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I’ve been rolling all this back and forth for a while. I actually wrote it out and then lost it and had to write it again.

Anyway: I was disappointed by The Final Warning, but it was MAX that killed my interest. I think I only flipped through a few pages, and those were the pages on the Navy. I was originally going to write this on the Navy scenes, but then I realized that that part was only indicative of a larger pattern, so I started at the beginning.

In the first three books, Max was tough, capable, and witty with a sense of snarky humor that to me at that age was completely hilarious. I still smile at some of the early jokes. However, by the time of MAX, there’s been a fundamental change in the books’ world. Namely, the kids are no longer homeless or hunted. The stakes of their battles are very different.

In previous installments, Max was pointing and laughing at people who were attempting to hurt her or who presented a threat, or at the very least were unreasonable. Now she still acts the same way, but it becomes incredibly glaring, because the adults she does this to now are nearly all reasonable authority figures. They may not be perfect, but they’re trying to help her and work with her.

Near the beginning of the book, the Flock meets with a Hollywood talent agency. Right into the meeting, Max has some basic assumptions that are very telling.

3) People who promise me tons of “benefits” and assume that I don’t see right through the crapola to the stark truth that actually they want me to do a bunch of stuff for them.

And she mentions that the office building they’re visiting is similar to ones where they’ve been attacked. She’s resentful, given that she didn’t choose to be here, and that she’s paranoid, given her past. All of this makes sense so far. Let’s get into the meeting.

She snubs lead agent Steve and ignores him when he tries to shake her hand. They then get snacks, but the really important part here is that Steve leads into the discussion with, “So! You kids want to be big stars, eh?“

“God, no!” I said, almost spewing crumbs. “No way!”

Again, this is a meeting with agents. What did she expect? Why is she surprised?

The agents start throwing around suggestions – do the kids want to be models? Actors? (Max is shooting down each one, though notably there’s at least one Flock member who seems interested in each suggestion). Angel reads a woman’s mind out loud and humiliates her in front of her boss, repeating a scene from The Angel Experiment. (And that woman’s been nothing but nice to them!) The kids give fake names (repeated from both School’s Out Forever and Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports).

Now, we have only Max’s word that these agents are trying to exploit the Flock. Actually, I’d like to argue that the dialogue indicates the opposite – namely, that line “You kids want to be big stars, eh?” Steve is completely thrown when Max says no. There’s been a miscommunication somewhere.

The thing is, someone from the CSM set up the meeting without asking the kids. The CSM, not the agency, is to blame for this whole uncomfortable situation. But also, by blowing off this meeting, the Flock is spitting in the face of the people who feed, house and clothe them.

“The Sharkalator,” Steve repeated, his enthusiasm waning. What can I say? We have that effect on grown-ups. Even on other kids. Well, okay, on pretty much everyone. We were created to survive, not to be the life of the party.

So … They are rude. They make fun of those who try to be nice to them. Others don’t enjoy being around them. And Max is clearly enjoying the Flock’s behavior here.

I’m sensing some buried issues. The thing is, the Flock’s actions are always presented as positive by the narrative, so this will never be dealt with in a realistic manner.

Finally Fang takes mercy on us and bails out through the window. As the kids leave, the narration takes pains to point out that these are big-shot Hollywood agents. This is part of a trend throughout the book of setting up the young, unimpressive-looking Flock and having them knock down prestigious, prideful authority figures. After snubbing and embarrassing these people, not to mention eating all of their very nice food, Max quips “Thanks … but no thanks,” and that’s it.

We’re just not cut out for all this media circus crap.

In other news, Max is the one insisting they keep doing the airshows even when it threatens their lives.

We’re clearly supposed to see the agents as self-important sleazeballs and way too overly friendly. People who deserve to be taken down a notch or two. But again, this is all from Max’s point of view. I’d say the text itself might actually indicate that these guys aren’t so bad. The agents behaved well; the Flock did not.

Last time, I looked at the Flock’s meeting with some agents whom they snubbed and then abandoned after eating all of their food.

This time, it’s on to the Navy scenes. This section really showcases the worst of Patterson’s pacing skills, as it pads the book like the mattresses in the Princess and the Pea. It also repeats some worrying elements in Max’s psychology. Since there’s so much padding to get through, this post is going to be kind of long, but you should read it, because I drew a picture at the end.

When the Flock first starts working with the U.S. Government to recover the kidnapped Dr. Martinez, there’s a very short scene with a meeting that sets the tone for where we’re headed. A random commander arrives and immediately asks why the children are present, and asserts that “this conference is inappropriate for children.” He doesn’t really seem that far out of line, but is left speechless after his superior shuts him down.

But simply silencing him once isn’t enough. Total pipes up with something inane and then:

“It’s okay, Commander,” I said in the deafening silence. “Like the admiral said, we’re different.” I shrugged out of my hoodie and extended my wings, all thirteen feet of brown glory. They are stunning, I must say.

So there’s “deafening silence,” with everyone “mesmerized.” However, the narration takes the time to single out the commander. His jaw literally drops and he’s “pretty much a squashed bug,” left silent and emasculated in front of the room.

But the bragging and self-importance is just beginning.

