Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
Directed by: Wes Ball
Written by: T.S. Nowlin - Based on the novel by James Dashner
Starring: Dylan O'Brien, Ki Hong Lee, Kaya Scodelario, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Dexter Darden, Alexander Flores, Jacob Lofland, Rosa Salazar, Giancarlo Esposito, Patricia Clarkson, Aidan Gillen, Lili Taylor, Barry Pepper, Matthew T. Metzler, Alan Tudyk
Action/Sci-Fi/Thriller - 131 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 15 Sep 2015
Written by: T.S. Nowlin - Based on the novel by James Dashner
Starring: Dylan O'Brien, Ki Hong Lee, Kaya Scodelario, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Dexter Darden, Alexander Flores, Jacob Lofland, Rosa Salazar, Giancarlo Esposito, Patricia Clarkson, Aidan Gillen, Lili Taylor, Barry Pepper, Matthew T. Metzler, Alan Tudyk
Action/Sci-Fi/Thriller - 131 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 15 Sep 2015
2014’s The Maze Runner is in the running for best descriptive film title of the decade. There are some kids and they run through a maze. Unfortunately, there is no maze in Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials; in fact, there are no trials. Most of it is yelling and screaming during jumping, dodging, and superfluous warnings to “Watch out!” or “Get down!” If somebody had not already taken cover before someone inevitably yells, they would be a goner. The Maze Runner left audiences with quite the cliffhanger. I, for one, was looking forward to some answers. Now that I have them, I’ll gladly give them right back if it means the filmmakers would come up with better ones. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials removes the most effective parts of the first film, the mystery and the puzzles, and replaces them with a garbled mess of a middle child film.
I did not read James Dashner’s books but I hope adaptor T.S. Nowlin drastically diverged from the source material. Otherwise, Dashner filled the second installment in this series full of irritating scenes where someone yells, “Tell me what is going on right now!” The audience already knows, so to slow down and fill yet another person in on the quick and dirty is more frustrating than the atrocious dialogue the actors must spew to make sure everybody is on the same page.
I did not read James Dashner’s books but I hope adaptor T.S. Nowlin drastically diverged from the source material. Otherwise, Dashner filled the second installment in this series full of irritating scenes where someone yells, “Tell me what is going on right now!” The audience already knows, so to slow down and fill yet another person in on the quick and dirty is more frustrating than the atrocious dialogue the actors must spew to make sure everybody is on the same page.
Dylan O’Brien returns as Thomas, the ringleader of the maze survivors, and brings with him the charisma of a wet mop. Thomas is in the running for the worst leading man in an action franchise since someone invented the action franchise. He is stoic, stoically puzzled, stoically angry, and at one point gets stoically slipped a date rape drug. Thomas’s memory remains haphazard at best as he remembers only bits and pieces of his pre-maze life with the evil corporation WCKD, pronounced ‘wicked’. Subtle.
Kicking off at the point of their maze rescue, the survivors are lumped together with other kids who have survived their own respective mazes and are now in a limbo state akin to 2005’s The Island. Every day, a handful of lucky souls are handpicked to go through a heavily guarded door to the safe zone. If you believe that, you deserve to get blindsided by a militant doctors without borders operation called Wicked. Thomas realizes something is not right, gains the help of a new friend, Aris (Jacob Lofland), and the two become simpatico because getting the other dunderheads to believe something is rotten in Wonderland takes far longer than it should.
Later on, the crew moves on into a Mad Max version of what is left of what must have been Manhattan. New York City is a desert wasteland now with pockets of scavenging survivors, bandit gangs, and some infected zombie things which run as fast as the 28 Days Later zombies but resemble World War Z zombies in appearance. When one of the characters gets very serious and says “I don’t wanna end up like that,” I’ll give you a head start on analyzing what happens to him.
The most interesting supporting characters from film number one including Alby and Chuck are both gone and replaced by a very resourceful new girl, Brenda (Rosa Salazar, 2015’s Insurgent), and a handful of other famous faces all not written well enough to be able to turn in anything other than a below average performance. Each successive new person is set up as a big reveal. First, we learn the character’s name in conversation, then we either see them with their backs to us or only hear their voice, and then, aha, it’s Barry Pepper or Lili Taylor. Patricia Clarkson shows up again and in the same M.O. as last time, only briefly, but just enough to confuse the hell out of everyone and prime the next cliffhanger.
I had issues with the first film but I really did enjoy watching the boys puzzle their way out of the most impressive maze seen to date in a film. The maze in 1986's Labyrinth was quirky, but the rules and hazards in The Maze Runner were fun; I remember my biggest problem with the film was there was not enough maze. The Scorch Trials, lacking both maze and trials, also lacks anything I could even remotely recommend – even to big fans of the first film. The writing is terrible, the actors have nothing to work with, and those with all the screen time are as interesting to watch as paint dry. Here’s hoping the final film in the series, Maze Runner: The Death Cure, heals us from the contagious disease of boredom inflicted upon audiences through The Scorch Trials.
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