The Maze Runner Gets Scorched In This Honest Trailer
This article is more than 2 years old
No movie is safe from the Screen Junkies’ Honest Trailer, except for really good, quality movies. No, not those, huh? Oh well. Despite being surprisingly fond of Wes Ball’s dystopian YA flick The Maze Runner when it came out last year, I was immediately ready to watch it get ripped to shreds by clever Internet videos, and this does not disappoint. Check it out!
The biggest gripe to be had here is that The Maze Runner is so deeply ingrained in the somewhat generic set-up that most modern post-apocalyptic YA stories adhere to, with The Hunger Games and Divergent laying the “teens tasked with overly important duties take on the establishment that doesn’t seem to have a real purpose in giving the teens said tasks.” The overall plots behind these projects don’t really sit right with me either, but I can easily fall back into the cynical P.O.V. that everyone is corrupt and that only the manipulative survive. And not the innocent little kid. Never that one.
Another one of the strange ways that The Maze Runner sorta sets itself apart is by having a sizable slang vocabulary that is born of nothing, really, beyond being created for young adults that love insular language. I get why “motherfucker” and “bitch” would be replaced with the less offensive “shank,” but having a character say, “We call them (this),” isn’t really a great explanation for anything. Those things aren’t grieving, so why are they the Grievers? WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE!?!
One of the most laudable aspects of The Maze Runner is that it largely avoids turning the newly arrived female Teresa (Kaya Scodelario) into a love interest for Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) or any of the other boys. (That will probably change a little in the sequels, if they follow James Dashner’s novels closely.) But it’s also one of the more ridiculous details/omissions. There are 50 dudes living together in one area for an undetermined amount of time—without any obvious homosexual boys among the group—and nobody goes hormonally insane when a girl shows up? Maybe they all just forgot what sex was. That happens, right?
Many other good points are made in this video, such as Chuck being the only pudgy dude in a sea of hot-bodied studs. And while I really like Will Poulter and his angry bitch face, this was probably the most accurate assertion made.
Now I can’t wait for the sequel, The Scorch Trials, and its impending Honest Trailer.
