Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

FoxMovies

Let's take a second and talk about what a good sequel does. First off, a worthy sequel should only follow a good, original story that made the audience want more. Second, the sequel should continue to build on that originality as opposed to retreading or borrowing too heavily from other sources. This sequel to meets the first criteria - 2013's The Maze Runner was a good movie, and its original and suspenseful mystery approach to the YA universe made me excited for a sequel. But looking at the second identifier, it's clear that The Scorch Trials doesn't qualify as a good sequel - at all.

Following his escape from The Glade, Thomas finds himself transported to a safe haven with allies Newt, Minho, Teresa, and the rest of his friends. It's assumed to be a sanctuary protecting them from those who orchestrated the maze trials, WCKD. Thomas is greeted by the man running the facility, Jensen ("Game of Thrones'" Aidan Gillen), who assures them their troubles are over and a new life is ahead of them. But when familiar faces start disappearing, Thomas is warned by maze survivor Aris (Mud's Jacob Lofland) that Jensen can't be trusted. They discover that they're actually in a WCKD run containment center exploiting those immune to the virus that wiped out humanity. Confused yet? Yeah, me too.

After an exciting and impressively-filmed escape, the group treks across a barren cityscape (the "Scorch") looking for survivors to help them fight WCKD. They team up with rebels Brenda and Jorge (Giancarlo Esposito, who milks his "Breaking Bad" fame by saying hermano in almost all his conversations), two survivors who are also looking to take down WCKD. They spend the rest of the movie looking for weapons and recruits and trying to avoid contact with those infected with the Flare virus, which turns its victims into mindless zombie-like attackers.

As I mentioned earlier, a good sequel elevates the originality of its predecessor instead of falling back on recycled storylines and clichés of sequels past. At times, I felt like I was watching I Am Legend (running zombies), 28 Weeks Later (running zombies in dark underground areas), each of The Hunger Games movies (waking up after escaping a government-controlled arena, hiding from a hovercraft, kids fighting against the government), both Divergent (zip lining over dystopia) and Insurgent (poorly-dressed rebels hosting escapees from those in power), Face/Off (that prison break), Cloverfield (climbing up a tilted city building) and more. And these weren't subtle nods to cinematic classics, these were blatant rip-offs from better movies of a similar or the same genre. Couple that with the overload of unnecessary characters and a muddled screenplay with too much violence and language and not enough character development, The Scorch Trials makes it too easy to get lost along the way.

It was a struggle to watch Dylan O'Brien as Thomas, because you could see he was giving the movie his all while virtually every other cast and crew member seemed to assume their Hollywood faces would carry them to box office success. It's even more painful to see a talented actor like Aiden Gillen waste a good chunk of his screen time sitting on a helicopter in terribly lit scenes.

So on behalf of the filmmakers, sorry fans of The Maze Runner. If you're looking for the excitement, fun, and compelling mystery the first Maze Runner movie brought, you won't find it here. Instead, you'll find boredom, confusion, an overlong production, and another cliffhanger that will lead us into what will likely be another letdown. The Scorch Trials is a disappointment that I can only imagine diehard fans of the original could appreciate. And even then, still probably not.

Rating: 2/5