Scorch Trials Movie Review

Movie: Scorch Trials

Director: Wes Ball

Genre: Action/Sci-Fi/Thriller

Duration: 131 min.

Rated: PG-13

Distributed by: 20th Century Fox

Original story: James Dashner

Release date: September 18th, 2015 (USA)

Rating: ★★★★★

I have so, so, sooooo many things to say about this movie that I don’t know how I’ll manage to make this a non-spoiler review. If anything, this review could have a few mild spoilers here and there, as I’m assuming you’ve all either watched the movie or read the book and that if you haven’t it’s because you don’t really care much for it, but I’ll still try to keep it as spoiler-free as possible.

Soooooooo… They changed a lot of things. Although they kept the whole essence of the book, they changed almost everything. And surprisingly, I WAS OKAY WITH THAT! Actually, I was more than okay. I loved it. I loved it so, so, so much. I didn’t know what I was expecting to happen when I watched this movie but it certainly wasn’t this. This movie served to prove something that I very strongly believe: not all book-to-movie adaptations that deviate from the books are doomed to be a disaster. They took the essence and the base of the book and turned it into something adequate for a screen, something that kept you on the edge of your seat. Props to Wes Ball for having the balls (pun intended) to deviate so much from the books and still managing to keep it true to what the book is. There are only so many directors that would risk doing such a thing, and actually succeed at it. I’m honestly mind-blown.

Mind = Blown

It starts exactly where they left off in The Maze Runner, action right away and action all the way through. They give, in my opinion, a perfect, easy to understand representation of what WICKED (or as is named in the movie, WCKD) is. Many of the complains regarding this series is that it’s very complicated and hard to understand, although I personally don’t have any problems with it, and Wes Ball did a phenomenal job at making it so it’s easy to understand and yet still very much wicked (pun intended).

The setting was very much on point. Very accurate representation of the Scorch and the WCKD base, or at least an accurate representation of how I’d pictured it when reading the book.

Something that really surprised me in a good way, I suppose, were the cranks. BLOODY. CRANKS. Let’s just say that they weren’t that scary in my mind, and imagined them being pretty damn scary. They were honestly horriying. I had imagined them as being more human, even though full-gone cranks are supposed to have lost their humanity. In a way, I think I may have underestimated how truly scary and deadly these once-human-now-basically-monsters could be. There were SO MANY CRANK JUMP-SCARES! I’m very surprised and pleased that I didn’t pee my pants or anything of the matter. I think at some point I became so paranoid about these jump-scares that I kept flinching and getting scared at the stupidest things thinking they were cranks.

Lovely.

Something else that surprised me about this movie was the way *spoiler* Teresa’s betrayal was staged. I actually liked it a whole lot more than the one in the book, possibly because it seemed more real than it did in the book. At first I was honestly a bit annoyed about the fact that Teresa stayed with the group all the way to the Right Arm, and I admit I was getting a bit worried that they would leave out the betrayal completely and Teresa would just stay with the group, because yes, I strongly dislike Teresa. I think that even though “she thought she was doing the right thing” and that it was “the only way to save him,” she sould’ve known better. Thomas always seems to defy authority and the odds to find a way to do things without hurting anyone, or staying faithful and true to his friends, and if Teresa was a strong as she was made out to be, she would’ve found a better way to do things. Anywaaaaaaays, as I was losing hope that she’d leave, BAM! It happened. And I was glad they made me wait so long for it, as in a way that I know understand, keeping Teresa longer just made the whole thing all the more shocking, even for someone that knew it was bound to happen at some point or another, like me. And I really liked the fact that in the movie they made it more about her and her conscience than about her trying to save Thomas. ALL THE MORE REASON TO DISLIKE HER! Although I guess I can understand her need to “save” all of the people that were going through or had went through the same thing she did, but still. If WCKD had shown again, and again how truly wicked (pun intended) they are, shouldn’t she have known better? I mean yes, of course finding a cure would’ve been the ideal thing, but if they keep hurting and affecting all of these healthy immunes to do so, people with the potential to keep their generation alive, what good are they really doing? I just… I should stop talking about Teresa and this whole thing with her right now, because I really could go on about this forever.

The face of a traitor.

On a happier note, I loved Brenda, as well as her relationship with Thomas. When I first saw pictures of Brenda I was very iffy about how Rosa Salazar would do. She looked nothing like what I had imagined Brenda at all. I remember thinking she had a weird face, and not in a bad way, by any means, but I’d just imagined Brenda being straight up beautiful. Little did I know that this very thing was, in my opinion, what made her relationship with Thomas work out perfectly. She wasn’t the most beautiful girl because she was the type of girl that made you like her and fall in love with her with who and what she is. Everything that she was as a person, was what made her whole being beautiful. So of course Thomas wasn’t going to fall in love with her at first sight, it was a slow, true process. She kept surprising him, and proving that he’d made the right choice by trusting her, that she was worth a whole lot more than he’d thought.

*chants* OTP OTP OTP *chants*

I also, not surprisngly loved Ki Hong Lee and Thomas Brodie Sangster’s acting. Well, everyone’s acting, really, but specially those two. They couln’t have chosen better actors to play these two characters. They portray Minho and Newt so perfectly, that they literally seem like they jumped out of the book. Newt has the accent and that seriousness to what he does, Minho has the sass and the sarcasm, it’s all just perfect. And let’s not forget about Dylan O’Brien as Thomas. He’s all I could’ve ever asked of the actor that would be blessed with the task of bringing this character to the screen. I don’t even need to go into detail about this because I’m pretty sure you all understand what I mean. OH, and I also really loved Giancarlo Esposito as Jorge, he did an outstanding performance.

 

Something else that I liked, that could seem somewhat insignificant, were Sonya and Harriet. I swear I had this one moment in which I could see them being straight up kick-ass on one side, Brenda on the other, and the only thing I could think about was girl power. I love seeing strong female characters doing the things that the male characters generally do. IT. WAS. AWESOME.

Overall, this movie was outstanding. I’m still shocked by how incredible it was. It’s like I have these two amazingly mind-blowing portrayals of this story I love, the book and the movie, and they give me this sense of power and happiness. I feel like I have everything I need in life, hahahaha! No, but really. I give this movie a thousand stars, and I 1850285298% recommend you go watch it. And please, don’t be closeminded to change, you’ll be surprised at how much you can like it.

*mind still blown*