Two stars. Rated PG-13, for profanity and relentless action violence
By Derrick Bang
As was the case with last year’s
opening entry in this big-screen franchise, this sequel looks great — the
special effects are quite impressive — and the acting is solid.
But the storyline remains
bonkers-stupid and utterly impenetrable. If last year’s cliff-hanging Maze Runner left us with far more
questions than answers, this second installment doesn’t even try to make sense. It’s as if scripter
T.S. Nowlin abandoned any effort to parse James Dasher’s complicated source
novel, and chose instead to fabricate one superficial chase sequence after
another.
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| Things seem mighty bad, folks ... then again, maybe our heroes should simply stop looking over the next ridge. Try as he might, Thomas (Dylan O'Briend, second from left) can't stop leading his friends ‚ from left, Minho (Ki Hong Lee), Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), Frypan (Dexter Darden) and Teresa (Kaya Scodelario) from one crisis to another. |
When our primary protagonist
Thomas insists, at one point, that he’s tired of running, I cheerfully agreed:
I’m tired of watching him run.
Him and everybody else in this preposterous,
kitchen-sink excuse for a sci-fi thriller.
We’d ordinarily be inclined to
blame Dasher, since his book logically serves as the source material. But
Nowlin’s screenplay bears scant resemblance to Dasher’s novel, perhaps because
the filmmakers are trying to condense a five-book (thus far) series into a more
compact trilogy. Which would have been a reasonable idea, if Nowlin had the
slightest talent for narrative, plot structure or dialogue.
Yep: This is one of those movies
with eye-rolling, melodramatically laughable one-liners, invariably delivered
with utter sincerity. The cast isn’t at fault; everybody does their best ...
but not even seasoned Shakespeareans could wring emotional honesty from these
verbal clunkers.
Such dialogue also frequently
anticipates moronic behavior. “They’re never gonna stop chasing us,” our heroes
lament, having narrowly escaped a massive land- and air-based search party. So
what do they do next? They take a long walk across a wholly exposed desert
landscape, where — based on what happened just a few scenes earlier — they’d
clearly be spotted and captured.
But no: Apparently the bad guys
decided not to look that day.
On top of which — and this is Dasher’s fault — I still can’t get
beyond his internal technological inconsistencies. Consider the engineering
ingenuity and sheer brute manpower that would have been required to build,
maintain and operate the massive maze that initially trapped our young heroes.
Now ask yourself whether such structures could have been fabricated so quickly
— because we now know there were numerous mazes — given the timeline of events
as established via maddeningly brief flashbacks.
And, more crucially, to what purpose, precisely? Two films in,
and we’ve still no clue as to the original maze’s intent.
On top of which, we’re once again
forced to accept a truly dismal picture of human nature under stress: a degree
of “civilized” behavior so barbaric, so abhorrent, that it frankly defies
description. That’s not merely sad; it’s also loathsome.
Popular entertainment often mirrors
a given time, and if the current trend of dystopian, death-laden young adult
novels are any indication — aside from Dasher’s work, we can point to Suzanne
Collins’ Hunger Games books and
Veronica Roth’s Divergent series,
among others — our national psyche is in deep, dark trouble.
The books may better reflect
their respective authors’ personalities, but the resulting movies all look
alike: post-apocalyptic landscapes improbably existing alongside pockets of
aristocratic technology; lone teenage protagonists who are somehow “different,”
and who attract loyal followers; lots of running, jumping and hair’s-breadth
escapes from various monsters and crumbling infrastructure; and the cruel,
systematic loss of said protagonist’s comrades.
This mini-genre has been played
out in the space of just a few years, and The
Scorch Trials glaringly exposes all the worst flaws. Nowlin’s script
shamelessly snatches bits and pieces from countless other, better sources, as
if hoping that by throwing so much narrative spaghetti on the wall, at least
some of it will stick.
Hardly. All that remains is a
mess.
