I Watch Films: Maze Runner: The Death Cure
The third in the trilogy. In the first one our heroes find ourselves in the maze and have to run it. Later films have tried to explain why this is happening and it’s become increasingly silly and convoluted.
(SPOILERS: The Maze stresses the runners in the right way to stimulate the latent immunity to the Flare virus; also the Maze is a controlled area etc.)
Anyway the sequel The Scorch Trials was much more regular dystopian fiction without the slightly claustrophobic strangeness of the first one, and this one starts off very like that. Then things get a bit more enclosed as they enter the last city and run about it, but it’s much more of a standard action film than the more interesting first one.
Still there’s a couple of things to like; the repeated way of escaping (in each case the means placed clearly in sight earlier), some actual acting as people are threatened and die, some good stunts.
The whole thing operates according to the characters having exactly the correct amount of information. The opening scene has a raid on a train which operates with clockwork precision, little margin for error, and a mere handful of people against the full might of WCKD. It would have needed exact details on how the trains operate and are escorted.
A couple of scenes later they try to figure out where it might have been going and aren’t sure if there’s anything up there. Which is... an intriguing lack of knowledge after a heist of such pinpoint accuracy. I'm just saying.
Watch This: For a bit of fun teen action adventure with the odd cool set piece
Don’t Watch This: For clever, intelligently plotted drama.
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