Cast: It's a rather huge cast. Some favorites from the last movie like Dylan O'Brian, Ki Hong Lee, Kata Scodelario, and Thomas Brodie-Sangster are back. A bunch of new people including Jacob Lofland, Rosa Salazar, Giancarlo Esposito, and Aidan Gillen to name a very few show up too.
Plot: After getting out of the maze, Thomas (O'Brien) and the others are taken into a suspicious compound run by W.C.K.D. They escape and spend the rest of the movie looking for the resistance group (the Right Arm) and running from the infected zombie-people.
Thoughts:
I struggled to remember what was learned at the end of the last movie, which is on me. It is worth noting though that they aren't concerned with explaining for the unacquainted. You need to see the first movie.
This is completely different from The Maze Runner. There's no high concept mystery/puzzle/game which was all that part one was. This opens up the world and the rebellion going on in it. At times, this is a much better movie than the first. When it turns into one big chase movie or a big budget zombie movie, The Scorch Trials is pretty fun. I don't know how big the budget was for this, but unlike, say, Insurgent (which spent all its money on shattered glass graphics), this looked like it got value out of the effects.
There are so many characters! I couldn't keep up with everything and everyone. It doesn't help that everyone talks to Thomas in abstracts or cryptic references. I was disappointed how much the characters from the first movie other than Thomas were sidelined, especially considering that Teresa (Scodelario) didn't get a lot in the previous movie either. I'm not sure if the book this is based on does a better job weaving the different back stories together. The movie turns into exposition-dumps and flashbacks that only explain enough to frustrate me. As a result, I felt every minute of the slightly over two hour run time.
The biggest drag in the story is the number of "chosen one" moments. Apparently, Thomas is the most important person ever, which would be great, if it didn't seem like every single move of his was an accident. It's a narrative dead end to have him both unaware of how important he is and also not show anything in the moment to explain why he's so important. Danny Ocean has a plan throughout Ocean's Eleven. He's at the center because he's always in control and driving the story. That's interesting. Jason Bourne has ridiculous skills. He has no idea what he's doing, but it's immediately clear how he is special and can survive all this. That's interesting. Thomas kind of stumbles through everything with little or no memory of what came before. People keep saying he's special, but he just as easily could fallen out a window or been eaten by a zombie in a mall at any point. That's not interesting. That's lucky.
Elephant in the Room: The bad guys are called W.C.K.D. (Pronounced: "Wicked") and I'm supposed to believe they have good intentions? I always complain about these young adult dystopias creating worlds that could never happen. Here's a good example. New Speak 101 demands that if you are in a group that doesn't want to be seen as bad, you make sure your name doesn't make you sound like the bad guys. It's not like "Nazi" is German for "Jew Killers". W.C.K.D. is laughably on the nose.
To Sum Things Up:
The addition of veteran adult actors is welcome and the production values are solid. The Scorch Trials is hampered by too much of a convoluted story that drags too often and kills the momentum whenever things get exciting.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
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