Twentieth Century Fox Film Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials features returning fan favorites and a franchise newcomer, who may seem familiar.
The film, which hit theaters on Friday, is the sequel to the 2014 dystopian sci-fi movie The Maze Runner and is based on the second novel in James Dashner's trilogy of the same name. In the first movie, Thomas, a teenage boy played by Teen Wolf TV star Dylan O'Brien, 24, loses his memory and must navigate through a labyrinth with others. In the second film, the group has already established the society The Glade and battles the powerful organization WCKD while navigating through the dangerous landscape the Scorch.
In addition to O'Brien, Aml Ameen, 30, Ki Hong Lee, 28, Kaya Scodelario, 23, and Phineas and Ferb and Game of Thrones actor Thomas Brodie-Sangster, 25, reprise their roles. Joining the franchise is Irish actor Aidan Gillen, 47, who currently plays the scheming Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish on Game of Thrones. In the film, he portrays Janson, the head of a seemingly safe facility where the group ends up at, who is not who he appears to be.
Find out what five critics said about Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials.
1. The Los Angeles Times' Michael Sragow calls the movie a "wicked good game."
The first Maze Runner film was a wilderness saga refitted with robotic monsters. The Scorch Trials is a Mad Max film on foot," he writes. "If you're up for an end-of-the-world adventure done with brio, take the film's own advice and "Go!"
2. ReelViews' James Berardinelli gives Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials two out of four stars.
"With minimal plot development and far too much running around in dark corridors, The Scorch Trials has a poor story:filler ratio," he writes. "And much of what happens is poorly thought-out. The visuals of a blasted city are impressive but hardly reason to spend $10 to sit in a theater seat and watch a bunch of underdeveloped characters get chased by zombies for an inordinate amount of time."
3. Variety's Andrew Barker says the movie "succeeds well enough as derivative survival-horror-action thrillers go, but makes for an unsatisfying, confusing sequel."
"For an incident-packed 131-minute film, The Scorch Trials offers virtually no character development and only hints of plot advancement, mostly just functioning to move a group of obliquely motivated characters from one place to another without giving much clue where the whole thing is headed," he writes.
4. Den of Geek's Rob Leane gives Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials two out of five stars and calls it "a film that feels like it's not really going anywhere."
"Gillen plays his leather-jacket-wearing character like a forlorn teacher on a school trip...This leads to a handful of fun moments as Gillen hams up his performance as much as possible. Meanwhile, everyone else is moaning and groaning," he writes. "Sadly, the core young characters of The Scorch Trials are essentially the Goonies grown teenaged and lethargic. And not in a good way."
"While the basic idea of cool youngsters taking down a nasty adult-made dystopia should be enjoyable and energetic, here it isn't," he says. "The script refuses to give returning stars Dylan O'Brien, Kaya Scodelario, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Ki Hong Lee and Dexter Darden a good line of memorable dialogue or enough character development."
5. CraveOnline's William Bibbiani praised the action sequences.
"The Scorch Trials is just another highly derivative mishmash of old sci-fi and video game concepts. It's unapologetic to the extreme, and just about everything else to the extreme as long as we're on that subject. But it is also, and this is incredibly important, absolutely fantastic," he writes. "With this film, director Wes Ball has crafted a breathless but expertly crafted sightseeing tour of action set pieces, each one exquisitely filmed."
"The plot is a junior jumble of hack mysteries and largely unremarkable characters, but the experience of watching it unfold is so downright electric that you never quite give a damn," he adds.