I was excited when I saw Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials hit Uverse on demand. I was lured in by an email I received with a coupon to watch it free. After 15 minutes of staring at my email and following the directions on my Uverse catastrophe of an interface I gave up and I just decided to buy it. I enjoyed The Maze Runner so I figured six bucks would be worth it.
The cast was pretty much the same from the original with Dylan O’Brien, the clear star, playing Thomas. I will admit I’m a mild fanboy of O’Brien based on his epic performances in Teen Wolf. Not the old Teen Wolf… that’s Michael J. Fox for God’s sake…. sheesh. Three noteworthy newcomers to the franchise are Giancarlo Esposito playing Jorge, Rosa Salazar playing Brenda and Aiden Gillen playing Jansen. You may know Giancarlo from NBC’s Revolution. He was amazing in Revolution and again in Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials. Jansen on the other hand single handedly wrecked this cast. Fantasy lovers out there probably know him as Little Finger on The Game of Thrones (GOT) on HBO. I think Jansen is amazing in GOT but his performance in Maze Runner was… well… the exact same. He looks, walks, and talks the exact same. He does have on different cloths… I think. Come on man at least lose the accent! I guess he just comes to work and talks normally.
If you haven’t seen the movie stop reading because the next section will wreck your life. For the record I think the movie was worth 6 bucks.
I never understood the purpose of the maze and I still don’t. The “kids” (all clearly in their 20’s with bigger muscles than me) get rescued and taken to a new place. The helicopters land just far enough away from the door that ZOMBIES start to swarm and require the group to run for the door. You heard me right: ZOMBIES!!
I can only imagine the conversations at the studio:
James Dashner, “We want to make another Maze Runner”
Studio exec, “You know what’s hot right now Dashner… Zombies. You got Zombies?”
James Dashner, “ Uhh.. sure we got zombies”
Enter the Scorch, a disease that caused people to plug their eyeballs out and turn into zombies… how original. Our merry band of “kids” just happen to be immune… Shocker.
I’m not going to spoil any more of the movie for people who can’t take the hint. Like I said, it is worth watching for six bucks or less. I still have no idea what the maze was for. Maybe they will explain in the next movie.
Greg
Teen Wolf…?
😉
These movies do not capture (effectively) anything close to the suspense and character depth demonstrated in the books of the same title. While no one really expects the flashy-flashy-bang-bang of the films to match the character depth and suspense-ability of the written word, it seems they might have at least made a better go of it.
On that note, I am kinda done with the “desolate desertification of the future” stuff…Lets see more caribbean blue-green water…and coconuts, lots of coconuts.