THE “BS”

An official respectfully nicknamed Lieutenant Khaki tells the Flock that they must take a BSSTC, or basic survival skills training course, before they can board a Navy vessel. In return, Max fantasizes about running her over with a tank.

I Googled “can civilians board a Naval vessel” but didn’t get many results. The few I did get, though, seemed to contradict this. 

“…business leaders, lawmakers, and other notable civilians are routinely allowed on board naval vessels as part of the Navy’s community relations program.” (source)

The Flock are definitely notable civilians. I kinda doubt they make these people go through a three-week training session so difficult that the lieutenant doesn’t believe these kids can possibly complete it, but again, I really haven’t been able to find much information. Please correct me.

Anyway, Max immediately reduces it to “BS” and they will continually refer to it that way as often as possible because it’s just that hilarious. Ha ha! Mocking the military and the U.S. government is automatically funny! There’s a good chance Patterson made up this training session just so they could use that name.

However, Max’s problems with authority in this particular situation seem to boil down mainly to pride: “I’d always gotten us out of scrapes on my own. I’d never once had to agree to let some official person help us.” That’s actually some good character building.

So they spend the night in a military barracks and are woken by a nervous ensign. Max quips, “Time for the BS!” And they’re given Navy uniforms to wear. The ensign is shocked when they start cutting wing-holes in the shirts, and tells them they’re defacing the Navy’s property.

They brush him off, but he’s right. They didn’t even ask for permission. Later, Nudge will continue to tailor her uniform to look more trendy. And this all makes me wonder, why ARE they taking these kids along? It seems to basically boil down to “they’re the heroes, they go rescue the hostage because the plot says so.” In real life the Navy would never take these kids into a situation like that – powers or not! They wouldn’t put them through military training! They wouldn’t dress them up in uniforms! With all this military training, new uniforms, eating in the mess hall and basically living as soldiers, it reads more like the Flock is actually being recruited into the Navy for the express purposes of making fun of it.

Remember Max’s trick at the debriefing, with snapping out her wings in front of everybody and shocking them into silence? Gazzy pulls it again, leaving the ensign white with shock.

Did the Navy just not inform anyone what was going on? Everyone they meet seems totally shocked by them. You’d think they’d drop it into the briefing! “The kids have wings. Do not freak out.” Anyway, he drops them off at the training grounds.

Ensign Workman silently turned us over to him, then slunk away, no doubt hoping never to see us again. It’s weird how many people feel that way about us.

If you look back at my previous post, this is now the second time that the narrative points out that people don’t like being around the Flock. Are we really supposed to see our heroes as that unpleasant?

The kids are in full form, while the Lieutenant Colonel in charge of their training is presented as a pompous, pedantic and ultimately ridiculous idiot. (Fun fact: there are no Lieutenant Colonels in the Navy. The equivalent rank is Commander.)

Cut to them going through karate training. (They make people go through karate training for three weeks to be on a submarine?!) The incredibly cocky Max beats the eighth-level black belt instructor, twice, very badly, but it’s okay because he’s prideful.

“Not to malign the U.S. Navy or anything, but he didn’t land a single blow.”

She has humiliated him in front of his class, basically. But nah, you’re not maligning the Navy, Max. 

The rest of the training is just like that. Max’s narration is near-unbearably arrogant and dismissive. This whole section is basically rubbing in how the Flock has survived all sorts of things and that makes them excel in literally every subject. They are inherently far superior to people who have worked at this for any length of time. We are apparently supposed to laugh at their classmates feeling like dirt.

Explaining that we’d been designed to be strong, fast, and light didn’t really cheer them up. They just saw us kids beating the socks off them. We were barely panting when our classmates were bent over at the knees, throwing up from exertion.

 In covert ops, Gazzy scares a trainee so badly that he “jump[s] about a foot in the air and stifle[s] a shriek,” and later incapacitates the guards by passing gas. And Angel mind-whammies them, too. The guards show up in disarray, disoriented and humiliated. (Gazzy, Iggy and Fang are barely holding back outright laughter at them. Our heroes, making fun of people.)

That was Chapters 32-37. Six chapters devoted completely to nothing but a very long gag. And then we get Chapter 38 to wrap everything up nicely! Lieutenant Khaki reads the report and gives us a rundown on EV-ER-RY-THING. Then a disgustingly smug Max asks, “Now that we’ve gone through all your BS, can we go rescue my mom?”

At this point, I would be throwing that kid off my naval base. But they’re going after all! 

Fortunately, the lieutenant is not totally cowed, and lays out the rules. They have to be on their absolute best behavior. Her demands are all perfectly reasonable, of course, and now Max gets nervous that the others will ruin it if they don’t “stifle their trademark lack of respect and intolerance for bull and, for once, keep their mouths shut.”

First: trademark lack of respect. That’s Max. That’s all Max. They totally get that from her, and she normally encourages it and is proud of it. Now, when the habits she’s always encouraged are on the verge of causing real trouble for her, now she gets worried about it.

Second: intolerance for bull.

Intolerance for bull.

Her demands are not bull! Her demands are perfectly reasonable! The training session was silly, but telling them to behave themselves on a submarine and not break anything is not bull!

