Spoiler Heavy Film Reviews – The Maze Runner

Yay, it's film review time. I’m going to review the films I see here. I say review, most will probably be critical rants and will be spoiler heavy. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

For this, I’ve created a rating system called the “Projectile-Vometer”. It is a rating system based on how close the film brought me to vomiting everywhere, violently and profusely.

A low score is good – maybe there is a little bit of throwing up in your mouth, but only because of the giddy excitement that overwhelms one when baring witnessing to divine wonder. A high score means the film induced awful, awful projectile vomiting, maybe lasting for days, and possibly explosive diarrhoea (e.g. Avatar).

Review time

Today I was invited to go and see “Labyrinth” at the cinema. I was filled with glee! “Yay!” thought I. “Jennifer Connelly, puppets, David Bowie running around upside-down on Escher stairs, the Bag Lady…” But alas, it was “Le Labyrinthe” – or “The Maze Runner” to give it its English title.

Source: screenrant.com

A quick look online and the plot synopsis did not bode well. It’s based on a series of young-adult targeted books (sigh). Keywords “Teenagers” and “post-apocalyptic” induced some pre-film gastric distress, and I was tempted to stay in and watch “Battle Royale” instead. But I decided to be social and arrived at the cinema armed with Settler’s Tums and Accupressure Wrist Bands for Nausea to see me through.

Plot summary...

Each month, a teenage (30 year old?) boy (except for one lucky girl) awakens in the middle of a grassy field, “The Glade”, having had their memory almost completely erased. The Glade is located in the middle of a giant, excessively walled labyrinth that can rearrange itself. Also some supplies are sent up with the teenager. It’s Lord of the Flies meets… Labyrinth? But, <<SPOILER WARNING>> there are no puppets or Jennifer Connelly.

This film is noteworthy for…

...containing the most excessively forceful injection ever administered
...the title maze (le labyrinthe) being almost completely superfluous to the events of the story
...weird brainwashing scene product placement for musical theatre: 

"Wicked is good... Wicked is good...".

WARNING –SPOILER HEAVY! SPOILERS AT EVERY MOMENT! I WILL SPOIL THIS FILM FOR YOU!

What happens...

We enter the film as the protagonist, Thomas, wakes up in the field, and is heckled by all the other Glade-folks, so that he freaks out completely, rather than being calmly introduced to his plight. In fact the whole beginning of the film suffers from this approach, and it annoyed me very much. Basically the first 30% of the film could be avoided if someone would just explain everything to Thomas. I mean, I’ve pretty much summed up the key information in two sentences in my plot summary. But Thomas is dripped-fed disjointed pieces of basic and vital information. His questions are ignored, or answered with needlessly terrified, starey silences and cut-aways. “How did any of you know how to farm goats or grow corn when your memories have been erased” or “Where am I?” being just two such questions. If the idea is to not-freak-him-out then it’s a bit late, given the way they handle someone waking up from drug-induced amnesia.

Thomas is warned not to go into the labyrinth (no one even explains it is a labyrinth – as far as Thomas knows it’s just a big wall), and then is violently tackled to the ground when he does what any sensible person would do, i.e. ignore the fuck out of that shit and try to leave via the giant gap in the giant wall ASAP. Then everyone is angry at him. Injustice!!! At this point, vomit was bubbling up in my throat despite the wrist bands, but I forced it down. “Surely NOW someone will explain something to him and all will be well”, thought I naively.

And so they begin –

“It’s a scary maze that rearranges itself every night, but later on in the film I will ignore this fact and reveal an accurate, 3D map I constructed out of sticks” says one guy who clearly uses all the hair-gel that arrives with the supplies each month. What hardship!

“If you stay in the maze at night you will die, because “Grievers”, giant semi-robotic spiders or something, will hunt you and kill you. Except I’m not sure how we know any of that, because I’m also about to explain that no one has ever seen a Griever and lived to tell about it, and all we know is that no one who stays in at night ever comes back. Because of the Grievers. That no one has ever seen. Or lived to tell about. Yeah.”

“I’m a pudgy, innocent child character”, exclaims a pudgy, innocent child character, “I hope I don’t die! Bond with me!”.

“I’m in Game of Thrones” says another.

“Also, sometimes we get turned into sort-of-zombies” says a sort-of-zombie guy. “Blargle-argle”.

And so the film ticks along for a while, never managing to be thrilling, but also not to bore. Most of the characters are likeable, even the “bad” ones. Game of Thrones guy is landed with delivering some terrible dialogue, but manages to get us through it quickly. A token girl arrives, but thank God they manage to keep the film pathetic-teen romance free. Although in this film she also contributes very little.

