Interesting world building mixed with some rote storytelling make a mixed experience

Rating: 5/10 (25 November 2019)

Oh, the early to mid 2010s, when men were men, women were women, and teenagers were constantly being pitted against an all-oppressive state with absurd contraptions and concepts that fostered some kind of twisted growth. They were more innocent times, really.
So, the king of these films (really, the queen) was The Hunger Games a good series of 4 (should have been 3) films based on a young adult dystopian novel series. Soon, everyone in Hollywood was doing what they always do, mimicking the recent success. The Maze Runner came out of that time.
A young man, Thomas, wakes up in a dingy elevator rising to the surface. He finds himself in a green space at the center of a square of walls hundreds of feet high with only a few dozen other boys already there. What surrounds the little idyll is the Maze, a series of shifting passageways that opens up at the beginning of the day, closes as night approaches, and contains nasty beasts at night. Well, being this kind of movie, of course Thomas is going to become the guy who leads them through the Maze somehow. It's not really a surprise.
And therein lies the movies failing. Its utter predictability. Of course Thomas is the "chosen one". Of course he's going to do things that people who've been there for three years never tried or succeeded at. Of course he's going to cause a paradigm shift in the society. Of course he's going to lead them out.
The other failing is the incredible shallowness of characters. They're little more than archetypes that exist to fill rolls. The largest problem is with the "antagonist" Gally. He's angry and paranoid, and little else. I feel like he was placed there because the movie, without him, essentially has no antagonist except the Maze itself. He's there to stir things up and make life just a little more difficult for Thomas, but the situation around them is enough of an antagonist. Thomas' presence changes the rules of the situation in certain ways that the painfully expository dialogue makes very clear. Gally is just extra, and feels it.
But still, the movie's slickly produced so it has some surface level appeal. The movie was obviously made on the cheap side of blockbusters, but it uses its limited budget well. The maze looks good. The monsters look good. The action scenes engage on a purely sensory level. The acting is also pretty good, even if it is split across too many characters.
I didn't hate the experience. It was an okay way to spend 100 minutes of my evening. The promise of more of the world is intriguing enough to get me sort of interested. All around, meh.