Review of Maze Runner: The Death Cure (2018) by Aaron B — 14 Feb 2018

My gut feeling is just that the story went in the wrong direction way back in the first film. Remember the first film? Maze Runner....kids wake up with no memories in a glade surrounded by a crazy maze that changed and rearranged itself every night.

It was fascinating! What a concept! Why are they there? Why did they have their memory wiped? Can they solve the mystery of the maze and escape? Oh, wait. The maze has been COMPLETELY mapped. Now this guy Thomas shows up and boom! with no real experience he leads them out.

...and blah blah blah. I would have LOVED a first movie dedicated to all the adventures BEFORE Thomas showed up --- let's see all their adventures mapping the maze, creating a community, and organizing their social roles.

Let's learn more about Newt, Frypan, Minho, Gally and all the others. It's called "character development"!! There was so much rich material that could have been explored. But then it was off to the "Scorch Trials" which, to be honest, was a snoozefest.

Trials? What trials? ooh....it's all a trap and now we have to run through a desert and then, betrayal! Capture! Cliffhanger! (not really, it's all too predictable at this point). Now, finally we have the ending, we have "The Death Cure".

None of this makes sense....we have to torment and torture kids (in their 20s and maybe early 30s?) so their blood is somehow "stronger"? What? That makes no sense. And we have to kill them to take their blood? Basic science says you can donate weekly and even twice weekly if you are in good health and eat right.

But, in these movies, the kids have to be tormented and killed for their blood? Let's hear some REAL science behind that. Oh, we don't get deep dialogue. Just shallow garbage. Stupid. Then we have Rebels taking over a walled city DESTROY the city because.

..you know, they don't need a place to be safe from the infected and they don't need the medical building to continue searching for a cure.... WHAT? And who is their leader and why should we care about that guy and his rebellion? And how can they bring down a whole city when there is a trained equipped Army? Skyscrapers falling? Seriously? Then we find out that Thomas IS the cure (of course he is) but NO ONE WANTS TO SAVE THE WORLD except the evil people?? Yeah.

That makes sense. Let's just go off to live on a beach instead. After we kill off Newt for no good reason -- wasn't he immune???? And, of course, Theresa needs to die too because she betrayed her friends and caused many of them to get killed or be tortured, or both.

Basically, all the potential of the first movie was thrown away and destroyed in an effort to make what is basically a couple of zombie movies with shallow characters and impossible escapes/coincidences.

..etc. Yeah. The train stopped EXACTLY next to the hidden people. Yeah. The bus is driven down random streets but a crane just happens to be able to get to it to pick it up.... all these heroes from the sky!! Deus Ex Machina!! We are saved!!! Boring.

Overdone. Yawn. Honestly, let's go back to the maze and the mystery of the FIRST movie and write an entirely different story as to who these kids are and why they were there. It certainly couldn't be worse than this trilogy.

Let's talk about this city, all those people in suits going to/from jobs? What jobs? Who manufactures their clothing? Where does their food come from? Etc. Also, let's talk about all those mazes --- Where are the construction crews that, presumably, built multiple mazes over what had to have taken years.

..while dodging zombies? You can build all these mazes and robot monsters...but don't have the means or funds to create MORE SAFE HAVENS??? What committee voted to build mazes instead of funding walled cities?? How stupid.

..sounds like wasteful government spending. The whole premise of these movies as zombie movies just falls apart. Somewhere, deeper, there is a far better story that could have been told. This series is just too derivative of everything from Mad Maxx and The Hunger Games to Resident Evil and 28 Days Later and every other dystopian story of the past 20 years.

It just doesn't work as a zombie flick series. This should have been more of a Sci-Fi Story from the first movie and the maze....such a wasted opportunity.