'The Maze Runner' Movie Series: A Thrilling and Polarizing Success - Second P-Part Tipped On September 2015

By Andrian Darylle Torralba Oct 08, 2014 06:20 AM EDT

"The Maze Runner" Movie Series: A Thrilling and Polarizing Success - Second P-Part Tipped On September 2015

Movie goers can consider the 21^st century as the age of the Young Adult (YA) novel based films. With thousands of YA books that are being turned in a film, a few anointed ones, like "The Hunger Games" and "Twilight" series, can result to a new hype and millions of profits.

"The Maze Runner" is one of those few novels based on YA books that can be considered as anointed. As reported by Latin Post, the movie was a huge hit that its producers and distributors have been gearing for its sequel even before movie ticket sales have been recorded.

"The film's success was so huge that Twentieth Century Fox, the movie's distributor and copyright holder, green-lit a sequel soon after the box office receipts came in." Audiences and even critics have reported and gave good feedbacks for the movie that opened with a whopping $35 million on ticket sales.

"The Maze Runner" features O'Brien Thomas, a teen-ager who faces a dystopian world that requires guts, instincts, and stamina to be able to survive. Thomas and a community of children are confined inside the 'Glade', a confined place surrounded by concrete maze.

Most reviews of the YA movie are all good and positive. Mirror said that "The Maze Runner" is an "impressive and thrilling fantasy" movie. The report also put the movie in the rosters of well-acclaimed YA movies like "The Hunger Games" of Suzanne Collins and "Divergent" by Veronica Roth. "The Maze Runner is a young adult sci-fi adventure, in the vein of The Hunger Games and Divergent, that turns out to be exciting with a climax that bodes well for sequels."

To date, the novel's author James Dashner have written four books in the "Maze Runner" series. These are "The Maze Runner," "The Scorch Trials," "The Death Cure," and "The Kill Order." A fifth book, "The Fever Code," is said to be underway as well.

On the other hand, The Guardian has critiqued the "Maze Runner" in a not so positive way. The review said that the premise of the movie is not bad but the screenplay and the entire plot loses coherence and plausibility. "... less though-out and filled-in, lacking the mad Lisztomania costuming and general exuberance, and it steadily loses plausibility and coherence as it moves towards its climax."

"The Maze Runner" may have attracted both positive and negative feedbacks but still, the second chapter of the book that will soon be a movie will prove its audience appeal. The movie's second installment, "The Maze Runner Chapter II: The Scorch Trials," is expected to debut on Sept. 18 of next year.