The Maze Runner

The following review for The Maze Runner concerns all but the final fifteen minutes or so of that movie. I’ll get around to those final fifteen minutes (during this review), but everything you're about to read, until I state otherwise, avoids those final fifteen minutes.

Okay? Great. Let’s proceed.

Our protagonist, Thomas, discovers himself afflicted with amnesia and trapped in the center of a massive maze.

An entire village of young boys lives at this maze’s center. Not one of them recalls his past or how he arrived there.

The entrance to the rest of the maze opens every morning and closes every night. Those trapped inside the maze’s main body at night face a league of flesh-eating monsters.

A cage rises, once a month, from a trapdoor in the maze’s center. The cage always contains supplies and a new memory-deleted recruit.

Gally, the boy who first arrived at the maze, serves as the movie’s sympathetic antagonist. While Thomas urges his fellow villagers to challenge and successfully navigate the maze to freedom, Gally wishes to keep everyone safely tucked in the maze’s center, where the monsters haven’t yet attacked anyone.

Benjamin Franklin said that “Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” Thomas would’ve agreed.

The directing worked. The acting felt solid. Most of the characters proved well developed, while a few others came across as little more than a name each. The cinematography for several scenes played beautifully.

Must I file a grievance? The wardrobe and makeup departments might’ve rethought their strategies. The characters’ clothing, hair, skin, and teeth appeared too well sustained for a group of boys who lived separated from society, but I’ve nitpicked by this point.

Now. The movie's final fifteen minutes. Here’s where the movie’s well-earned goodwill swirled down the thunder bucket.

After Thomas led the villagers through the maze and inside a science lab. The movie had, up to this point, promised answers to mysteries (such as from where these kids arrived, who put them in the maze, and why) flavored by a great plot twist. The story failed, painfully, to cash a single one of these checks.

I won’t spoil the twist for you here. I couldn’t because I couldn’t possibly explain what the hell happened. Essentially, it went something like this:

“We (the scientists, now dead--or are they?--for unspecified reasons) put you (the boys) in the maze to accomplish A because of B and C, which have nothing to do with each other or A. But wait! A didn’t really happen. We lied! What really happened was D . . . or did it?”

The Maze Runner promised twists, explanations, and at least some fraction of a resolution. However, I left the theater armed with none of these satisfactions. The movie cheekily told its audience that they must wait for the sequel to get their answers.

If the movie’s writers wanted to go that route, they should’ve just skipped everything mentioned two paragraphs above, rolled credits right after Thomas and crew entered the science lab.

I would love to believe that the next movie will answer my questions, but such events as Prometheus, Lost, and M. Night Shyamalan have trained me to distrust these promises.

Worst of all, these last fifteen minutes degraded our previously well-written, sympathetic antagonist who made mistakes based upon noble, human motives into an uninteresting, bad-for-the-sake-of-bad guy.

I would encourage moviegoers to watch all but the last fifteen minutes of this move. When Thomas leaves the maze, leave the theater. I’m serious. You won’t miss anything worthwhile, unless you value an ice cream headache.

The Maze Runner offers a great ride, provided that its audience knows when to get off the coaster.

(You can catch my short fiction at martinwolt.blogspot.com and my novels, such as "Daughters of Darkwana" on Kindle)

I, Frankenstein

In the movie, I, Frankenstein, Frankenstein’s monster teams up with a clan of gargoyles to fight a race of demons that wish to destroy the human race.

Okay. Sounds like a fun yet forgettable ninety minutes of action and special effects.

It wasn’t.

To attack this movie for its weak, two-dimensional plot feels as if a world-renown foodie decided to review McDonald’s dollar menu. However, this is a movie review, so I must escort the plot before the firing squadron.

The aforementioned demons want to destroy the human race . . . for some reason.

The gargoyles have sworn to stop them . . . for some reason.

Frankenstein’s monster (who’s called “Adam” half the time and “Frankenstein” the other half) has spent the last two hundred years since his creation in pursuit of nothing, whatsoever. Then, he decides to go after the demons because . . . <sigh> reasons.

I would like, at the risk of sounding insane, to state how ridiculously racist these situations strike me. Yes, I know that gargoyles and demons aren’t real, but why would every demons want to destroy humanity and every gargoyles wish to save it?

It strikes me as lazy, at the least. Why build a complicated character with actual motives, when you can simply select a race for that character and have them behave in stereotypical fashion?

The writers could have, at a minimum, attempted to explain why the demons hate people. Yes, I know, they’re demons (and, yes, the emblematic value of that did not escape me), but it still makes for flat characters with no individualisms, nothing that motivates their actions.

I remember countless writing professors who swore I couldn’t include more than a few members of the same race in my fantasy novels, lest they “blend together.” Not if I write them with individual histories, personalities, and goals that make sense given those histories and personalities.

