Okay teen sci-fi actioner.

Rating: Null/10 (8 November 2015)

I finally saw "The Maze Runner", and I'll be brutally honest, it didn't live up to my higher expectations and hopes, but it did deliver on what I otherwise thought it might have been.
And that is it turned out to be a giant teenage market CGI film. Okay, that's not a big deal, but the story had a few loopholes, and felt like it was recycled material from classic sci-fi I grew up with in the 60s and 70s.
What to say. The acting is good, the sets and locations and SFX are top notch. Everything but the plot, is good. And since this is a franchise builder, the plot is incomplete at the present time.
What I wanted, what I hoped for, was an introspective film with some moments of action, but a lot of "oohs" and "ahh" moments of truly impressive visuals. This was not the case.
Instead we get cyborg spiders that look like they were recycled from DOOM and DOOM2, some pretty basic tropes of character interaction, and a lot of story that goes absolutely no where, and will have to wait until the sequel to get resolved.
Much of Hollywood is scraping to recapture teenage dollars for their product, not realizing that their target market is all but destroyed for the kind of fare they're putting out to their customers. I say that because there's little in the way of profundity in this film. It's pretty basic, and in that vein, dumbed down several shades to keep said teenage audience interested.
Plot holes abound. How come the characters don't come up with a defensive plan? With a tech base that is existent, how come there aren't more believable explanations for how things got to where they are? And, would you really waste a lot of resources on a gigantic maze given the other issues in the film's world?
For all of its mid-brow sci-fi intellectualism, it was an engaging film. I do have to admit that here and now. However, if I had shot it, I would have used mixed age actors (unless the source material, I'm assuming a sci-fi book, required otherwise). I would use a different monster, a different set of dangers, and slow the film some to give the characters time to reflect and come up with solutions of their own. I would address the obvious technology discrepancy, and lay out the world's problems from frame one.
There just isn't a whole lot here thematically. And what isn't explained, but hinted at, you can pretty much puzzle out and guess what might be included in a sequel.
The characters are somewhat likable (again, I would have preferred fully adult males and females), the setup is interesting, and the premise might otherwise have been intriguing if not for some story shortcomings.
Given the massive army of production personnel required to make this thing, I'd be hard pressed to see any producer live up to flipping the bill for a second installment.
It's not a film I would dismiss, nor a film I would highly recommend, but it is a film that I would say each person should watch on their own and decide for themselves. It's got that kind of quality to it. Technically healthy, but somewhat lacking in deeper story meaning.
Give it a shot if you need some sci-fi action on your TV or computer screen.