Review of Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015) by Christopher E — 26 Aug 2016

"Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials" lacks the flare and mystery of the original.

After escaping from the maze, Thomas and his friends find themselves under care at a facility who claims they're against WCKD. Skeptical of this, Thomas decides to uncover to truth, only to find him and his friends on the run. As they travel along the barren wasteland that is Earth, they'll face the aftermath of The Flare, a couple of different groups, and a whole lot of crazy.

Now, I honestly loved the first "Maze Runner". It's not the best movie in the world but I have so much fun with it and I've watched it over and and over again. I strongly feel that it's a four star movie, but it doesn't stray from the fact that I loved that film. It created this unique world, brought an exciting mystery, had a great cast, plenty of action, and more than its fair share of intense moments. It's sequel on the other hand, has some of the action, but otherwise, it carries nothing that its predecessor does.

One thing this movie lacks is a story with consistency and continuity. Realistically, we don't really know what's going on. Why are these kids actually so important? Apparently they're so immune and special but it doesn't explain the real lust and motives that these organizations have to do what they're doing. If anything, this just feels like some generic zombie film that's a poor man's combination of "I Am Legend" and, well, the "Maze Runner". It's lack of story makes this a significantly weaker film than the first one.

It did start out pretty strong in the first half. It had the thrilling mysterious marks like the first one did, but the minute these kids left to venture out into the world, the movie lost a lot of touch there. It felt like this movie relied solely on mindless running sequences, which actually got boring after quite sometime.

It's lack of character development was sadly present here. Instead of focusing on the characters that we know and love, they brought in the most generic and boring cast that we don't care about. There was more focus put on the new characters rather than the old, and this really was a crappy reality. I wanted to learn more about Minho, Newt, and Frypan, but frankly, we were stuck with more screen time from Jorge, Brenda, and Aris. They should've put their focus on the original cast, which would've helped create a stronger story and another reason to actually care about the situation at hand.

The movie does pride itself on some nice cinematography. I mean, the movie looks great and their use of practical sets and environments made the experience much better. It was much appreciated, especially since it would've been easy to rely heavily on CGI.

One thing that the director/writers did not realize is that bigger is not always better. They tried to go so much bigger here but it raised more questions than it answered. The movie wasn't smart. It was a mindless cash grab that ultimately didn't know where it was going.

In the end, I am definitely dissapointed in this sequel. I truly hope they can bring themselves back up with the third film as this franchise has the potential to be a strong one.