Last night I decided to watch The Maze Runner even though I haven’t gotten around to reading the book yet. Because I’m a rebel. Yup. That’s right. Also my husband was like “Do you want to watch The Maze Runner?” And I said yes.

Having not read the book, I was going into the movie relatively uninformed except that I’ve read a description of said book and read the first few pages. This is what I knew going in (mild spoilers):

A boy is trapped in a box that opens into a big grassy field known as The Glade. He doesn’t know who he is or how he got there but when he gets out of the box there are a ton of other teenage boys who also don’t know who they are or how they got there or why but they all seem to have come to terms with this information until a girl shows up a few days later and then they’re like WTF?? This changes everything????!!!!!”

I’ll be honest, I didn’t love this movie. The plot was fairly interesting but it also felt incredibly rehashed and because it was a movie trying to do a book’s job, it left a lot of questions unanswered that I tried not to dwell over but pretty much failed. After about half an hour I almost turned the movie off but my husband and I found that by making snarky jokes and heckling the movie loudly that it made it enjoyable to watch.

Things Learned while watching The Maze  Runner (spoilers obvy)

So a quick synopsis of this movie would be “If Lord of the Flies and The Hunger Games Had a Baby and there were giant cyborg spiders there.”

Lesson one: The first thing that Thomas learns when he enters the Glade (before he remembers that his name is Thomas) is that nobody knows why they are there and that there is a giant maze all around them that could conceivably lead to an exit but they aren’t allowed to go in the maze because they said so.

Lesson two: Then he tries to go in the maze basically immediately and another boy whose name is Golly or Gabby or Gally or something beats the crap out of him for it and when Thomas is like WTF? the walls of the maze start to close and he’s like “Oh so that wall would have crushed me?” and I was like, you could have led with that guys.

Lesson three: Except the whole maze doesn’t close, just the entrance. But apparently if you get trapped inside the maze you will for sure die because no one who has been trapped in the maze has ever come back because Grievers. What are Grievers you ask? We don’t know. Nobody has ever seen them. But you’ll die. And I’m like “Or maybe they just found the exit and left??”

Lesson four: If you get stung by that thing nobody has ever seen, you’ll die but first you’ll go into a murdery rage and then the other boys will kill you, so for sure, you will die. Look at this wall of names of all the boys who have been trapped here. Look at these names of all the boys who have DIED.

Lesson five: If you run into the maze without permission enough times, the boys will make you an official runner because they are tired of throwing you in the pit and reminding you that you will die but that Golly / Gally guy will for sure keep making slanty eyebrows at you or possibly those are just his normal eyebrows.

Lesson six: Turns out that your memories are coming back waaaay faster than predicted and you are getting more than just your name back. This has either never happened before or everyone else is lying.

Lesson seven: The guy in charge of running the maze has been making an intricate map of the thing for three years now but you’re going to go for a jog tomorrow and find new places he’s never seen and while you are at it, you’re going to kill a griever who happens to be a giant cyborg spider whose leg wants to tell you the way out of the maze like it’s scanning for metal at the beach.

Lesson eight: Don’t tell those guys that have been trapped here for 3 years that you think you know the way out because they will be throwing serious shade your way.

Lesson nine: When a girl randomly shows up in the Glade for the first time in ever and she’s saying your name, it obviously means you are suspicious and also you are the only Thomas that has ever lived so it’s def not a coincidence. Also apparently girls remember their names right away and are like “What’s your dysfunction?”

Lesson ten: Don’t tell the completely harmless chubby kid that everything is going to be fine and you are going to get him out of the maze and help him find his parents (because even though he doesn’t remember them, he obviously has parents that are looking for him). You might as well just shoot the poor kid in the face.

Lesson eleven: Girls should be immediately trusted  as an authority on all subjects because they throw fruit at you and you’ve never seen one before.

Lesson twelve: When you finally escape the maze, you will find out that everything is waaaay more complicated than you thought which makes sense since you don’t remember anything except the five things you remember for no obvious reason.

Lesson thirteen: People who are dead are probably not really dead unless they are. Also wicked is or is not wicked, for sure.

Lesson fourteen: Women of a certain age should not wear sleeveless shirts. Kay thanks.

Lesson fifteen: Dytopian stories are never finished in one book / movie. Even if you don’t want to watch another one, they will leave you on a cliff hanger saying “WTF?”

So has anyone read the book? And seen the movie? How do they compare?