Another "youth competing/surviving for their life" theme movie

Rating: 3/10 (2 March 2015)

The Maze Runner (2014) Another "youth competing/surviving for their life" theme movie 30 November 2014 Just another praise of youth. Or how can you put it...Hollywood is again using very young actors, and the plot or theme is,sigh,again about a group of people competing in order to survive. And the sub- theme about society is dividing people into a few class. Just mention The "Harry Potter","Hunger Games" series, plus "Divergent","Ender's Game",TV-series "The 100","The Giver" etc. etc. Of course there are differences of those movies/series. But the overall big picture is quite easy to see that Hollywood is into the "youth competing for their life"-kind of genre these years. Plus the placement is very often a society who put the citizen into a few classes right from birth or given when they are teens.
I was close to give this movie only 2 stars because I'm getting tired of seeing the same theme repeating over and over again from different movies. But I gave it a 3 star because of the good special effects. And the kids gave an okay performance despite an mediocre manuscript. I know the story should be a big thing as a book. I don't know about that, but I can't just give my review of the movie.
Don't give me wrong. I don't mind young actors. But they should be giving characters that seems plausible to the story. Plus in most cases, the older actors with more experience, will, In my mind, just act better than preteen/teen/tweens etc. Fx I like "Lord of the flies" because the actors where very good. But besides that, the movie had a good story and manuscript. Plus at that time the movies plot was original. Making a movie like that one or two times a year, and the originality quickly fades out.
To go into the detail of "The Maze runner" it was quickly to me, it had some things that could make it a better movie. From the start of the movie, there's a lot of secrecy about why the main character (Thomas) can't get out of the area they are put and go into the maze. Thats quite obvious that's just put in there in the movie, to give the audience some mystery. But for me, that already broke down my "4th wall" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall), or the realism of the movie got broken there. For me, if it should be more realistic, it would be more realistic if the people who was put there in the maze, to right away give warnings to newcomers about how dangerous it would be to step into.
The "greenies" or newcomers to the maze, are quickly told, they have to work for the community. That also seemed a bit odd to me. They get the food served on (metal)plate each month, so what is there to be done more really? But I guess that was another odd thing that was placed there just to give a bit of false drama.
Despite all those things, the rest of the movie was okay because you got curious what the maze had to offer. But it was rather predictable. Okay. No spoilers from me. But you can watch it one Sunday if you feel bored. But I would recommend "Rollerball" (1975),"The running Man" (1987) and "The lord of the flies" (1990) instead if you want a bit similar themes.
Tommo Boy