Which director Wes Ball has
orchestrated with all the emotional depth of the intentionally silly serials
from Hollywood’s Golden Age, with their 10-minute installments that always
concluded with a dire-peril cliff-hanger. Watching this bloated, 131-minute
film, we easily can imagine where editor Dan Zimmerman could have cut it into a
dozen pieces, each with its own climax of (in their dreams) heart-stopping
terror.
Sigh.
Having escaped the first film’s
maze, only to be rescued (snatched?) by an unknown military force, Thomas
(Dylan O’Brien) and his friends — primarily Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster),
Teresa (Kaya Scodelario), Minho (Ki Hong Lee) and Frypan (Dexter Darden) — find
themselves in a massive barracks/hospital facility supervised by the solicitous
but rather smarmy Janson (Aidan Gillen).
“You’ll be safe here,” Janson
promises, but we know better; Gillen is best known as the scheming Baelish on
HBO’s Game of Thrones, and he’s
obviously up to no good here, as well.
With scarcely time for a meal or
two, and assisted by new comrade Aris (Jacob Lofland), Thomas discovers the
facility’s true purpose. (Cue a “reveal” scene lifted directly from Robin
Cook’s Coma.) Time to go, kids! With
Thomas in the lead, our core protagonists charge blindly into “the scorch,” the
outlying ruins left devastated by the solar flares that ravaged Earth and also
led to a deadly virus dubbed “the flare,” which transforms anybody infected —
or scratched, or bitten by one so infected — into...
...wait for it...
...a ravening zombie.
Seriously? Zombies? Again?
Yep, suddenly our heroes are tossed
into a mash-up of George Romero’s Dawn of
the Dead — seeking sanctuary in a “deserted” shopping mall — while trying
to evade rage-virus zombies straight out of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later.
From there, things just become a
blur, with a detour into a decadent “party” run by Blondie (Alan Tudyk) being a
particularly random highlight. (Tudyk, at least, plays his role with a sassy
nonchalance that suggests full awareness of how ludicrous everything is.)
Along the way, our heroes gather
two more sorta-kinda-friends: Jorge (Giancarlo Esposito), leader of some ragtag
toughs, and his sorta-kinda ward, Brenda (Rosa Salazar). Nor should we overlook
Vince (Barry Pepper), leader of a sorta-kinda resistance, and Mary (Lili
Taylor), a doctor who once worked for the oft-referenced governmental (?)
entity known as WCKD, and always referenced as “wicked” ... particularly when
people keep telling Thomas that “Wicked is good.”
This sequel, at least, finally
acknowledges the entity behind the acronym. (It lives up to its billing.)
And then there’s Patricia
Clarkson’s Ava Paige, who supposedly killed herself at the end of the first
film, but who reappears here and reveals Her Actual Plan (which still doesn’t explain those silly
mazes). In behavior, end-justifies-the-means line readings and white-garbed
appearance, Ava is a virtual clone of Kate Winslet’s Jeanine, from the Divergent film series. (Do these
filmmakers read each other’s email?)
Matters get so sloppy, that by
the time Thomas finally is confronted by A Huge Betrayal — a deplorable act
that really should have a major impact — we’re beyond caring. Ball’s
live-action cartoon simply isn’t worth any more of our emotional involvement.
Which is a shame, because O’Brien
is a likably resourceful hero, and he certainly puts considerable passion into
his performance. Brodie-Sangster likewise is a solid supporting pal with an
engaging dry wit. (He was Liam Neeson’s love-struck son in Love, Actually, now all grown up.) Lofland, recognized from TV’s Justified, makes Aris an intriguing
character, mostly because he keeps such close counsel; we’d love to know more
about him.
Salazar is appealingly spunky;
Esposito is an entertaining rogue. Pepper and Taylor, both veterans, deliver
some badly needed character depth.
But they’re all acting in a
narrative vacuum, reduced to stick figures tossed about by Nowlin’s script and
Ball’s chaotic excuse for directing. He’s already attached to the third film — The Death Cure — which has been
announced tentatively for release in 2017.
Oh, frapjous day, collooh callay.
Not.
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