There is a lot of going into the maze which is better than not-much-going-into-the-maze. Grievers give chase inefficiently, having been programmed mainly to kill only extras, but waste time roaring in the face of central characters. There is a lot of maze running – and the maze is interesting but with no real sense of mystery or jeopardy. It needs a good Bog of Eternal Stench. Or that guy with eyes in his hands.

Source: Pan's Labyrinth. Image from images2.fanpop.com

With regards to the running, “The Best Runners” are chosen to enter the maze. But they all head off at a dramatic sprint, rather than a realistic, sustainable distance-running pace. And no one sweats. Also a panoramic shot of the maze is probably supposed to make it look impressively large, but in fact there is probably only a good 30-40 minutes of running involved in getting from the middle to the sides. No time is taken to portray the labyrinth as a mysterious, threatening place, the journey through which is arduous. In fact, when a large group enter the maze, frequent journey-montage cutting allows the little fat kid to keep up with all the athletic 30 year-olds with ease. Hunger Games had the same problem by undermining its central premise – i.e. everyone was supposed to die mainly from the arduous conditions, but in fact the climate was warm and they all had ample food and water at all times. Here, the labyrinth might as well be a big open room.

There is an infuriating giant spider attack scene in the middle. Moments are well shot – one shot in particular reminded me of Limbo, which was a nice touch.

A beautiful scene that is not in the film. Source: www.platformnation.com

Other moments are careless, such as when a group of people hide from the giant spiders whilst carrying lit torches. A moment that I found to be genuinely horrible due to a well-delivered scream is instantly ruined by a sarcastic one-liner. Where (non-special edition) Battle Royale excels beyond any other film in this genre is the fact that it allows the kids to be kids – they are frightened and scream and cry for their parents when they are about to die/are dying horribly. Their reactions are believable, and each death is poignant despite the large number of characters. Here, as for Hunger Games, everyone is always stoic and defiant, ready to die heroically for the cause they believe in at any given moment. Thus, the characters are rather flat and no death matters.

Then comes the end. The end is stupid. It was obvious from the start that this was all part of some giant rat-maze test, but given the reason for the test, the set-up of the maze makes no sense whatsoever. It’s like they just throw together every possible apocalyptic scenario ever as a justification. “There was an apocalyptic solar event… uh… virus… zombies… thing. We needed a vaccine and presumably sun block… something about immunity… so we built a giant robot spider maze and put you in it and then, later, had the giant spiders leave the maze to kill you so that we could test why you have immune brain. Presumably because all the books on immunology where destroyed during the sun explodey virus zombie thing?

Ok, so clearly some other stuff is going on to be revealed in future films, but even as a half-way explanation, this is nonsensical. I don’t know if it is as bad in the book, but here the exposition is just confusing and strange. Also, a final key moment in the film requires that one of the teen-adults who originally chooses to stay behind rather than leave, then changes his mind, passes an army of giant spiders whilst obtaining a functioning electronic key from one such spider, then deciphers a complicated pass-code that only one character in the film (not him) could potentially have solved (and stated was a guarded secret) in order to get through the labyrinth and catch up with everyone. Say whaaaaat?

Another thing that annoyed me was the blatant Central Character Conceit, or CCC as no one ever calls it. The moment Thomas arrives, everyone and everything is centred around him. When he isn’t on screen, all the other characters are asking “Where’s Thomas?” When under attack, they scream for Thomas, the person they just met, rather than any of the other people they have built a community with over a period of years. “Help me Thomas! Help me” they cry.

How much vomit? 

So rating time!!! I’m going to give this film a 47% on the projectile vometer. 

Image source: boatingtimesli.com

 47% vomit 

Some sick came up in my throat and made me choke a little. A few chunks went into my mouth, but I was able to swallow them. Maybe it was the Accupressure wrist bands or the fact I hadn’t eaten in a while – but the roughly two hours passed efficiently and vomit free. I don’t care whether or not I see the sequel and I won’t make any special effort to see this again. On the other hand, I was entertained enough to be really annoyed by someone using their stupid giant brighter-than-the-sun phone in the middle of the cinema.


I should also add that as a result of watching this film, I now have a strong desire to watch Labyrinth again. I've been singing songs from Labyrinth all day at work. So it's only fitting that I end this review with a link to the best dream sequence ever made. Also did you know that the choreography for Labyrinth was done by Gates McFadden i.e. Dr. Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation? Is there anything she can't do? Thank you for this Gates McFadden. Thank you.

The masquerade ball scene from Labyrinth.

First post - the pilot, in which I meet the Mayor of France

Hmmm... so I decided to write a blog. This may or may not be a good idea. I realised that a disturbingly large proportion of my day is filled with internal monologues, and maybe it will be more productive or useful in some way by writing instead. I hate the word "blog". 

