On another note, likewise not mentioned in this film, WCKD apparently stands for “World Catastrophe Killzone Department,” which would be a terrible name for a government agency even if its acronym weren’t pronounced like “wicked.”) (Not explained in this film: exactly how the previous film’s maze was supposed to benefit anyone.
#MAZE RUNNER THE SCORCH TRIALS FULL#
The group - also comprising Ki Hong Lee, Dexter Darden, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Alexander Flores and Kaya Scodelario as Teresa, the last film’s lone femme - has just escaped from a maze full of monster machines created as a test by the shadowy WCKD organization, which hopes to harness their immunity to “the flare,” a zombie-like virus that, along with an actual solar flare, has left the world barren and inhospitable. “The Scorch Trials” picks up mere minutes after the first film ended, as protagonist Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) and his band of fellow teenage “Gladers” are transported by helicopter to a remote fortified outpost. (Furthermore, this film makes some rather significant changes to the basic plot of James Dashner’s book, meaning those who did read it will be almost as confused as those who did not.)
Both series’ premises are asinine, but “Divergent” is quite conscientious about thoroughly explaining its asinine premise right from the start, whereas “Maze Runner” at least sustains a bit of curiosity by leaving its characters and its audience completely in the dark about why anything is happening, and what any of it could possibly mean.
#MAZE RUNNER THE SCORCH TRIALS SERIES#
With the all-conquering “Hunger Games” series nearing its final stretch, fellow dystopian teenage sci-fi sagas “Maze Runner” and “Divergent” seem equally poised to succeed it, but the former has one key advantage. Generally successful on its own as a strange survival-horror-action film for the pre-college set, but without making much sense at all as part of a larger narrative, “The Scorch Trials” should ensnare a solid chunk of its predecessor’s $340 million worldwide haul. Containing no mazes but plenty of running, the film takes the original’s surviving characters and drops them into the middle of an entirely different type of movie, this one a desert-set zombie chase. Furious, the Arabian king responds by sacking Babylonia, riding the rival king out into the middle of the desert and leaving him to die, saying, “Allow me to show you my labyrinth.” Though lacking in Borges’ ironic symmetry, Wes Ball’s “Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials,” a sequel to last year’s YA adaptation “The Maze Runner,” pulls the exact same switcheroo. In a 1939 short story by lifelong labyrinth aficionado Jorge Luis Borges, the king of Babylonia attempts to embarrass his guest, the king of the Arabs, by stranding him in a convoluted maze he’s constructed at his palace.
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