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Dylan O’Brien’s latest Maze Runner movie has plenty of zombies
B-At the end of last year’s The Maze Runner, the movie’s hero Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) got a glimpse of the world beyond the maze that surrounded the glade in which he and his fellow inhabitants found themselves. Not surprisingly, it didn’t appear to be a very nice place to live. In the current sequel, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, Dylan and his fellow escapees from the maze find out just how unpleasant the world is. Here’s a hint of what they find: post-apocalyptic zombies.
Scorch Trials is essentially one long chase, as Thomas, Teresa (Kaya Scodelario), Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), and the rest flee from the underground complex to which they are taken after leaving the maze. WCKD, the organization that built the maze, wants to harvest their bodily fluids to find a cure for the virus that has decimated the earth and created a horde of ravenous zombies. WCKD’s director, Ava Paige (Patricia Clarkson), and her top lieutenant, Janson (Aidan Gillen), try to find Thomas and friends, who are making their way through a desolate wasteland in hopes of joining up with a resistance group in the distant mountains.
As an action film, Scorch Trials is an improvement on the original Maze Runner. The zombies (called cranks in the film) are fast-moving, like those in World War Z, and Scorch Trials has two exciting zombie chase sequences. There’s plenty of traditional action as well, as director Wes Ball never lets the plot get bogged down by lengthy exposition. Thomas and viewers only gradually learn all they need to about the post-apocalyptic world where they find themselves, so the pace never slows down. The action does come at the expense of any real character development though. O’Brien has a good turn in his expanded role as the group’s leader, but most of the rest of the actors seem to be there only to make the action more large-scale and to provide an occasional sympathy-eliciting victim. The camaraderie and rivalries that were the best part of the original movie are now gone. On the other hand, from a science fiction standpoint, the first movie never really got past the gimmick of finding a way out of the maze, but Scorch Trials gradually opens up an intriguing world beyond. Viewers don’t learn all the answers in Scorch Trials, but the movie does a good job of setting the stage for a final chapter in the saga in two more years.
Continue reading on Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials: Mini-review
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