Why so many internal monologues? I moved to France with what can only be described as partial language skills. After a few years and fewer lessons, I can cope fairly well with daily life, although I am terrified of phone calls. But daily life chat is not the same as having deep, or even not-deep but just normal, throw-away conversation. I also refuse to limit my friend-sphere to other English-speaking ex-pats. Why move to another country and then exist in some sort of weird international social-limbo. So I generally go out of my way to avoid deliberate meeting/socialising with english speakers when the meeting criteria is "they speak english". Thus forcing me into a weird social-limbo...

Being pseudo-integrated into French life can lead to a unique outsider-perspective of what constitutes "normal", or maybe more frequently, stumbling into some sort of misadventure. So in that sense this will form sort of an "ex-pat log". A xplog. I also run a lot, so that will come up frequently since many bizarre occurrences...occur... whilst I'm doing that. In fact, to improve my french and mix learning with pleasure, I joined a local running club. And so the members now unwittingly constitute my major source of pals.  As far the the xplog is concerned, I guess I will inadvertantly review races.

I'll also review the occasional film I see, since we seem to have entered the brown era of cinema, where films are often a) lazy b) nonsense and c) boring, and are as entertaining as watching actors throw faeces at each other for 120 minutes (this may be the actual plot of the regurgitated Planet of the Apes remakes). Anyway, good, or at least interesting films deserve to be highlighted, and bad films need to be systematically destroyed. Also it's fun to talk about films.

Ok, so now the toughest part. Post number one, the pilot post. Well this week I met the Mayor of France. Well it wasn't the mayor of France per se. It was the mayor the the 6th in Paris. And technically I didn't meet him, but I was in the room and he spoke in my direction. Last week I took part in the 10km Course du Luxembourg with a team from my work. They also have a 6 km and 1 km race. It was on the same day as the 16 km Paris-Versailles race, so I thought perhaps Luxembourg would be quieter, but there were still, I think, around 2000 people who turned up for the 3 races. It was fun to meet some new people from work, outside of a work environment, and the course was well organised. It's a bit of a strange one, since it is essentially four loops on the road around the outside of the park. Some people will not like this because it is repetitive and you are constantly turning in a single direction. I imagine that people new to running, and finding the 10 km distance a challenge, might find it a bit demoralising. On the other hand, for the more experienced, after one lap you can gauge your speed and effort easily even if you don't normally run there. It is also a nice area and the course is fast. One thing to note is that the faster runners begin to lap the slower runners pretty quickly. I didn't really feel that this held me back (I got a new PB), although there was zig-zagging involved, and the winner managed to crack out a time under 30 minutes. Also, due to the loop nature, this course has the highest ratio of race photographers to km that I have ever seen. So if you like being photographed whilst undergoing horrible, unflattering physical exertions, then this is the race for you. In most (all) of the photos I look like this guy from Starship Troopers getting his brain sucked out.

Spoiler warning - he died.

I shall bemoan my conflicting issues with certain aspects of mass participation running events in a future post.

Anyway, the organisers kindly offered to make a donation to my workplace. So the following week, I found myself arriving with a work colleague at the Mairie de 6'eme for the award ceremony and to receive a cheque. I assumed they gave out the medals after the race, but this one holds a ceremony the following week in the nice Mairie building which I had not been in before. The course organiser did a nice job of quickly thanking all the volunteers and passing out the trophies of which there were many. Unfortunately the acoustics in the room were too bad for me to follow (and I struggle at the best of times) but I think the top three in every age category for every race got a prize. A lot of people didn't turn up which was a shame. Perhaps it would be a good idea to ask everyone receiving a prize to sign a sheet or something so they can skip the no-shows. We received the cheque within the first 20 minutes and we also were given a trophy which was nice. Unfortunately I had spent most of that day alone and wasn't in french-mode, and it was a completely new context so I had no relevant vocabulary. Although I often need to ask people to repeat themselves, it's been a while since I had no idea whatsoever what someone was talking about. So when the organiser was talking to us, I defaulted to "grin like a deranged maniac until his mouth stops moving" face, and the organiser increasingly adopted a similarly stressed "please say or do something, weird grinning guy" expression. Anyway, awkward moment over and it was very nice of them to donate a cheque and trophy for our fundraising.

Hmmm well there is not much more story after that. But the first one is done. I have no idea if that was even interesting for other people. But then no one is making you read it. Perhaps I should provide links to better pages in future, at the start of each post. I also have no idea what this is going to even look like so I shall stop and attempt to post it.

I assume you can say things at the bottom should you feel the need.