Then, a miracle happened. No one said a word. I heard cautious, even breathing as each of us bit our lips and struggled mightily against our true natures.

Don’t wait too long, I begged the lieutenant silently. Please dismiss us before we blurt out something bad, against our will.

Oh so it’s not their fault they’re so disrespectful. The goddess of snark herself has chosen them as mouthpieces and they have no control over whether they let loose some prophetic gem of sarcasm.

The Flock does have loads of experience, but it is simply not good storytelling to have the hero say “We’re gonna win!” and then immediately win without even trying. This whole thing is simply a long, long, long interlude to be “funny” and show how stupid grownups are.

Next time: a conclusion, and one scene where the Flock’s grandstanding doesn’t work.

Part I

Part II

So far, we’ve looked at three incidents in MAX where the Flock shows up the adults in the room and shocks people. But there is one incident, between the agent meeting and the Navy training, where it doesn’t work out.

They visit a normal school to see if it will fit their needs, and meet with an administrator, Ms. Hamilton. It’s all set up for the typical “person is surprised by the Flock” scene. Ms. Hamilton notices Total and seems startled that there’s a dog present. (You’d really think someone would tell these people what they’re in for in advance. They had to set up the meeting anyway - why not mention the dog?)

A few minutes later, Total speaks.

Ms. Hamilton stopped and stared at Total. I snickered to myself. I had almost forgotten how much fun it could be to bait people. I sat up a little straighter.

Then Ms. Hamilton smiled.

At Total.

“No, we don’t have any paw-ready calculators,” she said. “But you probably won’t need one for these questions, anyway.”

Just like that, this grown-up had accepted the talking dog.

Hamilton no-sells them, and Max doesn’t like it one bit. Now, it makes sense that Max isn’t happy here, especially as she feels she’s losing Nudge. But I’m more concerned with “how much fun it could be to bait people.”

First, a short defense of the Flock. 

The Flock has raised themselves in horrible circumstances, and have suffered horrific abuse at the hands of adults. You can’t expect them to be very well-behaved. It makes sense that they might be rude and off-putting to people.

Max’s motivations make sense and could be good flaws for a well-rounded character. Her paranoia infuses every situation. She takes pride in being the one to lead the Flock and has trouble with allowing others to help. She fears her family drifting apart, and resents the people who seem (to her) to be causing that.

But their cumulative behavior in this book, over all the posts I’ve made, really goes so far that I don’t think it can be justified.

Max snubs the main agent and turning away when he tries to shake her hand. The kids give fake names for no apparent reason other than to annoy people who hadn’t done anything wrong. Max enjoys and encourages the Flock’s misbehavior. She notices at least twice that her family has a tendency to drive people away very quickly. Not just adults, but other children. This doesn’t bother her. In fact, it’s in her best interests to keep the Flock isolated and close-knit.

She takes pleasure in shocking people and laughing at their discomfort. The other Flock members behave the same way, as seen in the Navy section, with the boys laughing openly at the other trainees. This goes beyond being socially awkward because they’re paranoid and traumatized.

She looks forward to “baiting people.” 

Definition of baiting:

To tease or taunt someone.

“To torment (a trapped or restrained animal), especially by allowing dogs to attack it.”

“To worry, torment, or persecute, especially with malicious remarks”

Our hero enjoys taunting and tormenting people.

I’m just going to leave that there.

In the Ms. Hamilton case, it’s the one time an authority figure is set up to fall, but instead rides right through without losing face. Instead it’s Max who feels discomfited. Here, she seems almost resentful that the woman is accommodating them and being kind. Because she doesn’t want her Flock going to this school, or because she missed seeing a grown-up embarrassed? Ultimately, this whole scene comes to nothing, like most of Patterson’s subplots. Nudge stays there briefly and then, offscreen, decides to rejoin the Flock.

The weird thing about this is that the Flock hasn’t really changed their behavior. This was all there in the earlier books - it just wasn’t as glaring. Looking back to The Angel Experiment, the first book, the Flock whips out their wings and flies from a restaurant. 

…I couldn’t help laughing at everyone’s faces. "Astonished” doesn’t cover it. … Yes, we were in trouble, yes, this was disaster, and so on forth, but… The looks on all those faces…

It doesn’t have the same feel at all. A) Max is aware that this is a bad situation, and it’s really not something she sought out at all - she just can’t help laughing, which is an understandable reaction. B) The adults in this situation actually were unreasonable. That is, you could understand where they were coming from and why they wanted the Flock to leave, but they weren’t exactly pleasant, and also the situation was rapidly getting worse due to other factors.

This scene has striking parallels with the scene from my first post, where they meet the agents. But here, the Flock isn’t just trying to feed themselves and lie low. Instead, they’re antagonizing people who actually don’t seem that unpleasant. Previously, the Flock was sassing people who put them in danger. But in all the scenes of this book, the adults Max faces actually have her best interests at heart. Even when they’re standing in her way, it’s because “this will be too dangerous for children” or “you need to behave yourself.” They are all on her side! They are villainized because they are stuffy, boring old adults, or because they are high-status and self-important and need to be taken down a peg.

