Yet another post-humans-have-screwed-up-the-world-and-its-up-to-the-kids-to-save-it film. As usual the kids are tossed into some completely contrived world where they have to make sense of things that make no sense. For a nice twist from the Lord of The Flies model, we have our young heroes working together to survive. I was waiting for them to don their buffs and give themselves a cool Survivor tribal name.
Living up to its title, there is a lot of running and there is a maze that would put those silly Game Designers over in Mocking Jay Land to shame. This is a huge complex with about ten acres of farmland in the middle, occasional rainstorms, and a steady supply of animals to augment the abundant crops and endless supplies of fresh water flowing everywhere. Then there is the Maze, a giant clockwork world made of cement and gears that makes Hoover Dam look small, and yet has completely movable components.
But it isn’t exactly paradise, for one thing, there are no girls. And there’s not a lot going on in the land of the Maze, except for the occasional death by giant Steampunk mutant spiders. There are numbers written on the walls here and there and a few scattered words that we are never allowed to read. The implication is that this used to be something, but now it’s just part of the prison/punishment/lab test that our brave young lads have found themselves in. We have a few flashbacks of the days before the Maze that look a hell of a lot of the training that Ender and his buddies went through.
By the time we get to the To Be Continued part of the film, there is the now familiar scene of the Old People Who Secrtetly Control everything rubbing their hands together and chortling with evil glee. Or at least that’s how it felt to me.
One or two problems I had with the story.
We are told by the Evil Witch that the world has suffered a plague and that everything is now a desert. Ok, so where did the Wicked Corp find the labor to build this massive and complicated Maze? Are we supposed to believe that the robot spiders made it? And how did rain fall in our heroes little bit of paradise? And now that our little band of survivors, more than expected, are out, is the Maze just going to be abandoned?
I found the whole thing to be a bit on the ridiculous side, even for a knock off Logan’s Run/Hunger Games story.
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