After its long-awaited return, the final segment of this acclaimed trilogy was announced after its year-long delay and needless to say, fans had high expectations. The question on everyone’s mind was, would this finale be worth the wait? Well, I am here to lay it all down for you, giving you the good – the bad – and the downright geeky!
Image source: imdb.com
THE GOOD: There is nothing worse than investing loads of time into a series and then being left with an abundance of questions in its closing chapter. Thank goodness that doesn’t happen here! This movie gave me exactly what I wanted in that it left little-to-no loose ends untied and gave this trilogy much-needed closure, all while throwing in more action than I knew how to handle. We jump in pretty much where we left off, just a few weeks after the ending of The Scorch Trials and straight into Minho’s rescue mission. From there the action just keeps coming, there were plenty of Cranks, explosions, fight scenes and near-misses to keep me hanging off my seat for the entire movie; I would even dare go as far as to say that this may be the best action movie I have seen released in 2018 thus far. More than the action, however, it was the well-portrayed relationships between characters that kept me watching, even if, at times, they were challenging. These bitter-sweet relationships, such as the one between Thomas and Teresa, who possess different philosophies concerning the immune, were incredibly enjoyable and thought-provoking to watch. What holds more worth? The importance of individual life or saving mass life? It certainly struck a heated discussion between my friends and I after the film.
THE BAD: The movie was too long ~ This may seem like I am picking at straws but hear me out. Less is often more in film adaption and there were parts of the plot, characters that we met and places we entered that didn’t serve much to this film adaption at all other than to perhaps appease the book reading fan base. While I understand the book readers are their core fan base, books and films are structurally different. In a novel you can get away with going to a place, looking around it, exiting and then entering it again later in the plot but within a film it becomes jarring and these added elements really just hindered the story line and strongly stood out as aimless to the overall product. I feel as though the creators of this film tried to include as much of the book as it possibly could within this film to satisfy the fans of the book series but this is almost virtually impossible to do in film while maintaining an in-depth, three-dimensional narrative. As a byproduct of this, there were parts of the plot that suffered. SPOILER ALERT For example, the upheaval of the war which is a huge part of the narrative but really did seem like an afterthought to the film as more screen time appeared to be delegated to things that weren’t necessarily needed. You really start to feel it within the last hour or so of the movie when it hits its third trimester and you expect the narrative to climax and then resolve but the plot runs back around on itself, kind of like it’s in a maze (sorry, I couldn’t resist). While I didn’t necessarily lose interest in the film while watching, certain moments felt a little repetitive and unnecessary. And, at just under 2 and a half hours I think a good half an hour of plot could have easily been edited out and would have made a good movie, a great movie.
THE DOWN RIGHT GEEKY: The Maze Runner trilogy has been an incredibly successful movie franchise and is one of the last of its kind as the young adult film genre appears to be dying out in popularity. I think the series success falls down to, not only it’s author, James Dashner, but also the consistent direction of the trilogy’s director, Mr. Wes Ball. Ball’s influence over this film trilogy has really benefited the series as a whole. We more-often-than-not see within the young adult film genre an assortment of directors that will work on one or two of the movies in a series, get some notoriety and then move on to other things. This can hinder a film franchise as each segment encompasses a different directors vision and this can loosen the connection between films. We get none of that, however, within the Maze Runner trilogy. The Death Cure, had a very similar feel to the previous films, the visuals, the music, they really felt like a continuation of the series as opposed to separate movies.
With all said and done, there were more pros than cons to The Death Cure. The movie was well budgeted and fantastically cast with big names such as Aiden Gillen, Giancarlo Esposito, and Thomas Brodie-Sangster, as well as up and coming actors such as Rosa Salazar, Ki Hong Lee and, of course, Dylan O’Brien, who really outdid himself as Thomas within this movie, especially after the serious injury he received during filming last year which resulted in the film’s delayed release. His fantastic performance brought Thomas to life for the final time and was definitely worth waiting for.
By far the worst in the trilogy. The plot was dull and at times didn’t make much sense. Lots of cliches and unimportant actions scenes to cover up a poor script and not well thought out movie.