Back to that scene in MAX where they meet with the agents. I still don’t think the agents are at fault; they’re the victims of a misunderstanding. The ones at fault are the CSM, who set up the meeting without telling the Flock or adequately preparing Steve. Not only that, but why does the meeting break down so quickly?

Angel.

Look at the timeline of events.

The agents welcome them in. The other kids seem neutral, but Max is extremely hostile and paranoid.

On the other hand: “Nudge smiled a little. She loves stuff like this. She’d even worn a skirt.”

Lead agent Steve – who somehow does not even know the names of the kids he arranged to meet with – realizes that there has been a serious miscommunication.

He asks if they want to be models. Max, with lots of snark, throws it back in his face. Nudge is visibly disappointed.

He asks if they want to be actors. This time, Total reacts with interest, and again Max shoots it down.

He mentions other things, including action figures. Before Max can veto this one too, Gazzy gets excited and says he wants to be an action figure. Iggy seems to second this.

Steve asks Angel what her name is.

She gives a fake name and reads a woman’s mind, publically humiliating her in front of her boss and coworkers.

Max mentally reacts to this with pride and satisfaction.

Steve starts asking the other kids what their names are. Gazzy, Nudge and Iggy – all of whom were specifically mentioned as being positively engaged in this meeting – give fake names, mocking Steve in the process.

Let me stress - Nudge, who wanted to be a model, who dressed up for the meeting, who we are specifically told LOVES stuff like this, made up a fake name.

After the meeting, Nudge actually yells at Max. She wants to go on Oprah. She likes fame and performing (since the Flock is doing airshows at this point). Gazzy likes performing too, and still wants to be an action figure.

So why did they go along with messing up the meeting? They had no reason to give fake names. They had every reason to cooperate, since they clearly liked the ideas Steve is tossing, and are upset when they lose that opportunity. What happened?

Angel.

Angel is the mindreader. She is clearly already reading the minds in the room, so she knows what’s going through Max’s head, and presumably wants to please her. Max is unhappy at the meeting, dislikes the people, and just wants to eat their food and get out. The other Flock members, however, are enjoying the meeting and want to make it work, except that Max is shooting down all the ideas.

So Angel steps in. First off, she gives a fake name. Then she publicly reads the mind of a woman who has been nothing but pleasant so far.

Note that Max reacts to the other Flock members in this scene by ignoring them, talking over them, or “promis[ing]” herself that she’ll “kick [Gazzy’s] butt later.” On the other hand, she reacts to Angel’s cruel prank with mental praise and pride.

We can reasonably assume that Angel knows that Max is very pleased with her action.

After this, the other Flock members - who were previously interacting well with the agents - abruptly switch paths and start giving fake names, ruining a meeting that they clearly wanted to succeed. They don’t yell at Angel afterwards, so they don’t know what she was doing, but Nudge is extremely upset and emotional, and Gazzy seems withdrawn and quiet. This has not been good for anyone. But all Max cares about in this scene is falling into Fang’s big gooey eyes.

(Spoilers for Maximum Ride Forever follow)

I really like Harry and I wish he got more attention. He’s an odd character though, full of childlike innocence and animalistic instincts. His very existence raises a fair amount of questions.

Where did he come from?

Harry gives us his own backstory, by drawing a picture of himself in a cage, surrounded by scientists. That’s par for the course in this series, though.

He is about Max’s age, so he was probably created around the same time. He’s also an animal-human hybrid, like her, which was the School’s modus operandi. (The later mutants like Fang’s Gang tended to look human. It was implied at one point that normal humans like Ella Martinez could be modified and given wings, but we never heard anything else about that.)

Where was he created? We see other School mutants throughout the series – the group freed in New York (who probably died instantly), the prisoners of Itex in Book 3, the mutants who apparently attended the only-mentioned-once Lerner School in Book 4, and the many mutants who showed up on Paradise in Nevermore. In none of these cases are this specific type of avian-human hybrid mentioned. Since they are so wild, it may not have been easy to collect them with the rest of the mutants who were on Paradise … or maybe they were passed up because they weren’t deemed human or intelligent enough. 

As a sidenote, Death Valley – the location of the School – is in the Mojave Desert, where Harry’s flock is living when Max encounters them. It seems very likely that these bird kids were created by the same people who made Maximum.

Relationship with his flock

Harry seems more intelligent than his flockmates – or at least, we see him applying his intelligence, while we barely see the others’ behavior at all. In his case, he is able to instantly identify Max from a year-old picture in a magazine, and even knows her name. He is barely verbal and can only mimic words like a parrot, but communicates by gestures or sounds and even art. He and Max hold a conversation by drawing pictures. In combination, those things indicate a character of human-level intelligence and self-awareness.

He leaves the Mojave Desert flock to stay with Max. Well, it may have seemed more like a day trip or something at the time, but he sticks with her. We don’t see any sign of a bond between him and his flock members. He stands out in the crowd. While the others group up together, he gravitates to Max. Later, when she draws that picture of her family with a stick in the dirt, she prompts Harry to do the same thing, but “Harry didn’t draw his friends or family.” Instead, he draws himself in a cage, surrounded by scientists, with no other bird kids in sight. He clearly has little connection to those other bird kids; is it something to do with having higher intelligence and awareness?

