In this next chapter of the Maze Runner saga, Maze Runner 2 – Scorch Trials, Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) and his fellow Gladers face their greatest challenge yet: searching for clues about the mysterious and powerful organization known as WCKD. Their journey takes them to the Scorch, a desolate landscape filled with unimaginable obstacles. Teaming up with resistance fighters, the Gladers take on WCKD’s vastly superior forces and uncover its shocking plans for them all.
The original Maze Runner, also directed by Wes Ball, arrived in movie theaters September 2014 and took in $102,427,862 at the U.S. movie box office.
Maze Runner 2 review
By Audrey Shine (Wild About Movies resident critic)
Be prepared. If you read the books and go to see the movie, it will be a shock. Major changes in characters, timeline, and plot were made for who knows what reason.
I liked The Maze Runner movie so much that I quickly read The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure. I could hardly put them down. I am not the kind of reviewer who tells you the whole story, but just to show the breadth and depth of the changes, the movie never mentions that this is another trial for the Gladers. The survivors just escape and wind up in big trouble in the Scorch. This omission, to me, was incredibly damaging to the movie.
Another real loss in the plot is that the movie almost totally omits the mystery of who can be trusted, what side of the conflict they are really on, and how did things get this way anyway? What really got me – the ending scene. Thomas’ (Dylan O’Brien) last vow sounded a lot like Scarlett O’Hara at the end of the first part of Gone With the Wind. And the look on his face was more like “What? We’re ending the movie?”
I can’t really understand or explain why there were so many changes. Harry Potter; The Hobbitt; The Lord of the Rings, even 50 Shades of Gray were true to their sources.
So what’s good about the movie? A lot of your favorite characters are back – Minho (Ki Hong Lee); Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster); Frypan (Dexter Darden); and Theresa (Kaya Scodelario) among others. The movie has lots of action, engaging special effects, and frightening Cranks (zombie-like victims of the Flare.) Janson, aka Rat-man, as played by Aiden Gillen, isn’t nearly sinister enough, though. Patricia Clarkson as Ava Paige shows up at the end just as she did in the first movie.
If Hollywood makes The Death Cure into a movie, let’s hope they get back to the original story, which is so much better than their rewrite.
