Did The Maze Runner help Young Adult films?

The short answer is no, but it's not really as simple as you, or really me, would want to believe. Now that we're in a post-"Harry Potter" world where people are finally done trying to find copycats, it seems we have entered an era in Young Adult fiction in which Katniss Everdeen is queen and we must all be like her:
"The chosen one, who sacrifices body and soul to overthrow the evil empire. Against all odds she will fight for her people, finding new love but also discovering betrayal around every corner. What she doesn't know, is that she is part of a group much larger in the making..." blah blah blah. I know Katniss doesn't necessarily fall into the latter category but with the whole rebellion thing you can see where it's going a mile away.

Such has it been since the days where The Hunger Games first hit theatres, as the first book in the new wave of Young Adult movies. Then we got its sequel, then we got Divergent, The Giver, and now, The Maze Runner and eventually the first part of a relatively short book, MockingJay. The whole "split in two" gimmick is about as lame as 3-D is and was only used in the "Harry Potter" films because the final book was 700+ pages and to wrap up almost every storyline it could it would need two hours.

Anyway, as I said, The Maze Runner was the latest to hit our theatres, advertised as a story with a mystery. What's the Maze, why are they there? Why are they revealing so much about the following two stories in the trailer? All these questions and more made me want to see the movie. Not only that, but I went into this film with a ray of hope.

Hope that this one would be different. In the age where almost all Young Adult book adaptations, be it dystopic like "Hunger Games" or fantasy-based like "Percy Jackson," suck, I wanted The Maze Runner, a film that required little alteration to the plot and, honestly, very little special effects if you would just let practical sets be used, succeed. I mean, how much did they need to change that was spelled out?

Well apparently they missed the memo of probably reading the freaking thing, instead probably scanning the Wikipedia page, writing down a few bullet points, and then making a movie. Realizing that they only had about an hour and forty-five minutes, they decided to look at the first paragraph of The Scorch Trials Wikipedia page and tack on fifteen minutes and a cliffhanger I'm not going to bother seeing.

If you can't already tell, then the book failed in its way to be a faithful adaptation. But you can read more about that, and why I don't like the movie, in my review here. 

After I wrote my review I checked out some other reviews, and saw exactly what I thought people would be writing about it. "The next in Young Adult dystopic." "Fan of dystopic novels, check out The Maze Runner." Dystopia. Dystopia. Dystopia. Wrong. Wrong. WRONG.

The Maze Runner failed to help the Young Adult film genre because it wasn't the game changer it needed to be. It will continue to be seen as another "Hunger Games" rip-off because of the way that it has been advertised. I would blame reviewers for missing the point, but I honestly can't, even if they haven't read the book. Why?

Because TMR showed itself as a dystopic film. Not the way that the book presents itself. The book The Maze Runner presents itself as a mystery and a, obviously, maze story. The Gladers have to find their way out of the Maze before their supplies run out and before they are all eventually killed by the Grievers. Not only that, but they want to take down the Creators, the people who put them there. The rest of the series, when they are out of the Maze, suits itself as a world that is in fall-out. There is no evil empire, heck, there isn't even a government. Mass chaos on heat-ridden streets ensues as pseudo-zombies are the new Grievers. It is a post-apocalyptic world that the Gladers find themselves in.

So why the heck do all these advertisers sell it as dystopic, why does the movie continuously use tropes of current YA films? Because it works. Because it wants to just be. Fans wanted a TMR movie? Here it is, stop complaining. Which is absolute garbage.

The movie we deserve, the movie the industry needs, is within that book. Just take the book and use it as a script. Exposition is laid out not in the first thirty minutes, there is mystery and tension, and there are very important plot devices used in the books to push the plot forward and allow it to speed up to a very fast-paced ending, not the hardly tense moments we saw at the climax of this film.

Again, for the third time, I don't believe this film helped YA at all. Did it hurt it? Well it made the genre seem generic. If you didn't see dystopic spelled all over these films before you certainly will now due to complete negligence on the part of the creators, who really did nothing to try and change the game. The book was completely different from all others in its YA genre, which set the following two books apart.

Now, the following two films are going to be crippled by the nonsensical way that this film wrought itself. If you thought this film made no sense, just wait until the next two.

My biggest hope is that one day, someone will actually take time to pick apart the book for all of its little things and realize what made it special before paying millions of dollars to disappoint fans and just make another generic movie.

This is why I like books that go to television, folks, because you have to pay attention to the details. These YA directors seem interested in just one detail: "Is dystopic still cool? Yes? Great, let's use that and forget everything else. Kids love that."

I think people are forgetting that the true dystopia kinda comes in the form of 1984 (the book...we don't talk about the movie), which, to me, puts all these fake films to shame. Evil empire, pah. Big Brother is dystopia. In my opinion, W.I.C.K.E.D. may have been the closest thing to it, and guess what role it has in this film compared to the books?

Zero.