Yahoo News Maze Runner: The Death Cure review – Worth the wait?
"They're late!" – that's the opening line of Maze Runner: The Death Cure, the third and final part of the post-apocalyptic young adult series that was styled as The Hunger Games for boys. No shit.
Finally hitting the cinema, after long delays following injuries sustained on set by leading man Dylan O'Brien, Death Cure arrives three years after part two (The Scorch Trials) and four years after part one. And sadly, it really is all a bit late.
The YA boom has bust, with the Divergent series trailing off into nothing and also-rans like The Mortal Instruments and Beautiful Creatures but a distant memory. While Death Cure is a solid if repetitive finale, the whole thing feels a bit 'over'.
Viewers would certainly be forgiven for having forgotten what's even going on. To recap, then – a bunch of boys find themselves in the centre of a constantly shifting maze with no memory of the outside world. Inside the maze are all manner of threats and nasties, then the biggest threat of all arrives – a girl.
Eventually she and some of the gang escape to discover they were the survivors of an apocalypse brought on by a global pandemic which causes the infected to turn into zombie like 'cranks' – as questionable corporation WCKD was experimenting on the immune kids in the hope of finding a cure.
Part two sees the survivors escape from WCKD and hunt for other splinter survivor groups. The end of The Scorch Trials found Thomas (O'Brien), Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and Frypan (Dexter Darden) joining forces with rebels Brenda (Rosa Salazar), Jorge (Giancarlo Esposito) and others on a rescue mission to retrieve Minho (Ki Hong Lee) from WCKD after the group was betrayed by Theresa (Kaya Scodelario).
Part three is essentially one long series of rescue missions with some sexy world building and the hint of a moral dilemma at its heart: is it right to sacrifice a generation of immune kids for the chance of saving all of humanity? It's a quandary that's ultimately never addressed.
Director Wes Ball was a feature neophyte when he started the series, and he does seem to have learned some lessons by the end. The over-reliance on CGI is cut right down in Death Cure, with the cranks much more like 28 Days Later's rage victims than I Am Legend's CG ghouls.
The kids too have come into their own, with Salazar and Brodie-Sangster as stand-outs, though O'Brien has never been that charismatic a lead – the male Katniss Everdeen he is not. Further perks come from a gruesome role for Walton Goggins as a nose-less half-crank, and the reappearance of a familiar and unexpected old face.
At 2 hours and 22 minutes, though, Death Cure really does drag, as the gang constantly rescues and re-rescues one another across Mad Max, and then Blade Runner backdrops.
A high-concept series which can't maintain the intrigue of its opening premise, by the end it's become another good-natured but generic tale of kids versus adults versus zombies, with the dirty dystopia of the world outside the maze nothing new or different. "I never thought I'd miss the maze," one of the kids laments. Us too.
Director: Wes Ball; Screenplay: TS Nowlin; Starring: Dylan O'Brien, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Rosa Salazar, Kaya Scodelario, Aidan Gillen, Patricia Clarkson, Barry Pepper, Ki Hong Lee; Running time: 142 minutes; Certificate: 12A
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