Relationship with Max

Max sees Harry as a vulnerable child to be nurtured: “Though I’d only known him for a couple of days, his plaintive cry awoke a fierce maternal instinct in me.” Adding to this, his name for her is “Max Mum.” Visually, he is “adorable” with “unusually large eyes,” descriptions and traits that suggest a small child.

He exists primarily to further Max’s character arc as she grows into more of a maternal figure. There’s definitely a shift; at first she’s seeing him as an animal-like creature or as a “handsome” young man, but later she sees him more as a child to be protected – with the “plaintive cry” and so on. However, he’s not as vulnerable as she thinks she is. In one scene, he is the driving force protecting both from threats as a parent would do, when he breaks them out of a cage Max had no way to escape.

Enough of that – how does Harry see her?

Not as a mother, but as a potential mate. There’s also the fact that he knew about her previously, and saved a picture of her. A possible element of celebrity crush?

Anyway, he’s nuzzling her and grooming her from the first second he sees her. He’s willing to accompany her off to who knows where. When he brings her food, Max wonders to herself if this “count[s] as flirting in the animal world.”

He also kisses her, apparently prompted by her taking his hand. He seems ready to do it a second time, but the shaken girl sternly tells him never to do so again. This is a really weird note, but from his perspective, it may have naturally followed. He likes this girl, but she doesn’t like him back. Oh well. There don’t seem to be any hard feelings; they both drop the subject.

First off, where did he learn this behavior? Kissing is not something birds do. Neither is it something depraved scientists do in a lab, so far as I know. This means there must be more to his backstory than we realize—possibly tying into his disconnect from the rest of his flock, and his fascination with Max’s magazine photo.

Second, does he comprehend what he’s doing, or is he just an innocent child mimicking a behavior? That second option is how I looked at it to begin with, but examining it again, I think he may have a pretty good idea what he’s doing. From the beginning, Max has wondered if he’s flirting with her, and she’s wondering that for a reason. He also kisses her only after she touches his hand, which suggests a misreading of a social cue. She may see him as a child, but he isn’t one. Physically, at least, he’s a young adult about her age.

The Future

When Harry meets the Flock in Russia, we get this line:

He’d been hanging off to the side, but now he crowed his name on cue, and Nudge’s face lit up.

Gotta be the dimples. Every time.

Uuuuhhh … does Nudge have a crush on Harry?

Max does describe him as handsome more than once. But he is still very childlike and animal-like to the point where it’s hard for me to picture him in a romantic relationship with one of the more human bird-kids.

Why was this line included? What does it even mean in this context to have Nudge’s face light up? Is she reacting to Harry as she would to a cute kid? I don’t think we’ve ever seen Nudge interact with small children. Her reaction seems really weird to me whether her reaction is “cute little kid” or “handsome boy,” because this is a naked teenager covered in feathers and chirping his own name. My first reaction, dimples or no, would be “What the heck?!”

Would it fitting at all for them to get together, with such a gap between them mentally? Can Harry consent? Well … he’s self-aware and intelligent enough to deal with some fairly abstract concepts, and he clearly gets crushes on people. However, Angel describes his thoughts as “jumbled and excited” “like a little kid’s.” Does this mean that he is mentally a child, or merely a childlike young adult?

The plot only adapts the first half of the book. Actually, I don’t have a huge problem with this, because as stated elsewhere, nothing really happens when they go to New York. They do some touristing and get a new dog. The main takeaways are that they find information on their parents and Jeb tells Max that Ari is her brother. I was waiting for that reveal and it didn’t come. I’ll get to that more later.

They do outright state something that I don’t believe was ever fully explained in the book - that their house was just a fishbowl for them to be observed, and that they were still the School’s prisoners the whole time. That was a definite improvement over Jeb’s overly cryptic rambling in the book.

This movie went the grim, gray, quiet, emo direction. That is fine and it is a mood present in the series’ darker moments and the overarching implications of the plot. Personally I think I always experienced the series more as wacky sibling interactions, snarky comments, and ridiculous, cheesy comic book science.

The characters are hard to like. They don’t even like each other. When Max threatened to attack Nudge, I think it threw most fans for a loop. Max comes off as stubbornly stupid, clinging to her trust in Jeb past all reason, even after she knows he’s a traitor and, in a pivotal scene, has rejected him to his face. That’s just confusing.

And a distrusting, unhelpful Dr. Martinez whose mantra is “I don’t want to know”? In the books, the Martinez scenes served a purpose in developing Max’s character because she opens up emotionally and allows herself to trust someone, sees first-hand the kind of life the Flock missed out on, and realizes that it is possible for ordinary people to accept them. She refers back to it several times throughout the rest of the book. Here, there is none of that emotion, and it is never mentioned again. It functions solely to set up “Max is brave and kinda stupid” and further her conflict and sexual tension with Fang. Another scene could have been substituted and the Martinez family left out, and nothing would have changed.

I don’t mind Ari being Max’s age. I think it adds a lot of material for the flashbacks and it allows for them to interact in ways impossible for a ten-year-old and a three-year-old, adding to the story well. However, they also amp up Ari’s evilness, which I think is just one of the many ways they miss the point and lose a chance for some really good emotional conflict. Ari was at his most unsympathetic in Book 1, but was really as much a victim as the Flock, probably more so. Here, Ari isn’t a victim at all. They specifically say that he CHOSE to be an Eraser, giving his entire character a different dynamic and shifting him over into irredeemable villain territory. That wastes a lot of potential drama. 

