Will There Be A Maze Runner 4
Fans of James Dashner's books will recognize how this fight has to end: Thomas confronting Janson, the true villain, whose interests were never about curing the disease that wiped out large swaths of humanity but about sustaining his own life. Of course, just as moviegoers noticed creative liberties taken in the second movie, they'll see more here: the nature of Teresa's betrayal, for one, changes. Same with her death.
They still happen, just differently, all in the name of making these key moments more satisfying. Perhaps one of the more contentious divergences from the source material will be the one that comes at the very end of the movie, when Thomas and his friends reach a safe haven. In the book, Ava Paige takes credit for this 'Paradise' in a final memorandum. 'And so, we have failed. But we have also succeeded,' she writes. 'If all has gone according to plan, we have sent the brightest, the strongest, the toughest of our subjects to a safe place, where they can begin civilization anew while the rest of the world is driven to extinction.' The Flare virus that loomed over the series is revealed to have been a well-intended plan to pare down the planet's population.
The Maze Runner Series Movies
The results were disastrous and unpredictable. 'I don't know how history will judge the actions of WICKED, but I state here for the record that the organization only ever had one goal,' she adds, 'to preserve the human race.'
‘Maze Runner: The Death Cure’ The Box Office: Maze Runner: The Death Cure begins its international rollout tomorrow in South Korea, after which it will eventually make its way to US theaters on Jan 26. The Wes Ball-directed sci-fi actioner is the third and final chapter in what was supposed to be a quickie three-part YA fantasy franchise based on James Dashner’s novels. Alas, Dylan O’Brien was seriously injured on the said of this picture, and his recovery caused the film to be pushed to what is now just over two years after Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials. It says something about the speed of entertainment these days that a 2.25-year wait between installments for a moderately-budgeted genre franchise is considered ungainly. Sure some old-school franchises, like Jurassic World or Mission: Impossible, are still dropping an installment every 3-4 years.
But Fast and Furious now offers a movie every two years, the MCU has three movies per year (with, yes, the specific franchises going 2-4 between installments) and the YA sub-genre ( Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Twilight, Divergent) got us used to one movie every year. Even if absence hasn’t made the heart grow fonder, this is the final episode in a self-contained story. So there isn’t much at stake beyond dollars and sense for investors and the financial legacy of the series. The first Maze Runner had a leggy (ha!) run in September of 2014, opening with $32 million and ending with $103m domestic and $348m on a $34m budget.
The Scorch Trials, a longer, more expense and frankly inferior sequel, opened a year later with $30m and ended its run with $81m domestic and $312m worldwide on a $61m budget. I don’t have a production budget for The Death Cure, but this is not a cheap-looking motion picture.
Come what may, at least it got to finish its story, unlike Divergent or Chronicles of Narnia. And kudos for not splitting the last book into two movies.
The Review: As a whole, the three-part Maze Runner series is a fine example of a known sub-genre (the YA dystopian fantasy) dabbling in explicit genre appropriation. The first (and mostly self-contained) Maze Runner was a bit of a monster movie/haunted house hybrid, while the inferior and overly world build-y Scorch Trials was a full-on zombie adventure. The Death Cure, which is heavy on character and light on mythology, is a hard action picture, filled with relentless chases, brutal smackdowns and more than a few breathless stunt sequences. Considering how much I didn’t care for the second film, I was beyond surprised to see how much I enjoyed this third and final chapter.
The Maze Runner Film Series
After a curtain-raiser chase set six months after Scorch Trials’ cliffhanger conclusion, whereby our heroes are reintroduced rescuing kids destined for “the maze,” we get a bit of “for those who don’t remember the last two films all that well” exposition and some character reestablishment. This info dump feels surprisingly organic, perhaps since it’s less about educating newbies and more about just jogging the memory of casual fans. Nonetheless, if you have the time, I would recommend rewatching the first two films. I was never lost, but I do wish I had bothered to at least skim a summary of the plot-heavy second movie. But the movie works on its own terms. After we re-meet the good guys (Dylan O’Brien, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Rosa Salazar, Giancarlo Esposito and Barry Pepper), the bad guys (Patricia Clarkson and Aidan Gillen) and the in-betweens (Kaya Scodelario’s sympathetic turncoat), our core heroes reembark on a quest into a protected city to free a captured colleague (Ki Hong Lee).
Maze Runner 3 Full Movie
And that’s it. What makes this picture so refreshing is that, for most of its 140-minute running time, it’s just about sneaking into the enemy territory to rescue a friend from peril. They aren’t trying to save the world or fulfill a destiny or overthrow a tyrannical regime.
They just want to get what’s there’s and get out alive. There are complications, in the form of Scodelario’s conflicted government scientist and the subversive notion that it’s the villains who are actively trying to save human race from extinction. Yes, their methods (kidnapping, torture, murder) are very bad, but Clarkson offers such complex empathy that they have Gillen overdo the overt villainy so that we can get a standard hero versus villain showdown toward the end. Nonetheless, especially in these circumstances, there is a valid argument to be made on both sides and the picture goes out of its way not to overly villainize its two major female characters (while splitting up the heroes so that Salazar can get her own big hero moments).
For at least the first two acts, we have a somewhat human-scaled action-adventure film, one that looks and feels grand in scope while taking the time to create real suspense and small-scale character-driven tension amid the top-flight action and stunts. Without making a direct one-to-one comparison, this feels not unlike how the Russo Brothers used Captain America: The Winter Soldier to introduce old-school action choreography and real-world fighting into the MCU superhero world. Without knowing if he’s kind to children and animals, I’ll argue that director Wes Ball should be in very high demand the next time a studio goes hunting for a fantasy and or superhero franchise director. The third act does go a little overboard with big-scale spectacle, climactic showdowns, fond farewells and the like. But even this stuff feels a little different, with theoretical “good guys” unleashing horrific kaiju-level destruction and carnage while our heroes just try to make it out alive.
And yes, the film does come full circle as to why O’Brien’s Thomas has been the protagonist of choice, but even here we get a choice rebuttal of the whole “chosen one” motif. It ends on a satisfying note, with enough of an opening for continuation should it make $400 million worldwide but more than enough closure to qualify as a series finale.
Maze Runner: The Death Cure can’t quite beat the first film’s lean-and-mean horror tropes, but nor does it fall prey to the sequel’s mythology overdose. The production values are top notch, the action sequences are genuinely impressive and occasionally inventive (I’m fond of the bus gag), the characters are sympathetic and there isn’t a bum performance in the bunch. Maze Runner: The Death Cure is a solid big-budget action thriller that just happens to be the third-and-final part of a YA fantasy franchise. The comic book superhero movie has evolved by embracing explicit genre appropriation, and I will argue that the YA fantasy genre would do well to do likewise. If you like what you’re reading, follow @ScottMendelson on Twitter, and “like” The Ticket Booth on Facebook. Also, check out my archives for older work.