On January 26th Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and their team of Gladers are taking their final run into the maze with the final movie in the Maze Runner trilogy: The Death Cure. There was a lot of drama revolved around this franchise including the accident that happened while filming this last instalment. While filming for Death Cure in early 2016, O’Brien was involved in a life-threatening accident that put filming on hold for a while. The movie was originally set to be released late 2016 but put off a little over a year so that O’Brien would be able to heal properly. Despite all of this, the movie did an amazing job telling our heroes story.
Now, if you’re like me and you read all these books when they came out a few years ago then you’re probably skeptical about going to watch this final film. The first film did an amazing job with sticking to the book and truly making it come to life in such a terrifying yet brilliant way. The second film on the other hand was just confusing. Don’t get me wrong, it was a great film on it’s own but it was SO different from the books that I had to watch it a few times to understand exactly what they were trying to do. The second film made me feel like the screen writers didn’t even bother reading The Scorch Trials and just decided to do their own thing. I was so conflicted with the entire franchise after this. I loved the movies but I adored the books to much to really get into the movies like I wanted to.
Enter The Death Cure: I didn’t know what to think going into this film. I had a lot of expectations but they also threw out most of the plot for the second book so I was sure there would be a ton of changes for this one too. Don’t get me wrong, they still changed WAY too much but the film was actually fantastic. I will do my best to have minimum spoilers but there is a lot to talk about here.
The plot of this final installment follows Thomas and Newt trying to break into WCKD headquarters to rescue fellow Glader, Minho. Minho was taken by WCKD at the very end of the previous film along with a bunch of other kids so that WCKD could do some experiments on their brains in order to find a cure for the disease that’s plaguing the world, the flare. This kind of sounds confusing if you haven’t read the books, they explain the trials done by WCKD and what the flare is in the book but barely at all in the movies. That’s one of my biggest critiques of the film. They didn’t really explain anything. Where did the flare come from? How did WKCD form? When did they start the trials? Why did they start the trials? None of this is explained properly. Not to mention the basics of all these questions is a lot different in the movies than it was in the books so that adds to the confusion.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the film. It had me on the edge of my seat for nearly the entire thing. I was in tears for the last half of it and couldn’t stop talking about it for days after. You really get attached to these wonderful characters and feel for them throughout this series. I’m sad to see it end but I think it was such a perfect ending and I am so glad they didn’t split it up into two parts like they do for pretty much every other film adaptation. I totally recommend going to see it (see the first two first though because you’ll be even more confused if you don’t).