The writing is lazy, clumsy and confusing. A casual viewer would have NO idea who these kids are. They are barely introduced. Vital information flashes past you during the credits; if you freeze the frame, you might learn that they all have superpowers never mentioned in the movie. And the younger three do, in fact, have wings, which we never see or hear about. More on that later. 

The lines are stilted and silly. I’m not going to repeat the one about the chocolate chip cookies. I got the sense from the near-nonexistent promotional material (the actors’ Twitter posts were the entirety of their promotions! The only other thing they had was a Comic-con panel a month before release that was cancelled with no explanation!! They put out a trailer a week before release!) … That is, I got the sense from the Twitter and Facebook posts that the actors wanted to do this well, but my gosh, they did not have much to work with. Angel shows no defining character traits and says maybe one word, telepathically, in all of Acts I and II. It’s easy to pity her when she’s imprisoned, but we have nothing else to get attached to or care about. 

The pacing is terrible. Flashback scenes drag on and on, bringing the plot to a screeching halt. The books run at a ridiculous (but attention-keeping) speed with cliffhangers on every page, and the movie is molasses.

As for the budget: Don’t do the movie unless you can afford to include the wings. This is a story about people who can fly, and three of them never leave the ground at all. One makes a flight that lasts approximately .2 seconds, and the other two get some plodding greenscreen sequences where they drift across some forests and mountains that quickly begin to all look the same. Way to suck the joy out of fantasy, movie.

And caring about the movie? I didn’t feel like the creators cared about the story or had done much more than glance over the books. There are some diehard fans out there already making their own video adaptations and you can tell those videos have some heart. 

This did not. The quality was laughable. The lack of wings are a perfect case. So are the files at the beginning of the movie, which are full of misspellings, grammatical errors, inconsistencies, and information that almost looks pasted in from Wikipedia. Iggy is “developign Synesthesia.” Who proofread this?

The less important characters’ files are short and terse, limited to their otherwise unseen powers; the main characters get the most information and Max’s file is absolutely covered with her parents’ names, her height, her weight. She weighs 97 pounds and a second file says her hybrid skeletal system weighs … 200 kilograms? Wait, what? It pops up right underneath “Executive Producer Jenna Marbles.” Am I reading this wrong?

Conclusion

This thing needed to be given to a different team. It was in development for years. And it is not a fun movie. After the trailer, my sole remaining hope was that it would at least be a fun kind of bad, but I was disappointed even in that.

If I’d worked on the script, I would have compressed and combined events, not hacked the second half off. That would probably still annoy fans, but I think it would be the best possible improvement on the plot. One thing that should stay is the reveal of Jeb and Ari being related to Max. That twist could be fantastic, with all the setup we were given for Max and Ari.

The characters have to be likeable. The backstory has to be made clear to the audience. The pacing has to make sense. I would have thrown out this script entirely and started over, because there is not one good thing in here. The basic outline may work, but nothing else does. 

They should have wings, and the wings should look at least somewhat nice. It’s 2016! The CGI exists! This is like making Spider-Man without any webslinging, or the Hobbit without Smaug and the only mention of Smaug is in a book during the credits. Don’t do it and call it a professional movie, unless you can do it justice!

The intro with them as kids in the lab, escaping, works. But I think I’d have Max walk on her own and help the other kids along, because with Jeb picking her up and carrying her to the car where everyone else is waiting, she’s very passive and reactive in this scene and we don’t get a sense for her character. Ari calling after them works, I liked that note.

The opening credits are a bit long. The device of the files is kind of cool, but they’re so muddled and lazy that I’d revamp that whole sequence and make it shorter and really focus on just the names and the kids (who have wings in their photos because you do not need that much budget to Photoshop up some pictures).

Max and the other kids definitely have PTSD. They’ve been though incredible trauma, they were starved and isolated and tortured both physically and mentally, you name it.

Nightmares: The first book begins with one of Max’s nightmares. The other kids, including Gazzy, are mentioned as having similar nightmares. Even much later, in ANGEL, the story begins with a “day-mare.”

At Dr. Martinez’ veterinary practice in Book 1, Max is triggered by the sight of a man in a white lab coat.

Max is constantly scanning for threats (and has good reason to do so.)

However, there’s evidence that Max has issues beyond that. I wrote some posts on MAX (book not character) about her most worrying behavior.

Narcissism. (Constantly talking about how pretty, smart, awesome she is.)

Lack of empathy for people outside the Flock. (Enjoys humiliating people.)

Signs of codependency with the Flock. (See her reaction to Fang leaving. Also, she notes that she and the Flock tend to drive people away, and she likes this isolation.)

Physically violent and aggressive. Talks a lot about hitting or harming things, fantasizes about running someone over with a tank.

And elsewhere:

Exhibited self-harm in School’s Out - Forever. She was trying to get the chip out of her arm, but did so in an incredibly dangerous way, leaving a permanent scar.

