Summer Project:
The Maze Runner
Brief plot:
The Maze Runner is about a boy named Thomas who is placed in a community of males who a trapped in a maze. The runners start exploring the maze when it opens every morning and closes every night. The leader - Alby gets trapped within the maze one night and Thomas goes out to get him. In the end Thomas helps everyone escape the maze.
Genre: Hybrid of Action, Mystery and sci-fi.
Sub-genre: Adventure
Key Conventions.
Within the movie there are many things that apply to the science fiction genre such as the inclusion of cyborgs named Grievers. These cyborgs roam the maze at night to prevent runners from escaping the maze. Cyborgs and robots are very common in sci-fi movies which make them a key convention. This scene shows parts of the grievers that are very mechanical and robot like.
They are put into a dystopian landscape as the outside and maze and like hell for them. A dystopian environment is another key convention for sci-fi movies as it shows what has been done to the landscape with the evolution of technology. This key convention is used in other movies such as The Hunger Games where different districts are made to live in dystopian environments.
Institution:
Release date: 11th October 2014
Budget: $34 million
Box Office: $102 million
The production companies that produced The Maze Runner are; Gotham Group; Temple Hill Entertainment; TSG Entertainment. It was then distributed by 20th Century Fox which released the film in late 2014.
The cast included actors like;
- Dylan O'Brien - Thomas
- Kaya Scodelario - Teresa
- Thomas Brodie-Sangster - Newt
- Ki Hong Lee - Minho
- Will Poulter - Gally
- Patricia Clarkson - Ava Paige
Target Audience:
I think The Maze Runner will appeal to the audience that enjoyed The Hunger Games as they both focus on a main character attempting to bring justice and help everyone escape. I think the age group would be between 13-30 as the younger audience may be attracted to the grievers whereas the older audience may be more intrigued as to how they may escape/
I think the film will have a 50% male audience and 50% female audience as I think this movie is a family film and all genders will be interested in the movie as it isn't based around something only men would enjoy or only women would enjoy. The movie in my opinion is very diverse in terms of who watches it. Whether it be a 30 year old man or a 13 year old girl i think the movie appeals to all audiences. This is one of the main reasons as to why it has been such a successful movie in 2014 and may be why they are bringing out another one this year.
WWW: This is an excellent summer project with impressive detail. It's great to see you identifying the key conventions of Science Fiction films and making links with similar films.
ReplyDeleteEBI/LR: Be careful with sweeping statements such as 'appeals to all audiences' - even within an age range of 13-30 it will appeal more to certain groups (be it gender, social class, level of education etc.) Write a comment below this narrowing your target audience - start with the film certificate and then work from there. Justify your target audience with specific references to the film. We'll be doing some work on target audiences in one of our upcoming lessons so that will help you with this process.
LR: The film certificate in the UK is 12A which tells us that people aged over 12 can watch the movie. Also kids under 12 can watch this as long as they are accompanied by an adult. From this I think the target audience would be aged between 10-30. I think this because there are very few violent scenes within the movie. However I don't think this movie is suitable for any children under 10 even if they are accompanied by adults. This is because the dark and eerie atmosphere within the night of the grievers attacking may scare the children. Also I think the movie is based more towards males however they are trying to get a female audience as one of the main characters is a woman. This may attract more females to watch the movie as women are now getting more chances to become main characters within movies.
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