'The Maze Runner' 101

The Maze Runner opens today, and a huge young audience of devoted fans anxiously paces in circles, waiting for their turn to rush the theater. The book — the first in a bestselling YA trilogy — is kind of like The Goonies meets The Hunger Games meets Labyrinth, and while its loyal fans will be judging the film adaptation scene by scene as to how loyal it is to the source, the uninitiated are likely surprised to find out that this is “a thing.” How is this dystopian adventure different from Divergent? Just how popular are these books? Is it about doing mazes? Here’s what those out of the loop need to know about this phenomenon.

Unlike The Hunger Games and Divergent, this YA franchise is nearly all-male
These last two hits were built around strong heroines, played by Jennifer Lawrence and Shailene Woodley. But The Maze Runner is centered around a risk-taking teenaged boy named Thomas (played by Teen Wolf’s Dylan O’Brien), who wakes up wiped of all his memories and trapped inside a dangerous and ever-changing maze, surrounded by other young male survivalists. It’s like Lord of the Flies, but with a token girl named Teresa, who comes in about halfway through.

Just how popular is the series?
The Maze Runner, by James Dasher, came out in 2009; it’s currently number one on the New York Times’s Children’s Series bestseller list and has been on the list 100 weeks and counting. That’s more than Divergent, which has made the list 44 times so far, but less than The Hunger Games’s current standing at 207.

How similar is it to The Hunger Games and Divergent?
Maze Runner follows their template, with society elders forcing young people into staged, life threatening struggles. Just as Katniss fights for her life in arena scenarios contrived by the gamemaker, and Tris fights off throngs of people programmed to kill her, the monsters lurking inside the maze who hunt Thomas and his peers are put there by cruel experimenters.

How good is the movie?
Maze currently has a respectable 63 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes; like the book’s bestseller list ranking, the movie falls between Divergent (41 percent) and the first Hunger Games (84 percent).

[Related Video: Quizzing The Maze Runner Cast]

Know your terminology going in
It always helps to know the lingo beforehand, so you’re not lagging behind the fans. Start with these terms:
The Glade: The space inside the maze where the boys (and girl) live.
Gladers: The inhabitants of the Glade.
Greenie: Short for Greenbean; a derogatory nickname for those who are new to the Glade.
Grievers: Perilous creatures that come out at night inside the maze.
Runners: The strongest and swiftest Gladers who enter the maze by day, attempting to map it, looking for an escape.

Up Next
Without spoiling it for those who haven’t read the books, the movie very clearly sets up the next phase of the trilogy, The Scorch Trials. Though the sequel was greenlit in 2013 and concept art for it was revealed at this summer’s Comic-Con, a release date hasn’t been set yet, but filmmakers were eyeing the end of this year to start shooting. The concluding book in the trilogy is called The Death Cure, and if the series proves to be a smash hit, Dashner has also written a prequel, titled The Kill Order, which could be adapted. That one is set in New York, thirteen years before Maze, when the planet suffers catastrophic environmental damage, setting up the inaugural book’s dystopian society.

Do fans like how the whole series ends?
Divergent fans nearly unanimously railed against the shocking way that trilogy finished up (we won’t spoil it here, so you can read it and come to your own angry conclusions). There are factions of Hunger Games fans critical of Mockingjay’s end, but not as universally. And to follow the trend, those who followed The Maze Runner books to the end have generally not been happy with the final novel as a whole — due, in part, to some story loose ends and a few controversial character deaths. It remains to be seen whether the endings to any of these franchises will be altered for the big screen versions. (Most likely — or hopefully — to change is the Divergent finale, Allegiant, which is in dire need of a more palatable ending.)

Photo credit: 20th Century Fox

Want to see The Maze Runner? Visit our Showtimes page to get tickets.