The world outside the Maze just seems thrown together from pieces of other franchises. In fact, there’s little to understand in The Scorch Trials. Even when one of the group betrays the others later on, we really don’t understand why. There’s really no further attempt at character development: we know that Thomas is the Chosen One for some reason, but only because the genre itself seems to dictate that someone has to be.
Once the kids escape the WCKD facility (and again, you have to ask, why does the research into the cause of the virus have to be so sinister?), the movie becomes one long chase, with the gang pausing to catch their breath every 10 minutes or so before another chase or action sequence kicks in. Leaving the Maze behind might have seemed like a good idea in light of these massive holes in the story, but The Scorch Trials doesn’t come up with anything coherent to replace it. Once we realize that WCKD wants to figure out why Thomas and his companions are immune to the virus, we immediately have to ask: so why build the Mazes? And with the world in ruins, who has the resources for such an enormous, expensive undertaking and couldn’t they be put to a better purpose?
The problem with a lot of series of this type – whether they’re YA or not – is that once you get past the initial idea that makes the first book or movie compelling, in this case the mystery of why the teens are being held captive within the Glade and the nature of the Maze itself, the more you learn about the mythology the more it falls apart.
Eventually Thomas and a small group of friends – including the Glade’s first female prisoner, Teresa (Kaya Scodelario) – solved the Maze and broke out, only to discover that they were the subjects of a vast experiment to find out why they were immune to a deadly virus that has wiped out most of whatever was left of humanity following (!) a solar flare that destroyed civilization.
So, now we have Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, which picks up literally where the first story left off and follows our band of surviving characters out of the gigantic maze they’ve had to navigate and into what’s left of the world beyond.Ī quick recap: in the first film, protagonist Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) woke up with no memories in a place called the Glade, a sort of rural encampment populated entirely by teenage boys and sealed off by a gigantic maze populated by monstrous creatures. It was gripping entertaining.īut of course, no one leaves well enough alone anymore, and since Dashner wrote a trilogy of books (does any author ever get to publish a standalone genre novel anymore?), it therefore follows that, given The Maze Runner’s healthy box office return, the other books should also be adapted for the screen. Instead, it proved to be a thoughtfully-directed and reasonably well-acted, post-apocalyptic mystery nestled into a Lord of the Flies scenario. Directed by the unknown Wes Ball, starring a cast of young, mostly unfamiliar faces, and based on a dystopian YA novel by James Dashner, the movie had all the potential in the world to be yet another forgettable, irritating carbon copy of The Hunger Games. One of last year’s bigger sci-fi surprises was The Maze Runner.