Mediocre -- adds worst part of series and leaves out much of book

Rating: 6/10 (20 September 2014)

If you read the book, prepare for disappointment. Although more complete that the book, the movie is mediocre. It omits the most interesting elements of the Maze Runner, while adding the worst elements from the sequels (The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure).
At the heart of the book is solving the puzzle of getting out of the maze, which that has eluded the runners for years. That should be the heart of the movie. Instead, the audience discovers that the maze could never have been solved, and but for the fortuitous discover and use of a device the maze would not be solved and everybody would die. Deus ex machine is a bad plot solution, but "Machine" ex machine would make ancient Greek theatergoers cringe.
The movie also discards any attempt to develop relationships between the kids. In the movie, the entire plot is explicitly and inexplicably compressed to three days. This means that any attempt to portray Thomas as being anything but the new outsider fall flat. It's a movie, we don't have to see every day, just let us know that time has passed.] The grievers and the conflict over Ben's sting are nonsensical in the movie. E.g., in the movie nobody has ever survived a night in the maze, the grievers only come out at night when the maze is closed so nobody has ever seen one, the grievers are what sting people (no beetle- blades) but the surprising thing about Ben's sting was that it was "in broad daylight," not that he's dying something had stung him.
The screenplay's attempt to give more of an explanation at the end of the movie is understandable, but horribly executed. While the book version ended with little explanation of "why" the kids were in the maze, a movie that left that out would be doomed. However, when one of the biggest criticisms of the sequels is that the author couldn't come up with a decent explanation, then that's the element you should change or explain in the movie! Not these writers, they make the explanation even less believable and more disappointing than the book. At least with the Matrix, the Coppertop explanation was fun to watch (and generated millions in product placement revenue).