It's a maze of bad

Rating: 1/10 (17 February 2015)

I know it's a sin to rate a movie a 1 because if someone really likes a movie, it ruins that person's day, but I hate this film. If you really love this movie, that's great, and I'm sorry about your day.
Maze Runner is a mess of plot holes, unanswered questions, and themes that never amount to anything. I won't deny that the movie has both competent direction and good special effects. It looks good. But the movie suffers from trying to be more than it is. It makes all of the kids in the maze look small compared to the maze itself and shows how inferior the kids are to the power of the maze. It probably doesn't sound half bad. I mention this part first because it's one of the only reasons to see the film.
If you're a harsh critic or even a person with standards for what movies you see, you'd come to the conclusion about thirty minutes in that the government has put them in the maze as a Hunger Games style test that to see how far we've come as a species. Or something. It's not. It's much, much, more disappointing. The reveal is stupid and not the movie's worst flaw.
The other big flaw of the movie is it hints at themes of friendship, loyalty, and trust, and never bringing them up again. Almost half of the first part of the movie talks about how the one thing that must remain constant is the peaceful nature between the people of the maze. But when the epic battle where the inhabitance of the maze are assaulted by the monsters of the maze and more than half of their friends are brutally ripped to shreds and scream in pain for their other friends, the main protagonists suddenly say, "who cares about those guys? Those guys aren't on the cover of the movie. They were never MY friends."A lot of the movie is like that. It builds up these themes of mystery, endurance, and friendship but then tosses it out the window and slaps your hand for try to empathize with a person or theme. After watching the movie, I felt attacked. Not offended because this movie didn't even give me enough investment to be offended. I felt hurt because I was being punished for trying to see the movie as more than it truly was. It's pure, nonsensical, garbage.