 it's a nasty rainy gray day in florida today this is noon I'm not gonna ride my bike my friend Mike is gonna come get me and we'll go see maze runner and then I'll come back home finish reading the book and do a review for you oh boy okay I should have just finished reading the book say the movie was so different from what I'd read so far that I could hardly follow it I could hardly make any sense of it at all the movie wasn't very good and the ending wasn't very satisfying in fact the ending didn't even make any sense so I'm gonna finish reading the book and get something to eat and then I'll come back and do a complete review okay bye all right I had intended to record my review yesterday immediately after seeing the movie then I sat down to finish reading the book and I fell asleep and I was headachey all evening so I just stayed in bed all night and now I feel better and I've had a chance to think about it and I've got some I'm glad I did because I've got some ideas in short well here's my little placard here's what it said on the on the little preview image I made the sequel delivery system this whole franchise that that's what the conclusion I've come to the movie didn't make any sense it was so different from the book that I could hardly follow it they changed the relationships between the various characters dramatically I mean dramatically they created entirely new scenes they radically changed the nature of the maze itself even the in some sense even the purpose of the maze in the book the maze was very and I said this on my review before my review of the book that the maze itself was very simple which is a reflection of the the plot and the writing style both of which are very simple and before I go any further I want to point out that this review that I'm doing now this combined review of the book and movie I'm gonna make an official part of my 32nd sci-fi book review series because this is basically a re-review of the book as well in in my review of the book which I did more than a week ago I said that I stopped reading when it was clear that the climax of the book was coming up or that the climax of the story was coming up because I wanted to see the movie and then I come back and finish the book well as I said the movie didn't make a whole lot of sense and the ending made no sense at all it didn't resolve really in any satisfactory way the secrets as to why the kids were there and I was thinking the book had to be it had to be better it had to be more clear but it wasn't it was just as crazy and just as unsatisfying as the ending to the movie in fact in in some ways it was even crazier and less plausible which was disappointing what had happened I've decided that what had happened when I said before that the the writing style was very simple and that the plot was very simple and that each of these brief tiny little chapters ended in such a way that kept you reading having not read the end of the book I was interpreting that as being skill on the part of the author after having read the ending of the book I've come to the conclusion that rather than being a sign of skill it's a sign of a mediocre author or perhaps even an untalented author who has studied who has studied the formula who has carefully studied the formula of the the young teen post apocalyptic science fiction genre I mean he's clearly read the the Hunger Games clearly there was a lot of similarities in the way this book is written and the way it's arranged between this and the Hunger Games that the Hunger Games book the first book in the Hunger Games series was excellent had an excellent ending I was quite happy with that book and the movie was an excellent interpretation of the book I did not read the second book in the Hunger Games series but I did see the second movie and the second movie was even better than the first movie if you haven't seen them I actually recommend them okay back to maze runner the the next few things that I say might be considered spoilery so continue to listen if you want to you you may have even gleaned this from just watching the trailers but the the purpose the maze itself has no exit the purpose of the maze is not to find a way out of the maze but it's a test of what the the scientists at the end explained that they're testing for intelligence but they seem they're harping on this this idea that they're looking for people who won't give up in the face of a hopeless situation but that's it's handled in such an unsatisfying way it doesn't explain why why the situation they put these kids in is the way it is I mean if you're gonna be testing for intelligence and if you're gonna be testing for creativity or for stick-to-itiveness or ungiving upping this if you do whatever you want to call it why would you put these kids in a situation where you're killing them left and right here's the other thing the this this kid that you're seeing the kid with the the dark hair Thomas is his name and the girl Teresa who was a dead ringer for Kristen Stewart I mean they cast a girl who exactly that Kristen Stewart you have to do a double take I mean and clearly that's the purpose of this franchise but Thomas and Teresa were part of the the science conspiracy that put the kids in the maze and by putting them in there I mean what's how can you call the results of your so quote-unquote test how can your results whether positive or negative have any legitimacy at all if you end the test by throwing in a kid by throwing in a ringer who knows the solution what's what's the point it renders the whole thing pointless if you ask me the there were about 50 kids living in the center of the maze and by the end of the movie there was just a handful of them that made it that made it out five or six in the in the book however there were more than 20 of them that made it through more than 40 of them had gone into the maze to get through the exit and they were met by a wall of monsters like more than a dozen monsters they said 15 or so and they they pushed their way through this wall of monsters with with spears was with pointed sticks these monsters by the way if you haven't if you haven't seen they're the size of trucks they're the size of like UPS trucks they're big balls of meat with with mechanical arms and syringes sticking out all over the place and and circular saws and I I don't see any number of kids pushing the way past even one of them much less a whole wall of monsters I didn't buy that about the ending of this book at all I didn't buy it about the movie either again this this brings up the point of what exactly is the purpose of the test if they were saying that the that the maze wasn't intended to have an exit then why then why was their way of a way of getting out of the maze and when the kids went as a group to get out of the maze why did you put monsters in there they killed more than half of them and then when the survivors make their way into the computer room why would you say that you're pleased and surprised at how many survived when you deliberately murdered half of them and then the whole thing ends with everything changing it's clearly setting up for a sequel it has an ending like one of these resident evil movies where you're basically shown that everything you just saw for the last hour and a half was a complete waste of time because everything else is gonna the next movie is gonna be completely different clearly what dashner the author did here was he studied the the teenage post-apocalyptic epic cycle and he wrote something that would fit into that formula he set up a crazy situation that sounds like that's a complete mystery to the reader it's making you think what in the world is going on anyone could write a crazy setup like that what's difficult to do is to write an ending is to make it all make sense he didn't do that instead he says okay this part's over we're gonna gonna move on to the next part and that's why I why I I came up with the the phrase a sequel delivery system that's what this is this is a deliberately formulaic franchise that's designed to make you buy the next book to make you see the next movie and here's something else that surprised me we saw the first showing on opening day at our little local theater and usually on the first showing of a new movie the theater has a lot of old people in it who are you know for lunch they're gonna go see whatever the new movie is that's what I found to be the case with new movies that are opening particularly on the first showing in the afternoon there was nobody in the theater this time it was just me and Mike two women came in and sat in the back when the movie started and we think they left some time during the movie I don't know that was unusual there's usually people in the theater on the first showing an opening day there was nobody there you notice on the book here it says let me see if I can get it to focus on that yeah see it says fan sticker full-color movie photos inside well there's the movie photos of course those are obvious they're right in the middle of the book and for a while I was like where's my fan sticker did I get ripped off where's my fan sticker there's nothing and then on the last page here it is it's disguised as the last page in the book shuck it remember survive run dashner army.com that's another thing this book is every page of this book is filled with this fake swearing every page filled with fake swearing of all kinds it's clearly written to to be read by kids so they had to make up all this swearing and my question is what's the difference between fake swearing and real swearing because you clearly know what what they mean every time they say shuck or call you a shucker so what's the difference but like again like all these other teen epic franchises like I like the hungry like the hunger games I almost said hungry games didn't I like the hunger games this book has absolutely no four-letter words in it none has no sex in it none none at all not even hints of sex or relationships of any kind but it is filled with violence wall-to-wall violence that's just an observation on what we consider acceptable I don't know that I have any conclusion about that observation but it's an observation all right that's it pick the book up if you want to it's everywhere said every grocery store even go see the movie if you want to I'm not gonna I'm not gonna rave about it I'm not necessarily gonna recommend it but there it is your latest sequel delivery franchise see you next time