“The Death Cure” hits the ground at a rollicking gallop, with a stunning, classical western-inspired opening sequence, as Thomas stages the rescue of his friend Minho (Ki Hong Lee) from a moving train. His goal is always just to get out, with all of his friends alive. He ran out of WICKED and straight to a group of Patagonia-clad resistance fighters seeking safe haven (or a Burning Man camp). He ran out of the maze and into WICKED’s lair. What Thomas can do is run, and run he does, often without thinking the whole thing through. Thomas and his young cohort have found themselves WICKED’s test subjects, as they’re immune to the Flare disease, which turns humans into bloodthirsty “cranks.”Īs we discovered in the second film, “Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials,” this apocalyptic tale is actually a zombie movie, an element that gives the whole enterprise that much more bite. The maze is metaphorical rather than physical now, as Thomas (O’Brien) tries to escape the maze of a crumbling civilization corrupted by the evil corporation WICKED.
THE MAZE RUNNER 2 SERIES
“The Maze Runner” was straightforward and task-oriented - a bunch of teens dropped into a mysterious glade have to try and escape through a maze every day - and the series never loses sight of that ethos. Nowlin from James Dashner’s novels, brings grime and grit to this race for survival in a dystopian post-civilization world that’s eating its young. “Divergent” et al., were too fastidious, cold, clean and remote to connect. “The Hunger Games” films were nakedly emotional, each tragedy channeled through the primal scream of Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss. This franchise brings a boyish, impish energy to the teen apocalypse genre. In the third and ostensibly final film, “Maze Runner: The Death Cure,” Ball and company go for broke and push the pyrotechnic action to the brink of unpleasant. It can be a pleasantly pummeling experience, an adrenaline-drenched ride, hot on the heels of the appealingly energetic star Dylan O’Brien.
THE MAZE RUNNER 2 FULL
But that sweat is evidence of what makes this trilogy work, because, as capably directed by Wes Ball, it takes off at a full sprint and never slows down. Of the dystopian young adult franchises that “The Hunger Games” hath wrought, “The Maze Runner” series has always been one of the most forthrightly entertaining - and the sweatiest.