Her migraines and hallucinations are the effects of the Voice, which is confirmed to be an actual person with psychic abilities. HOWEVER, Max experiences at least one visual hallucination not connected to the Voice, in FANG, when she sees Fang as an Eraser.

It might bear mentioning that she is in two romantic relationships with abusive/controlling undertones. And while she gets pregnant as a teenager in this series, in The Lake House, Max’s analogue was sexually active at the age of twelve.

My theory is that his ghostwriters were Gabrielle Charbonnet and Mary Jordan simultaneously, all the way up to the final two books.

I think when she was seeing herself as an Eraser, it was because of the Voice, giving her a vision as it did frequently in the first book.

There are two cardinal sins a writer can commit when writing an ending.

Reveal that it was all a dream. 

Bring in some insane, game-changing twist at the last minute with no foreshadowing, and kill everybody with a meteor from space.

Nevermore does the second one. And it was supposed to be the final Maximum Ride book, the last one ever, which made it even worse. It was constantly set up, again and again, that Max’s quest was to save the world. And then, out of nowhere, the world ends. There’s barely even enough page space to cope with this plot twist.

True, in real life sometimes things happen like that. You can’t predict the future and sometimes everything just goes pear-shaped. But unlike real life, stories must follow rules and make sense. You cannot lay out one plot and follow it for hundreds of pages, and then toss in another, totally unrelated plot in the last ten.

And there’s the indignity of the world ending, the ineptitude of Max’s failure, after all these books building up to it. 

Actually, this could be an amazing concept if fleshed out. The Chosen One is constantly pressured and questions herself. As a teenager, she is sort of unqualified to save the world, but she stays determined, holding out hope that there’s some way to beat the odds … and she fails miserably. Reality ensues. There is no time, there is no way for her to combat it. She doesn’t even get off her front porch before the world explodes. 

That premise could become a fascinating plot. There are so many directions you could go with it. But in this series, it falls by the wayside. At the end of Nevermore, Max is more concerned with touching Fang’s face than with protecting others. When she wakes up in the ruins of the world, when she learns that countless people have died, it doesn’t matter. Let me stress that - EVERYONE IS DEAD AND/OR DYING. But who cares? Max and her buddies are okay! 

“It’s not selfish. We’re here. We’re alive. I’m not going to apologize for surviving.” That might sound harsh, but through the grief and the devastation, I can’t help feeling hope, too. If you could choose between life and death, wouldn’t you leap toward living with everything you had?

This paragraph comes IMMEDIATELY after the end of the world. Mere minutes have passed. And yes, it is selfish - because Max has lost NOTHING. Of course she doesn’t weep; she has nothing to grieve for. Instead, she marvels over the ruins of the world. She claims it as her home. It has to be read to be believed.

… somehow, this new world makes sense in a way that the old one never did.

The sky … feels familiar, somehow. Like I’ve been dreaming about it every night of my life, but I’ve just forgotten my dreams each day on waking to the life in which I have been trapped.

… in this postapocalyptic world, on this tiny, wrecked island, I have a feeling we’re going to excel.

… “It’s almost like we were meant for this world, and not that other one. Like it’s finally our time.”

It’s a dark thought, but one I can’t turn away from. This is an environment that requires a little something extra from its inhabitants …This place is primal, and it’s raw. I was made for this.

… It is my time.

The time of Maximum Ride.

She has failed - but now, as we slowly realize, she never had a reason to want to succeed. 

We are told that there’s grief and devastation, but we are shown none of it. Instead we see her reunited with Angel and Fang and Dylan, and reassured that the rest of her friends are safe. Dylan seems more confident, Angel more mature. Angel and Max are at peace with each other. Max and Fang declare their love.

At no point does Max bring up anything good about the old world. She doesn’t remember friends she’s made or beautiful sights she’s seen. Instead, she remembers the bad side of it, the torture and the whitecoat experiments.

Like, jeez. If you’re going to pick someone to save the world, at least make sure they feel some attachment to it. 

I have to say, it makes sense for her to be bitter about how she was treated in the old world, and it makes sense that she’s primarily concerned with the safety of her immediate family and not with untold billions of strangers. That’s realistic. But this drives home that Max was never off to save the world because she cared about it, only because that was what the Voice in her head told her to do. And that makes you question why she even listened to the Voice in the first place, why she seemed to accept this quest when she has only a fleeting attachment to it. She always seemed primarily concerned about the environment more than the general population.

The writer has walled himself into a corner with that meteor and is desperately trying to reassure the reader that no, this is good, this is great, this is a happy ending. Sure, I just killed you and your whole family in the book, but still -

Maximum Ride Forever backtracks from this. The new world is not beautiful, it is hellish. Sure, they’re survivors like Max boasted, but just barely. Max watches a friend die in the first few pages. Her family is gone forever. Nuclear winter is approaching. The threats are still out there and worse than ever. In Nevermore she bragged of the Flock that “There’s no leader now, no power. We’re all working—quickly, efficiently—together.” In Maximum Ride Forever, the struggle for power is back and the Flock falls apart almost immediately.

Anyway, back when Nevermore was the official ending, I looked it up for some reason and then I described it to Brother #1. I was full of righteous indignation. Brother #1 was, as usual, very serious.

