty much felt the same way watching this film as I did when I was reading the book, because they kept the same tone in the same mood, which I think is very important. I think it’s a big part of making your adaptation successful because sometimes actually oftentimes you come into the movie theater with a certain expectation because you have this image of how the story should feel.

[00:12:03] And then it’s completely different because they took a completely different approach and decided to emphasize different things. And that’s where the core audience, which is the book readers, have a disconnect with the story. So I thought that was very successful, that they didn’t have a disconnect that felt the same as the book, even though there were a lot of changes. So, yeah, I liked it. I think it’s worth watching. I think as an adaptation, it worked really well. It was one of the most successful book adaptations that I’ve seen. And I hope you guys enjoyed this review. Let me know what you thought about the film and the comments below. If you have read the book, let me know if you saw it translated well onto the screen. And if you haven’t read the book, what did you think? Did you think it was a good film? Did you like the action? Was the ending really frustrating? I would love to know. So leave me some comments below. Just make sure not to spoil the other two books for people who haven’t read them yet because that happens. I haven’t read the next two books. I’m on the second book right now. I hope you guys are having an awesome day and I will see you soon in my next video.