The latest contrived YA dystopia has a curious gender imbalance

[Jabrosky]

Thus far, most of the recent movies in the contrived YA dystopia genre have featured female protagonists who lead a rebellion against the oppressors. The newest incarnation which I just saw went against this pattern in having a male protagonist. Which would be all right with me, but the really weird thing is that almost all the other characters around him, with one late-coming exception, were also dudes. There was racial diversity in their ranks (the group's original leader was a black guy, though inevitably he died), but the extreme gender imbalance stayed inexplicable to the end. All the big revelatory speech towards the end said is that these "test subjects" had to be young, and nothing more. What, were the oppressors behind this "experiment" afraid of their subjects reproducing?

(I'll make this fun by having you guess which contrived YA dystopia I am describing here.)

 

[Feo Takahari]

I just looked up the TV Tropes page for the original book. It mentions the MMC arriving in the dystopia and the FMC arriving the very next day. I guess a few things changed from book to film . . .

(It does mention a bit farther down the page that the largely-male cast is "Group A" and there's a largely-female "Group B" undergoing separate tests.)

 

[Kaellpae]

It kind of sounds like Mazerunner, but I haven't read the book or seen the movie.

 

[rhd]

Not even going to bother watching it. I've been waiting for months for something interesting to come to the theatres.

 

[Tom]

Yes! It is Maze Runner, isn't it!

Frankly, I find the premise interesting, but can't there be some girls in there? It might be interesting to see boys and girls have to (gasp) figure out how to work together.