"You realize what this means,” he said.

(I can’t always predict how his mind works.) “…What does it mean?”

Fang and the Gasman are objectively terrible names. Nudge, though, I don’t mind as much. I can see it as a kid’s nickname that could stick.

Nudge is an interesting character because her characteristics in the early books change so drastically.

First three books:

Hates going to school.

Somewhat interested in fashion and stereotypically feminine pursuits. In SOF, she wears a school uniform and says disparagingly that she looks like “prep school Barbie,” but in the next book she wants to be a cheerleader.

Longs to find her parents.

Loves having wings.

Later books:

Loves going to school and learning.

Very interested in fashion, makeup and models

Seeks affection from peer group and from boyfriend.

Hates having wings, wants to cut them off to look like other girls.

But her about-face is not as abrupt as it seems.

Nudge deeply values community and family. In the early books, she wants to find her biological parents. In a significant scene, she is struck by the sight of a family of hawks nesting together. When the Flock looks for their families, she’s always the most vocal. As the series progresses, however, she most likely loses hope or becomes disillusioned with her search; it’s also implied in Book 2 that at least one of her parents is already dead.

At this point, the Flock has just had a huge lifestyle change. They’re not on the run anymore and are actually pretty famous.

She’s also entering a life stage where fitting in with her peers is increasingly important to her. This is at its peak in Nevermore, where she’s trying to join the ranks of the popular kids. Instead of pursuing parental love, she pursues love from friends and a boyfriend.

Above all, she wants normalcy and safety. In the final book, while everyone else is running around the destroyed world, she chooses the safe and familiar option of staying with the fish kids. This surprises Max, just like when Nudge voted against keeping her in the Flock in FANG, but it lies with Nudge’s most deep-seated desire: to be safe and secure, surrounded by a loving environment, or at least one she fits in with. She recognizes old friends there. She makes plans to fit in better with them and practices her swimming skills.

The status quo in the later books is really extremely bad for Nudge. Max cannot handle her and doesn’t understand her. She’s baffled when Nudge seems more rebellious. She doesn’t comprehend or share Nudge’s interests or her apparently new desire to be normal and wingless. Actually, I don’t think Nudge really has anyone to talk about her fashion interests with. 

In MAX, Max denies Nudge the opportunities that appeal to her. OK, so being a model and having an agent wouldn’t be great for her, but attending school, which Nudge is very interested in, and which would help her stretch and mature as she grows up? Nope. Max forces Nudge to choose between an education and her family. 

MAX is also the first book where Nudge starts to talk about cutting her wings off.

In contrast to a school, the Flock encourages no growth in maturity. They are unstructured, with no adult guidance whatsoever. There was seriously a scene where Max was going to let all six underaged kids all get tattoos. They get no education, except in FANG, when Max abruptly decides they’re going to homeschool. This lasts about as long as you’d expect.

Nevermore seems to resolve Nudge’s arc by putting her on Paradise Island, where she is among other mutants like her and can finally be average. Maximum Ride Forever changes that ending, of course, and so Nudge’s arc resolves with her suffers a severe facial scar. This is apparently supposed to be her getting over her hang-ups on appearance. Max infuriatingly calls it “zombie chic,” in a nod back to frequent uses of the word “chic” surrounding Nudge.

Here, it feels uncomfortably like Nudge is being punished for being too “girly.”

Max does not like girly-girls. There’s a running theme of Fang seeming attracted to more stereotypically feminine women, and Max getting jealous and angry. In Nevermore, Max talks about how she’s bad at “normal girl stuff” but seems proud of it. She refers to a group of girls as “shark-infested waters” and makes sure to point out their “short skirts and spaghetti-strap tank tops.” Max seems dismissive of Nudge’s “twelve-step beauty regime,” which she considers unnecessary. She doesn’t understand it, it makes her head hurt, and she responds to Nudge’s makeup questions by holding up her hand in the universal “shut up” signal.

In the world of Maximum Ride, it’s bad to put care into your appearance or enjoy wearing makeup. It’s bad to be a cheerleader. Cool girls are like Max. They don’t care about makeup or clothes. They don’t care about boys (except when they do). 

That aside, I think Nudge’s makeup regime is also a way of creating structure for herself. The Flock offers her no structure. It’s disorganized and messy, rarely with a permanent home or schedule.

http://maximumride.blogspot.com/

Some fun, notable things about it:

there’s a link so you can connect your AOL account

none of the video links work anymore, but supposedly it was a lot of music recc’s

and cat videos

fake “travel” photos: “no, we are definitely not in New York”

evidence suggests that there may have once been a “wingkidsarereal.com” conspiracy website

(suggesting there was once a whole network of fake websites that JP and his slaves had to write)

okay so in retrospect its pretty obvious in the first book that Angel is The Voice. now, im kind of disregarding what ACTUALLY happens in the series since its all bullshit in favor of what i believe the first book was hinting at.

A while back I wrote out my description of how I would have wanted the Maximum Ride series to go. There are elements I like. I think it has a kind of campy charm. However, I also think more editing would have really, really helped.

Great review of the movie. If you still haven't seen this monstrosity this is a good way to watch it and only feel your skin crawl a tiny bit.