If you're looking for this movie to be like the book you will be utterly disappointed.

Rating: 4/10 (6 August 2017)

A movie is never as good as a book--that's a given. A movie can't develop characters like a book, and it doesn't dive deep into what the characters are thinking and feeling. Time also inhibits the amount of details that can be included. Still some movies manage to capture books on film very well. The entire Hunger Games series (2012-15) has been an excellent telling of the book series. A movie like "The Shining" (1980) has an alternate ending from Stephen King's book, but capture the essence of the novel. "Angels & Demons" (2009) left out a lot of details from Dan Brown's novel, but kept the general plot line. This movie fails on all accounts. After reading the book I was looking forward to seeing this movie. There were a lot of parts I was curious to see depicted on screen. So many details were changed, and the plot line was completely altered. I was disappointed on all accounts. In both we have a world where adolescent boys are taken, wiped of all of their previous memories. They live in a walled region known as The Glade, outside of which lies a mysterious moving maze. At night, the doors that lead to the maze shut. In the book, these doors are massive wall which shut defying all laws of physics. In the movie they show a perfectly plausible gear system only made slightly implausible by the character saying "How is that even possible?" In the book it never rains--in the movie it rains. The meaning of the maze is completely different in the two. The grievers, the creatures in the maze, are an utter disappointment. It's hard for me to tell if I would've enjoyed this movie more if I hadn't read the book more. The amount of death and violence is high for a very young audience, but the plot has been watered down so much it's hard to imagine it's intended for a more sophisticated viewer. If you're interested in The Maze Runner, watch the movie first and then read the book, or skip the movie entirely. Doing it in the order I did will prove utterly disappointing.