The Dystopian James Dasher's The Maze Runner

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Though the summer blockbuster season was unofficially over when it landed in theaters, The Maze Runner brought thrills that could have gone toe-to-toe with any action tent pole. The film, an adaptation of the dystopian James Dasher novel of the same name, was a compelling story about a young man trying to make sense of his almost unbelievable situation. The story beings with our disorientated protagonist Thomas, played by an almost too old Dylan O' Brien, as he awakens on a lift that is bringing him to lush green forest area. He learns that he hadn't entered an evergreen paradise, but rather was shipped off into a green enclave, surrounded by massive stone monolith walls. Thomas quickly learns that enclave, called "The Glade," is the center of a larger-than-life maze with no form of escape. The inhabitants of The Glade, other boys …show more content…

Aside from a rather shameless attempt to set up subsequent sequels, The Maze Runner operates at a good enough pace that never quite drags on. While some tertiary characters aren't quite fleshed out, there is enough information presented about them to advance the story without problems. Dialog juggles the unenviable task of establishing personalities and sharing with the audience rather dense patches of exposition. In the wrong hands, The Maze Runner could have easily have been twice its runtime, endlessly going into detail about the intricacies of the maze. When the sole female "Glader" is introduced in Teresa (played by Kate Scodelario), she offers a different sensibility than the other boys without falling into the same onscreen stereotypes that plague other female characters. Teresa could be seen as a new type of female protagonist: Neither overly sensitive, nor overly brash for the sake of entertaining the audience. Teresa's journey in learning her role with the creation of the maze is a satisfying one, regardless of the audience member's

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