The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

Starring Dylan O'Brien, Kaya Scodelario, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Dexter Darden

Directed by Wes Ball

The Story:
After surviving their maze, Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) and his friends find themselves under the protection of Janson (Aidan Gillen), and are told that they're on their way to a better world.  Yet things don't sit right with Thomas, and he finds out that the group that "rescued" them are actually members of WCKD, the company that took them in the first place.

After planning a harrowing escape, Thomas and his friends find themselves in a deserted wasteland, after the world was pretty much destroyed by a solar flare.  As they traverse the desert in search of a rebel group, they come into contact with Cranks, human-zombies who were affected by the Flare virus that turned them into murderous monsters.  They struggle to survive and try to make it to the Right Arm, a resistance group aimed at taking down WCKD.

The Synopsis:
In a world filled to the brim with young adult novel-to-film adaptations, there's bound to be a sense of repetitiveness.  There can only be a certain amount of dystopian worlds, rebellious young leaders, untrustworthy adults, and bland secondary characters before the subgenre grows stale and tired.  Unfortunately, that's happened to the young adult novel-to-film craze, thanks mostly to the fact that production companies love to take the final book in a trilogy and prolong it into two separate films, creating four films when there should've been three.  "The Hunger Games" did it, and "Divergent" didn't even get a final film before they realized the series grew stale, but "The Maze Runner" is thankfully only making three films out of three novels.  The second film - "The Scorch Trials" - deviated very far from the source material (I've heard, I've never actually read the series), and even though it's longer than the first, it doesn't really go anywhere.  Basically, it suffers from the "middle film syndrome" - with no true beginning or end, it merely serves as a place-marker until the final film.

It doesn't help the fact that the series as a whole doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  A solar flare struck the Earth, reducing most of it to a barren desert wasteland, but also created a plague called the Flare virus that affects the brain and turns people into ravenous, mindless zombies.  A company set out to find a cure in the blood of the youth by subjecting them to live in mazes, which somehow purified them or shaped them or something, and in turn became the real monsters themselves.  It's like author James Dashner had a list of ideas on a wall and threw darts at them to see what came up - apparently "scorched earth," "zombies," and "Hunger Games" were what he hit, because that's what "The Maze Runner" is a mixture of.  Whereas "Catching Fire" became the best in the "Hunger Games" series, "The Scorch Trials" was merely an overlong action epic that did nothing to further character development or story, leaving one apathetic for its ultimate conclusion.

Basically, what this entire film boils down to is a group of kids moving from place to place, being hunted by an evil corporation and zombies, while trying to survive the elements and finding someone they can trust.  That's the premise, and the only thing added is exciting action pieces to create something of an exciting story that will keep you in your seat for the duration of the film.  This would've worked a lot better as a television miniseries, as it seems the film is broken down into different chapters that have their own beginning, middle, and ending.  Yet the film ends on a huge cliffhanger, and if I had seen the film when it was released in 2015, I would've been more excited to see the conclusion than I am now that the final film is finally out in theaters.

Dylan O'Brien once again returns as our favorite protagonist Thomas, a headstrong leader who doesn't have a lot of intelligence (he's even told by a character that he asks a lot of questions), but he's got a firm gut that he believes in.  He knew things were wrong before anyone else did, and trusted his instincts throughout the film, which is a good thing because that's all we know about him.  Yet that's more than we know about any of his companions, whom we met in the first "Maze Runner" yet still don't know any of their names, but know them merely from their outer characteristics - the British kid, the African American kid, the Asian kid, the Middle Eastern kid and the girl kid.  When one of them dies, it's supposed to be this rousing emotional thing, but I was left wondering who the kid actually was and why I should care in the first place.

It's interesting to note the parallels of this film to the Biblical story of Moses.  In Exodus, Moses leads the people of Israel out of their bondage of Egypt and into a land promised by God to be flowing with milk and honey.  Here, Dylan's Thomas serves as the Moses, leading is crew out of the bondage of WCKD and to a promised land of freedom.  In both stories, they traverse through a desert, and in both stories, the leader deals with insubordinate followers.  The Israelites mumbled against Moses and said they'd rather go back to Egypt, where the kids Thomas leads pretty much tell him they would've been better off as test subjects in a maze.  However, if I had a choice to follow Moses or Thomas, Moses would be the leader I would pick.

Other than that, the rest of the film is just one action sequence to another, and the introduction of several new characters that I find more appealing than those I already met, which never bodes well for a trilogy.  Hopefully, "The Death Cure" will bring all the questions to an end, and be the death knell for the young adult novel-to-film genre.

The Summary:
While it's visually exciting, "The Scorch Trials" is in reality an all-too-long narrative with weak character development and no continuation of a story, ending on a convenient cliff-hanger so you actually want to see how the franchise ends.

The Score: B+