Thomas leads his group of escaped Gladers on their final and most dangerous mission yet. To save their friends, they must break into the legendary Last City, a WCKD-controlled labyrinth that may turn out to be the deadliest maze of all. Anyone who makes it out alive will get answers to the questions the Gladers have been asking since they first arrived in the maze.
The first movie to this trilogy had an interesting gimmick: a dynamic maze filled with dangerous creatures. When this is removed, you take away the most interesting part of the movie. That is why the sequel performed so poorly in the box office. The second movie could be summarized as a bunch of bland characters walking on a desert. This third and final film is better than its predecessor, but that is not saying much.
The plot boils down to a group of characters rescuing one of the friends, Minho, of the protagonist, Thomas, while some people work on the cure for a virus. The virus is of course as unoriginal as possible (it turns the infected into the stereotypical zombie). The plan to save Minho is ridiculous, it consists of putting him and other people immune to the virus in a bus, lift it with a crane from the inside of the city and drop it outside of the walls that border it. Of course, the bumpers must have been incredibly strong since they remain attached to the bus when it is lifted by the crane, plus the immune kids must also be invisible because none of them die or are hurt when the bus falls.
I must say I have a couple of questions. Why do mainstream movies have to end with "epic" explosions? Why are the main characters always being shot at when they are running, but they are asked nicely to calm down and to surrender when they have nowhere to go until a deus ex machina appears? Why does the bad guy, the one trained to kill people, who has an army at his command armed to the teeth, playing catch up with a bunch of teenagers for 30 min? If the first five times when he almost caught them were not exciting, do you think the next twenty will be? Are we supposed to care about Teresa's death? Didn't the movie spend 2/3 of its time painting her in a bad light? You know, the untrustworthy chick? Where is the character arc? Where is the plot twist? The suspense?
Apart from the weak story, the acting is mediocre, and the directing was full of problems too. Instead of the action being fluid, it is shot by sections making it look clumsy and awkward. For example, there is a scene where one of the good guys throws a grenade, but instead of being thrown and it exploding, there a shot of it being thrown, a show of it shown where it lands, a zoom in of the faces of the bad guys looking at each other worried because it is going to explode, it exploding from a different angle, and a shot of the good guys celebrating. This type of editing removes the fluidity of a shot and disconnects you from it. I could go on and one, but I think I made my point.
The film was originally to be released on February 17, 2017 in the United States by 20th Century Fox, but the studio rescheduled the movie on January 26, 2018 in theaters and IMAX, as it was Dylan O'Brien's recovery from injuries he suffered while filming. The film received mixed reviews of criticism and has grossed $ 192 million worldwide on February 9, 2018.
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