STACK NZ Jan-Feb #59

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SUMMER EDITION 2015 JB Hi-Fi
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In bringing the young adult bestseller THE MAZE RUNNER
to the big screen, first time director WES HALL was conscious
that it was important to stay true to the book.
B ringing a young adult bestseller to the
big screen is a balancing act. It has to
stand up in its own right as a film,
whether you know the book or not; on the
other, fans of the original printed version
tend to be fiercely protective
and if they don’t approve, then the movie
may become a box office disaster.
Wes Ball, whose only previous directorial
effort was a seven-minute CGI animated short
entitled Ruin, was certainly very conscious that
it was important followers of James Dashner’s
bestselling trilogy The Maze Runner would
give the thumbs up to the film version.
“I thought the first script I read was good,
but it was a bit too far away from the book,”
admits Ball. “So we brought in two writers and
kept working on it, to bring it closer to the book,
because I thought that was important. That was
our fan base, that was where we started from.
So we tried to take it back to that initial source
material, while changing what we had to along
the way to make sure it was a movie that could
stand on its own. That’s the balance – what you
can keep, and what you can’t.”
First published in 2009, The Maze Runner
follows the adventures of a young teenager
Thomas (played by Dylan O’Brien) who wakes
up to find himself among a colony of boys in
The Glade, a large open expanse surrounded
by enormous concrete walls. He and his fellow
‘Gladers’ don’t know how or why they got there,
only that each of them has a role to play, whether
it be gardening and construction or being one of
the elite runners who map the walls of the
Maze that keep them captive.
As well as keeping fans of the book happy, Ball
also knew that his debut feature would inevitably
draw comparisons with other hit dystopian
franchises aimed at young teenage audiences.
“I was very aware of The Hunger Games and
Divergent, though of course Divergent hadn’t even
come out when we were making this movie,” he
says. “I knew we didn’t have some of the same
ingredients, we didn’t have the love triangle, we
didn’t have the oppressive government in this first
movie. This was basically a really cool adventure,
with these fun situations around it. A little bit of a
monster movie in there, too. Hopefully people
will give it a shot and see it’s different to
what they’ve seen before.”
With a worldwide box office gross of more
than $350 million, The Maze Runner is on track to
become another lucrative teen franchise
– a sequel is already in production – an impressive
achievement given that Ball was working
with a much more smaller budget; in fact,
he shot it in just eight weeks.
However, he believes that actually worked
in its favour. “We were a very small movie,”
according to Ball. “We didn’t have the resources
other movies like ours have, in terms of time
and money, so we had to have character,
and intensity and suspense.
In a way, the schedule contributed to the movie.
I’d say to the cast members ‘all right guys, we’ve
got three hours to shoot this scene’ and they’re on
it. ‘Okay, let’s do this.’ We all joined together to get
this thing done, and there’s something interesting in
that limitation, it forces out some good choices.”
And the initial feedback suggests that fans
of the book are pleased with the way The
Maze Runner has turned out.
“James wrote this book in 2009, even
before Hunger Games, so there have been
fans of this book for a long time,” Ball notes.
“Thankfully, they’ve been really nice to us from
the start. They’ve enjoyed the casting decisions
and given us the thumbs-up. We can’t just get by
on the original fans, we need new fans too,
but it was important for us to
respect the fans of the book
who have been waiting for this
movie for so long.”