Consider how moronic it would sound if I suggested that you couldn’t include more than two Mexicans in a movie, lest they “bled together.”

The movie takes place in a major city where exactly two humans live. Everyone else (seriously) exists as a gargoyle or a demon. Both humans serve as scientists who work (unbeknownst to them) for the demons.

One of these humans (an older guy) does pretty much nothing of consequence.

A pretty, young woman plays the other human, and—shocker—she serves as Adam’s reward for killing the bad guys.

This female human seems incapable of surprise. Her boss, the demon prince, hands her an old book, identifies the book as Frankenstein’s diary, and explains that, with it, they can reanimate the dead. She nods as if that’s the most perfectly normal thing she’s ever heard.

I, Frankenstein's special effects prove “special” the way a candy shop features a “special” on Dum Dum lollipops. Rubber masks and pitiful computer-generated effects abound.

The acting (or lack thereof) sounds terrible, but this seems an unfair observation on my part. These actors and actresses had nothing with which to work. Many of these people try to “act” by yelling (angry) or talking to the floor (broody).

Dialogue remains this movie’s ugliest quality. An alarming percentage of it tells the audience what’s happening right in front of them or re-clarifies something the audience already knows.

That made me think . . .

I re-watched I, Frankenstein on mute, and I realized that this would’ve worked as a silent movie—a bad silent movie, but still interesting for its silence.

Heck, carve this disaster down to about an hour, kill all the dialogue, and make it into an extra-long music video with multiple songs by multiple artists, and you might produce a creative feature.

The creation of any movie, even a terrible one, requires massive amounts of effort. A lot of people (many with impressive work on their resumes) worked very hard to produce this pile of crap. I wish I could say something nice about it. I wish I could offer politer, more constructive advice. I wish I could mention a few of the movie’s good points, but I can’t think of one.

If you plan to accommodate a brain-damaged five-year-old who won’t ask questions, this movie might work. Otherwise, avoid it (the movie, not the five-year-old).

(You can catch my short stories at martinwolt.blogspot.com, and my novels, such as Daughters of Darkwana, on Kindle.)

Gotham: First Episode

Gotham seems a great idea poorly executed.

James Gordon, the television show’s protagonist, serves as a rookie police detective in the crime-ridden city of Gotham. He must, for his first, big case, arrest the mugger who murdered young Bruce Wayne’s parents.

Bruce, as any DC comic book fan knows, will eventually grow into the role of Batman.

Gordon lives an honest life. He optimistically struggles to better the world.

Gordon’s partner, Harvey, doesn’t share Gordon’s outlooks. Harvey’s cynical nature leads him to accept corruption and to play nicely with the local mob.

First, the good news.

The actors and actresses give great performances.

The writers allow the city itself to serve as Gordon’s unconquerable antagonist. Almost everyone in Gordon’s world runs dirty. His frustration feels genuine. His desire to protect his (very attractive) girlfriend speaks at the audience’s primal level.

I have, on the subject of Gordon’s girlfriend, a nagging concern that she’ll never fill a role greater than a damsel for Gordon to rescue. This concern arose not from anything I witnessed in the first episode of Gotham, but rather the past practices of comparable programs.

The directing proves decent, aside for a strange series of scenes where Gordon chases a bad guy through (what else?) the kitchen of a restaurant, where the camera suddenly hovers just in front of and beneath Gordon.

This sort of shot works beautifully and often. However, since the director, Danny Cannon, shot only this single sequence in the entire episode this way, it feels inappropriate, as if Cannon had shot a single scene in black-and-white for no apparent reason.

And “no apparent reason” brings us to the bad news.

I could, if I summarized the first episode of Gotham, end about twenty-percent of all characters’ actions with “for no apparent reason.”

Characters often do things that make no sense beyond rushing the story, reducing those characters, for the time being, into plot devices.

Sometimes, they do things that make no sense at all. One crime boss, Carmine Falcone, guns down subordinate criminals so as to prevent them from killing Gordon, even though Gordon’s death would’ve benefited Falcone.

Heck, Falcone could’ve just told the other criminals to release Gordon. Falcone clearly had the right to give them orders.

There’s even a scene where the Penguin cuts a fisherman’s throat to steal his sandwich (you heard me). It seemed an effort to end the first episode with a bloody bang, but managed only to make my head hurt.

Pacing proves Gotham’s biggest problem.

Gordon, by the first episode’s end, stands at war with his partner, his police department, and the mobsters who run the city. This sort of situation belongs at the climax of a story, not the end of the introduction.

I’m uncertain that the show can continue to mount additional tension from here (I’ll feel gratefully impressed if Cannon proves me wrong). Gotham can’t reduce its tension, and it can’t hover at the same level.

