Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials is a chase movie looking for a story

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials: “PG-13“ (2 h. 12 min.)

Starring: Dylan O'Brien, Kaya Scodelario, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Ki Hong Lee, Dexter Darden

Directed by: Wes Ball

So, this is the second cinematic chapter in the Maze Runner saga. Truth in reviewing requires us to admit that not only did we not read the young Adult Novel(s) upon which these films were based, but that we weren’t a fan of the first film either. Hence we were neither impressed with this film as it was essentially an extended chase sequence where the principles race from one life-threatening crises into another with little, if any, time for expository material or character development, and winding up with, not a resolution, but merely a segue into the next film. Sigh.

But to backtrack to the beginning of this film. Thomas, Newt, Minho, Teresa Agnes, Frypan and Winston managed to escape from the Maze, and are welcomed by Mr. Janson (Aidan Gillen) in a protected facility. It is there that they meet up with other survivors from other mazes and they learn that every day, a new group of teenagers is summoned to be lodged in farms and communities in safe areas. However, Thomas decides to investigate what happens with the teenagers and he meets Aris Jones (Jacob Lofland).

Soon they find that the place is a WCKD facility and Ava Paige (Patricia Clarkson) is alive and the leader of experiments with the teenagers that are intubated neither alive nor dead. Further, his group will be the next to be guinea pigs. Thomas and Aris succeed in escaping with the other Gladers from the facility and they decide to search the resistance group The Right Arm that is hidden at the mountains. Along their journey, they find the post-apocalyptic world completely destroyed; they meet the Cranks, zombies infected by the Flare virus; they have the loss of a friend; they face storm in the desert and a dangerous group of survivors; and they are betrayed by a friend. Now Thomas and his friends want revenge against the WCKD and Thomas promises to kill Ava Paige.

Still, as stated at the onset of this review, much of the film takes place at a pell-mell pace with the teens running from one set-piece to another, with the kids all but tripping over everything form rage-infected bezerkers, to rebels, insurgents, to the military of the WCKD, to who-cares-what as they rush around the countryside at night dodging all sorts of terrors. Like so many of these types of modern-day Young Adult novels they read essentially the same, and thus translate to the screen in a similar fashion: The world suffered some inexplicable cataclysm and now teens much fix what adults have somehow destroyed.

As we stated in our original review of the first film the science is implausible as are the methodologies developed to deal with the issues in the first place. None of these films measure up to the Young Adult science fiction tales we read as a youth, and all of the current crop tend to pander to nonsensical premises, thus crippling them from the onset. So, no, this again proved to be a sub-standard Sci-Fi story that we found well worth skipping.