Maze Runner: The Death Cure review

MAZE RUNNER: THE DEATH CURE:

ABOUT AS GENERIC AS ITS PREDECESSORS!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** ½ out of 4

20^TH CENTURY FOX

Thomas, Newt, and Brenda in Maze Runner: The Death Cure

            After waiting three years since the release of Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, we finally have closure on the Maze Runner film trilogy, based on the series of books by James Dashner. Maze Runner: The Death Cure is the third and final installment of the latest young adult dystopian sci-fi franchise in the same vein as The Hunger Games, but never quite gets off the ground.

            Unlike Harry Potter or The Hunger Games where I get wrapped up in the story and characters, thrilled by the action, and leaves me praising the films, or even The Twilight Saga where I can go on and on about how terrible it is, Maze Runner is a franchise I acknowledge that it exists. None of the films in the series I would consider bad and I thought the first movie was pretty good, but they don’t really do much different from other dystopian stories.

            Maze Runner is a perfect example of a franchise I classify as…okay, how’s the first one? It’s okay, how’s the second one? It’s okay, how’s this one? It’s okay. That’s pretty much my thoughts on the entire franchise in a nutshell.

            Like its predecessors, Maze Runner: The Death Cure offers some thrilling action sequences and solid acting from its young cast. But its narrative comes off as generic paint-by-numbers young adult novel adaptation fluff and doesn’t do much new with the genre.

            The film follows Thomas (Dylan O’Brien-Teen Wolf, Deepwater Horizon, American Assassin), Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster-Love Actually, Nanny McPhee, Phineas and Ferb), and Frypan (Dexter Darden-Cadillac Records, Joyful Noise, Geography Club), the last of the Gladers immune to the Flare virus that infected the world’s population, off on their final and most dangerous mission yet, break into the WCKD organization and save their captured friend, Minho (Ki Hong Lee-The Nine Lives of Chloe King, Everything Before Us, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt). Little do they know, WCKD controls a labyrinth of a utopia known as the legendary Last City which turns out to be the deadliest maze of all.

            Thomas and the Gladers, with the help of their newfound friends, Brenda (Rosa Salazar-American Horror Story: Murder House, The Divergent Series: Insurgent, Alita: Battle Angel) and Jorge (Giancarlo Esposito-Malcolm X, The Jungle Book (2016), Okja) must race to save Minho along with several immune children that were experimented on by WCKD, get answers to all the questions they’ve been asking ever since they’ve entered the maze, and bring WCKD down.

            The film also stars Kaya Scodelario (Skins, Moon, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) as Teresa, Nathalie Emmanuel (Twenty8k, Game of Thrones, Fast & Furious 7 and 8) as Harriet, Aidan Gillen (The Wire, Game of Thrones, The Dark Knight Rises) as Janson, Walton Goggins (Justified, Lincoln, The Hateful Eight) as Lawrence, Jacob Lofland (Justified, Mud, Free State of Jones) as Aris, Katherine McNamara (Happyland, Natural Selection, Shadowhunters) as Sonya, Barry Pepper (Flags of our Fathers, True Grit (2010), The Kennedys) as Vince, Will Poulter (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, We’re the Millers, Detroit) as Gally, who was presumed dead in the maze, and Patricia Clarkson (Pieces of April, Six Feet Under, The Elephant Man) as Ava Paige.

            Overall, Maze Runner: The Death Cure does exactly what it’s supposed to do, wrap up the trilogy for its fans. However, if you barely ever re-watch the Maze Runner movies (like me), chances are you’ll be completely lost in terms of the story, I completely forgot about what happened in Scorch Trials (aside from Teresa betraying the group in the end…spoiler alert) and I get the feeling if I didn’t watch both movies again prior to this one, I’d be lost with all the other mainstream movie-goers who don’t follow the franchise.

            But with that said, there are some good elements in this film, the action is pretty exciting, the main characters keep you invested, and the acting is solid. Dylan O’Brien I can see acting in a great film in the future, and he gives it his all in this trilogy, plus the chemistry he has with Newt is very strong.

            Most of the action is fun to watch but at times they seem recycled from other movies, the opening train chase looks like a crossover between Mad Max and Hunger Games, and the climax, while thrilling and offers some variety, does run on a lot of young adult clichés and looks more like the Hunger Games districts fighting in a war against the Capitol, not much to it.

            The film offers some interesting ideas regarding medicine, science, and life but they’re either really vague or not explored that much. I was personally underwhelmed that the movie never goes into the origin of WCKD and the reasoning behind their decisions, what does locking kids into a maze have to do with finding a virus cure? What’s the history of the feud between WCKD and the people on the other side of the wall? Why does Thomas literally have a Deus ex Machina inside his body? These questions are either never fully answered or not answered at all, which would have made a much more interesting movie.

            If you’re a fan of the Maze Runner books and movies and want to see closure of the franchise, you’ll probably like The Death Cure fine. As mentioned before it does exactly what it needed to do, wrap up the Maze Runner series and there’s enough entertaining moments to make it worth a viewing, better than Scorch Trials but not by much, take it for what it’s worth.