Critically acclaimed and YA adaptation rarely come together when the inevitable movie reaches fruition. But The Maze Runner was extremely well received by fans and critics alike. The film also pushed “Teen Wolf” actor Dylan O’Brien towards movie stardom as Thomas, a young boy who finds himself trapped in the middle of a constantly changing maze with a group of other young men who were brought there before him.
Director Wes Ball was the man tasked with bringing James Dashner’s novel to the screen. Unsurprisingly, Ball was asked back for the sequel and he is currently working on The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials based upon the second book in Dasher’s series.
With the release of The Maze Runner on DVD and Blu-ray this week, CraveOnline was given an opportunity to speak with Ball about his experiences on the set of The Maze Runner. Although Ball wasn’t able to talk about The Scorch Trials, he did seem to confirm one aspect of the novels won’t be used in the films. He was also exuberant when speaking about the recently released trailer for one of 2015’s most anticipated movies.
Note that there are some spoilers for the first Maze Runner movie in this interview! You’ve been warned…
CraveOnline: Did you have any difficulties adapting the story of The Maze Runner into a film?
Wes Ball: You know, I thought it actually adapted pretty closely to a movie. James [Dashner] always talks about how he had written it over six years, so he had a lot of time plotting this thing and getting the pacing right.
Early on, the adaptation challenges were the characters and just the overall pace while turning a 300 plus page novel into a 110 page script. That meant a lot of compressing things and slightly rearranging some of the little things to make the motivations and the plot twists a little stronger. But ultimately, we matched the book pretty closely.
Who among the cast was the biggest revelation as a performer?
It might be Dylan [O’Brien], to be honest. He was probably the last person we cast because I was all over the world [looking] for the best [actors] for the characters. And I have to admit that I wasn’t completely sold that Dylan was going to be the right guy at first. That’s where I kind of left it until I sat down and talked with him.
And in the resulting screen test, it’s immediately obvious that he’s very talented. He’s got a lot of range and I think he’s just a movie star. He was probably one of our greatest gifts. In the long run, he’ll be able to carry this franchise all the way through. The whole story leans on his shoulders and he was probably the greatest [actor].
But I’ve got to say, all of the cast has been absolutely fantastic. Kaya [Scodelario], Will [Poulter] and all of those guys did a really, really great job. I couldn’t be more pleased with everyone.
I think you may have launched a few film careers with this movie.
I hope so! Part of me has a really selfish desire that in ten years, you’re gonna look back at this little crazy movie and see all of these guys before they were huge. You know what I mean? They’re all great, great actors. They all look great, of course. But just the talent to be able bring that emotion to the [film], I thought it was really, really powerful.
When I watched The Maze Runner for the first time, I kept mentally checking off where I had seen the cast before. “There’s Stiles from Teen Wolf,” there’s Jojen from Game of Thrones.” I think you were pretty fortunate to get them.
Yeah, it was cool! We got lucky. A lot of the credit goes to Denise Chamian and our casting director too. We talked early on about finding good actors and that was our main priority. There wasn’t anything else to it. We were just trying to find people that you could really invest in and believe in.
I haven’t read the novel, but I was surprised that movie didn’t really have any sexual tension between Teresa and the colony of young men that she got dumped in.
Yeah! That’s something that actually attracted me to it, because it isn’t in the book either. I wasn’t really interested in doing the typical love triangle thing. I will say that there is technically a connection. There’s definitely a past and a history that we get to expand on in the future movies. But there was never really a love thing, it was always a little more innocent.
And it focused more on just the kind of the brotherhood and survival aspect of this movie and the circumstances that they found themselves in. It’s just a boyish adventure, and I felt like that was going to be something different to bring to the YA genre. I guess you could call it that. That kind of excited me that we didn’t have that old flavor.
I read up on the original Maze Runner novel last night and I was surprised that there was a telepathic angle which doesn’t seem to be in the movie. Why did you drop that?
You know, things that might work in a book just do not work in the visual medium of movies. The only way I could have done it is two characters staring at each other and voiceover echoing through their heads. It just doesn’t work, especially for a movie with this kind of tone and the kind of gritty realism that we’re trying to go for, it just wouldn’t have worked.
So we had to cut that and hint at it through some sort of dream. The idea is that we’re hinting at a connection between these two characters and there’s more to come. That was one of the big cuts that fans were a little unsure about. I think that ultimately they kind of agreed with why I cut it. It wouldn’t have worked in the long run.
Would you reconsider that for the remaining films in the franchise? Or is “no telepathy” the way that you’re going to go?
That’s a tough one to say. I’ll just say that telepathy is a very, very fantasy idea and we’re trying to make more science fiction. So, that’s probably the answer.