Ordinarily, I appreciate a fast-paced story. My own writing reflects this (don't you love how I make it about me?). However, I write short fiction and novels that are (quite deliberately) barely long enough to count as novels. I can get away with it.

Television producers who wish to milk as many episodes out of this series as possible can’t grease their tracks as slippery as I can.

A second issue springs from Gotham’s fast pacing.

The writers have, perhaps to better build the world of Batman’s childhood, included younger versions of the characters that would, one day, serve as Batman’s opponents (such as the aforementioned Penguin).

Gotham’s audience faces an unnecessary tide wave of these characters, all during the first episode. It’s overkill.

I felt as if the show spoke to me at a million miles a minute, terrified that I might grow bored and wander away from it.

“We have the Riddler and the Penguin and Catwoman and maybe the Joker. It’s all your favorite characters. Don’t go! Keep watching! Please!”

The second episode has yet to air, so who knows? Perhaps this series faces only a rocky start before it really takes flight.

Or, perhaps, it will grow worse, its creators certain that Batman fans will never abandon anything related to their beloved superhero, despite the material’s poor craftsmanship (a cancelled series called Birds of Prey would beg to differ on that point).

Or maybe--just maybe--this rushed setup will prove exactly what the series requires. Perhaps the writers know exactly what they’re doing, and everything that currently fails to compute will pay off by the first season’s conclusion.

Here’s to hoping.

(You can catch my short fiction for free at martinwolt.blogspot.com. You can also catch my novels on Kindle or any device with a Kindle app.)

Her

We don’t require relationships to spawn or raise our offspring. Plenty of pregnancies occur as accidents outside of relationships. A village can raise its children collectively. What use, therefore, have we of relationships?

To study this question, the movie Her removals sex (all physical contact, in fact) from such a partnership. It digs at what truly affects our emotions and fuels our needs for intimacy beyond the bedroom.

If we required only physical intimacy, our lives would prove simpler, and our vocabularies would rarely include the word “lonely.” Sex would, without emotional baggage and wagers, prove a common, effortless occurrence.

The movie Her features Theodore, who, for a living, writes beautiful love letters. He takes the lives of other people, and he writes for one exactly what the other feels. Yet, he cannot honestly express his own feelings.

Theodore spent the last year finalizing his divorce from Catherine, with whom he seemed to enjoy plenty of physical contact, but very little intellectual or emotional synchrony.

Catherine, in a flashback scene, asks her then-husband Theodore to spoon her. He happily gratifies her request. They seem, in terms of physical affection, compatible and content.

Theodore eventually purchases a computer operating system for his computer-phone-and-so-forth that possesses artificial intelligence (Her takes place in the near future, where everyone wears the same stupid pair of pants).

His operating system can speak to him through an earpiece and see him through his smartphone’s camera. She names herself Samantha.

Theodore and Samantha’s relationship starts out professional before it graduates into friendship. They afterwards connect on and intellectual and eventually emotional level . . . and fall in love.

Theodore can (perhaps because Samantha is a computer program, and he therefore doesn’t have to look her in the eye) speak frankly with her. He discovers much about himself in the process.

The movie’s experiment begins. How would a relationship with someone you cannot see or touch differ from a physical version?

Would a polyandrous relationship bother Theodore, despite the fact that Samantha couldn’t actually touch (let alone enjoy sex with) her other boyfriends?

Would the routine, relationship hurtles surface, even those that seem directly related to the sex Theodore and Samantha couldn’t experience? They do (as if sex actually has little in common with these issues).

Her presents evidence that we want someone to see us naked of our daily disguises, which we shed once no one can see us. Notice me. See me. Infuse me with significance. I’ll hide from you, though, the instant I notice your attention.

The dialogue in Her feels so well crafted that this movie could’ve worked just as well as a radio drama.

That’s not to say that Her failed to offer impressive visuals. Its director, Spike Jonze, uses everyday objects—from boiling teakettles, to a manhole cover venting steam, to dust drifting helplessly through the air—to convey the movie’s mood.

I recall a splendid scene in which Theodore sits in front of a large, television screen that displays an owl while it swoops down for a kill, and I felt refreshed to witness visuals creatively geared towards telling a story, rather than loud, high-end, “mind-blowing” computer graphics without a message.

Her moves a little slow at times. Jonze might’ve benefited, had he sliced away or shortened thirty minutes from the final cut. Still, I’m far from complaining.

Guy falls in love with his cellphone. Who would’ve thought?

I love it when Hollywood takes chances. I love it when those chances pay off wonderfully and unexpectedly.

(You can catch my short fiction at martinwolt.blogspot.com, and you can find my novels, such as Daughters of Darkwana, on Kindle. Thanks for reading. See you next time.)