Having escaped from the Maze Thomas and his fellow Gladers think they are ready for a new “normal” life but things aren’t as they seem in the new place they are being held.
As usual Thomas does not just settle in the new environment and wants to work out exactly why they are now being held by someone different. WCKD put the kids in the maze and they are still wanting answers to why they did that in the first place and what is so special about them all. Considering from the audience point of view we knew that WCKD had not been destroyed and that the second place they were taken to was phase two. It doesn’t actually take Thomas long to find out that Ava is still alive.
I remember actually really enjoying the first film as thought it managed to do things in a different way comparing it to Insurgent and The Hunger Games. Thinking that the maze was interesting and wondering why they had been placed in it, but I have to admit that I was left disappointed and bored with Scorch Trials. I knew it was going to be a lot different but I don’t think it actually mattered very much if you had seen the first film or not.
The running time of 2 hours and 11 minutes felt a lot longer than that and certainly could have easily been 20-30 minutes shorter. That may seem like really picking at the film but after a certain about of time seeing them being chased and tracked down by WCKD. This is where it got rather boring as we still need a lot of questions answered. Why exactly are the group so valuable and are they really immune to the flare?
Speaking of the disease that we have figured out took out a lot of the human race and leave not too many left trying to survive and not catch it. We have then entered a zombie style film going on, this was again overused and we had to watch a few different scenes of them being attacked and trying to escape against these former humans who seemed to be super strong and indestructible. Yes really this is all in the same film!
I was expecting that they were going to be put with a task of getting through the Scorch and a similar survival style theme to the maze. But this was an escape and they had to try to get to a safe place, but as Thomas and the others don’t have their memories it is not possible for them to remember what is going on. Although I guess one of the few interesting plot twists is that Teresa had been given her memories back . . . Won’t spoil what happens with that, although it does seem to be pretty obvious.
Anyway I was actually looking forward to this film and just left disappointed by the way things panned out, I guess it doesn’t say a lot for how the third film is going to go as well. Maybe they will manage to improve on this one? Well you never know. Maybe it just shows that we have had too many of this type of film out in recent years to actually care enough about them. Too many unanswered questions about everything going on and surely we should know how the flare started and what exactly people were doing with their children?
Won’t be recommending this film to anyone as wouldn’t want responsibility for making them sit through it all. Nothing new or even entertaining about it at all for me.
