Rated: PG-13
Distributor: 20th
Century Fox
Starring: Dylan O’Brien, Ki Hong Lee, Kaya
Scodelario, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Giancarlo Esposito, Aiden Gillen, Jacob
Lofland, Barry Pepper, Rosa Salazar, Lili Taylor, Alan Tudyk, Patricia Clarkson
Directed by: Wes Ball
Written by: T.S. Nowlin
Personal Bias Alert: liked The Maze Runner, likes
Y.A. dystopias
4.9 of 10
Another
week brings another Y.A. adaptation trying to stretch its legs. While the genre seems to be winding down, Maze Runner was late to the game,
releasing the first film nearly a year to the day before The Scorch Trials. That
opener was a rough but interesting potboiler that held itself on the rails until
its bewildering third act. In this second
installment, the young filmmakers helming the series must open up the world
even more, and instead of finding solid footing they only slide further down
the rabbit hole.
Having
escaped the maze, the surviving Gladers (yes, still a dumb name) must elude the
clutches of WKCD and figure out how to survive the crumbling world around them. Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), Teresa (Kaya
Scodelario), Minho (Ki Hong Lee), and company are all targets, we find out,
because of their immunity to the virus that has decimated society. Those infected are essentially zombies, and the
mysteriously powerful WKCD believes that a cure can be found in the blood of
the immune. What precisely WKCD is
remains a mystery. Is it a powerful biomedical
company? An evil organization? A branch of the government? It could be argued that this isn’t revealed
to the audience because Thomas and the other Gladers don’t know the answer, but
the multitude of incongruous mysteries that keep stacking up in this series
makes a poorly thought-out plot the more likely scenario. Without giving away what happens in Scorch Trials, it infuriatingly never
explains what the hell putting a bunch of kids in a maze accomplished. In fact, if WKCD only wants the teens in
order to develop a cure, taking a whole bunch of them away from your scientists
and putting them in mortal danger seems like the last thing you’d want to do. But there are hints in Scorch Trials that something much larger is going on. It’s a distinct possibility that all the odd
plot points will be explained by some big plot twist in the third film, but any
twist that might be on the horizon will be lessened by how muddled its buildup
has become.
Scorch Trials is essentially a chase
film, with the Gladers running from civilization pocket to civilization pocket
with WKCD nipping at their heels. These
new encounters allow fresh blood to join their dour band, but the speed with
which Scorch Trials moves from place
to place never allows them to feel fully integrated into the group. The background players fade into a faceless
pack running behind Thomas, Teresa, and Minho, and even the main player’s
stories feel simultaneously trite and aimless.
Thomas becomes the de facto leader of the group, but it’s clear that he’s
making up the plan as he goes. Without
any clear goal, the film devolves into an episodic series of action sequences
that, despite being well staged, never have any meaning. Due to some heavy foreshadowing, the fate of
two of the characters are sealed early on, and the familiar cliffhanger ending makes
the whole thing go out with a whimper instead of a bang.
The
smartest move this series made was retaining director Wes Ball, who despite
never making any other feature-length films has an incredible eye for visceral
action. The first film featured a
handful of tense maze sequences, and Scorch
Trials opens up into a never-ending play land of dystopian action. He’s still hamstrung by a tired and
repetitive plot, but Ball never lets the action sequences degrade into such cookie-cutter
material. He plays with the lighting,
colors, and sound design to construct some truly terrifying sequences, and one
shot in particular is an attention-grabbing moment of quiet despair. Maze
Runner is shaping up to be quite a feather in Ball’s cap, and hopefully one
day he is able to find material that matches his extraordinary talent.
As
with The Maze Runner, what The Scorch Trials gets right can largely
be traced back to Ball. The material he’s
working with simply isn’t that great, and the young cast is nothing more than a
competently likable group of actors. None
of it is particularly terrible, but Scorch
Trials remains a definite step back for the series as a whole.
Other
Notes:
Ø I
have to mention how delighted I am by Minho.
He’s essentially Thomas’s right hand; a smart, strong guy that’s a
straight-up action hero. He also just so
happens to be of Asian descent, which makes the character a rarity in
Hollywood.
Ø I
still don’t feel much chemistry between O’Brien and Scodelario.
Ø “I’m
tired of running.” Good, because I’m
tired of watching you run.
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