{"id":5153,"date":"2018-10-27T19:42:18","date_gmt":"2018-10-27T23:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/?p=5153"},"modified":"2022-10-25T15:49:13","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T19:49:13","slug":"maze-runner-the-death-cure-2018-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/maze-runner-the-death-cure-2018-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Teenagers shall inherit the world in Wes Ball’s Maze Runner: The Death Cure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

While definitely not in the target audience, and without expressly setting out to do so, I’ve still somehow managed to see all three Maze Runner<\/em> movies. Their easy availability on streaming services is just too tempting for my chronic addiction to escapist sci-fi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s interesting to see how young adult fiction contrives such scenarios where adults are absent, subservient, or villains. Like Star Wars<\/a><\/em>, Harry Potter<\/em>, and Hunger Games<\/em>, the Maze Runner<\/em> movies are constructed upon the trope of there being one single girl or boy, born with the inherent destiny of rescuing a world that the older generation has squandered. I’m sure kids are not blind to how the genre panders to them, but that doesn’t mean it’s not cathartic for them to imagine themselves bearing cataclysmic responsibilities in life-or-death, world-ending situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While none of the Maze Runner<\/em> films are very good, I did appreciate the first’s relatively straightforward Lord of the Flies<\/em> pastiche (with the caveat that the premise allowed for only one female character — inexcusable in this day and age). As the original title helpfully elucidated, the hero’s journey was to simply escape a maze, which of course came equipped with a minotaur. But the original quest is accomplished, the title becomes essentially meaningless in later installments. To be fair, their subtitles Scorch Trials<\/em> and Death Cure<\/em> are also silly, so I guess cool-sounding nonsense is part of the whole package.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
This year’s Maze Runner<\/em> field trip will be chaperoned by Aiden Gillen and Patricia Clarkson.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Wes Ball’s The Death Cure<\/em> is a bloodless PG-13 zombie war movie for kids, and almost preposterously long at almost 2 1\/2 hours. But it does boast some exciting action sequences, however wildly illogical and coincidence-dependent. The opening rescue of captives from a caravan is an effective emulation of Mad Max<\/a><\/em> for kiddos, and the aerial ensnare of an entire bus near the end is impressive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The young cast is… fine, if a little bland except for an impassioned Thomas Brodie-Sangster (doomed to be known as him from Love Actually<\/em>). Like Kate Winslet in Divergence<\/em>, Ashley Judd in The Hunger Games<\/em>, and every grownup in Harry Potter<\/em>, a handful of respected respected veteran indie actors take up the slack: Patricia Clarkson and Aiden Gillen as baddies-with-actually-rather-complex-motivations, and the Giancarlo Esposito Drinking Game (take a swig every time he says “hermano”, and you’ll be on the floor long before the end).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While definitely not in the target audience, and without expressly setting out to do so, I’ve still somehow managed to see all three Maze Runner movies. Their easy availability on streaming services is just too tempting for my chronic addiction to escapist sci-fi. It’s interesting to see how young adult fiction contrives such scenarios where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,2],"tags":[1700,1816,930,1817,1814,1815,1214,85,1812,1813],"class_list":["post-5153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2-stars","category-movies","tag-1700","tag-aiden-gillen","tag-dystopia","tag-giancarlo-esposito","tag-harry-potter","tag-hunger-games","tag-patricia-clarkson","tag-science-fiction","tag-wes-ball","tag-young-adult"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/maze-runner-death-cure.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa9lhB-1l7","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":606,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/the-8-best-movies-i-saw-in-2007\/","url_meta":{"origin":5153,"position":0},"title":"The 8 Best Movies I Saw in 2007","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"February 10, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Followers of this blog (a statistic which I believe can be plotted on an arc approaching zero) may have noticed an accumulation of digital dust this past year. Indeed, I watched my own blog drop off the first page of Google results for my own name. Who's feeling lucky? A\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Movies"","block_context":{"text":"Movies","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/category\/main-menu\/movies\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The Orphanage","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/orphanage-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/orphanage-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/orphanage-1.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/orphanage-1.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/orphanage-1.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":7988,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/a-muggle-tries-to-make-sense-of-harry-potter-and-the-half-blood-prince\/","url_meta":{"origin":5153,"position":1},"title":"A muggle tries to make sense of Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"July 15, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"As Pottermania began some years ago, I recall being amazed at how similar it all seemed to Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic, which predates J.K. 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From the name and poster alone (indeed, what caught my own interest), one might not even guess Paprika is foreign-language, let alone anime. 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I worked at Warner Bros. throughout the original run of Harry Potter movies. In case that sounds exciting, I assure you it wasn't; it was an extremely minor role in a vast corporation, that involved selling t-shirts, iPhone cases, and battery-powered toy wands online. 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Rather, it's a psychodrama about paranoia, in the Philip K. 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Rewatching it 17 years later, I'm struck by how\u2026 well,\u00a0quaint\u00a0it seems in retrospect. Now every post-Scream horror movie is required to be a postmodern deconstruction of the genre. 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